‘Not ready to fight endlessly’: Russian propagandists are breaking ranks as chronic war fatigue sets in
After nearly four years of relentless propaganda, some of Vladimir Putin’s trusty allies are breaking ranks to lift the lid on a number of claims.
For years, Russia’s state-sponsored propagandists have told the public the same story.
The invasion of Ukraine was a continuously victorious forward march and a campaign of steady victories. But now, even some of the Kremlin’s most loyal mouthpieces are admitting Vladimir Putin’s favourite narrative no longer holds.
Frustrated US figureheads are also becoming increasingly blunt about Moscow’s failures despite early claims Donald Trump would broker a Russia-friendly settlement to end the war.
Unfortunately for Russia, the “special military campaign” once slated to take under three weeks has run for over three years. Western allies pumped billions into Ukraine’s defence in a bid to send a message, remaining firm that nobody, not even a superpower like Russia, can just roll their tanks in and seize land like they’re living in the early 20th century.
“Russians have got to wake up and accept reality. A lot of people are dying and they don’t have a lot to show for it,” US Vice President JD Vance said last week.
Just a few days earlier, Trump smashed Russia for “spending millions and millions of dollars on bombs, missiles, ammunition, and lives, their lives, and they’ve gained virtually no land”.
What’s different today is that the same doubts are surfacing even inside Russia’s highly complex propaganda machine.
Tatyana Montyan, a former Ukrainian lawyer turned ardent defender of Russia and its invasion, has now admitted manpower is drying up and warned President Vladimir Putin may soon be forced into another wave of mobilisation, a policy that has already forced thousands of military-aged men out of the country.
“In the first half of September, the pace of the offensive slowed significantly. They may have committed their last reserves,” Montyan, a regular pundit on state media channels like Russia-1 and Channel One, said in an interview on September 22.
Politician Dmitry Rogozin, a senator installed in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, also conceded that “it’s impossible to advance. There’s a deadlock at the front”.
Meanwhile, Pavel Gubarev, a veteran of Russia’s proxy wars in Donetsk, described “incomparably heavy losses” on the Russian side and argued Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries had created a strategically advantageous situation for Kyiv.
“In reality, the current situation is already tantamount to defeat for us,” he wrote.
Independent monitoring backs up those warnings. According to Ukraine’s Deep State group, Russia seized just 1,548 square kilometres between June and August — equal to about 0.003 per cent of Ukraine’s landmass — while losing nearly 95,000 troops in the same period, more than 1,000 per day.
‘Russians are not ready to fight endlessly’
Even on Russia’s state-sponsored television, cracks are beginning to show.
On September 19 during NTV’s talk show Mesto Vstrechi (“Meeting Place”), a guest openly challenged the Defense Ministry’s claims of catastrophic Ukrainian losses.
“With the outbreak of hostilities, the Ukrainian army went up to 800,000 people. Then it increased by somewhere near 100,000–120,000 per year. Thus, there can be no 1,700,000–2,000,000 losses because, in that case, the Ukrainian army simply would not exist,” he said.
When the host pressed him on whether he was accusing the Russian Defence Ministry of lying, which is a crime in wartime Russia, he doubled down.
“Not only ours. It is a huge mistake to underestimate the Ukrainian army,” he said.
Military analyst and former officer of Ukraine’s Security Service Ivan Stupak says the admissions reveal a deep fatigue within the Russian public, who are rapidly approaching the four-year deadline to a war that has isolated them from the rest of the world.
“Propagandists speak as long as they are allowed to. If they tell the truth and it causes harm, we will see it in the Russian authorities’ actions toward them,” Ivan Stupak told the Kyiv Independent these, adding the dissent shows Russians “are not ready to fight endlessly, contrary to what the Kremlin claims.”
A dangerous gambit
The shift in tone among propagandists comes against the backdrop of Russia’s long record of silencing critics.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has expanded laws against “discrediting the armed forces,” with penalties of up to 15 years in prison for voicing opposition to the war. Independent media outlets have been shuttered or forced abroad, while street protests are met with mass arrests.
Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, political dissidents, opposition leaders, and independent journalists have routinely faced harassment, imprisonment, or worse.
High-profile figures like opposition politician Alexei Navalny were jailed on politically motivated charges after surviving an assassination attempt with a banned nerve agent. Navalny died while imprisoned in the IK-3 “Polar Wolf” penal colony in the Arctic Yamal-Nenets region.
Russian prison authorities claimed he collapsed after a walk and could not be resuscitated.
Other critics have died under suspicious circumstances, from investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down in Moscow in 2006, to former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko. He was poisoned in London the same year.
In 2015, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot near the Kremlin walls, just steps from Russia’s seat of power.
Beyond these headline cases, thousands of lesser-known dissidents have been targeted for sharing opinions against the ruling regime.
Originally published as ‘Not ready to fight endlessly’: Russian propagandists are breaking ranks as chronic war fatigue sets in
