London Defender

The Daily Mirror of the Great Britain

Russian pundit loses it as she slams Kremlin for not ‘preparing for this kind of war’

The Russian pundit admitted Moscow had not expected NATO countries to provide so much support to Ukraine following the launch of the special operation in February. Olga Skabayeva said Russia‘s army was too small to fight back against all the international partners who intervened in aid of Kyiv as she expressed rage at the Kremlin’s unpreparedness. The outburst came days after the Kremlin confirmed its troops had retreated from Kherson and crossed back onto the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.

Speaking to Rossiya-1, Sbabayeva said: “Nobody was preparing for this kind of war.

“Nobody was expecting such a large, global, war. Nobody was working on the basis that all 509 countries – I apologize for my slang – would stick up for Ukraine.

“Our army isn’t big either, it isn’t designed for such ambitious wars.”

Vladimir Putin announced the conscription of a further 300,000 Russians after the Russian Army suffered severe losses at the hand of Ukraine’s defence forces.

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Russia’s retreat from Kherson sparked outrage among Putin’s faithful propagandists, including ultra-loyalist Vladimir Solovyiov.

Solovyov questioned the army’s military strategy to keep the city under its control as Ukrainians pushed through with their counter-offensive efforts.

Speaking on his daily show, he said: “I’ve been screaming out loud since February that we need to strike the bridges, destroy the infrastructure, delivery entryways.

“They [Russian military] said, ‘You don’t understand anything, they’ll bring their equipment to the same area and we will smash it!'”

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Ukraine’s retaking of Kherson was a significant setback for the Kremlin and the latest in a series of battlefield embarrassments.

The Russian retreat came some six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Kherson region and three other provinces in southern and eastern Ukraine — in breach of international law — and declared them Russian territory.

The US embassy in Kyiv tweeted comments Sunday by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who described the turnaround in Kherson as “an extraordinary victory” for Ukraine and “quite a remarkable thing.”

The reversal came despite Putin’s recent partial mobilization of reservists, raising troop numbers by some 300,000. That has been hard for the Russian military to digest.