The Kremlin has allowed the state media to tell the truth sometimes about the failures of Russian forces in Ukraine, because official propaganda can no longer contain the growing doubts among the population.
Bloomberg writes about this with reference to sources.
The Kremlin fears that the optimistic reports of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation fuel the publicʼs distrust of the authorities and, together with propaganda, increase the wave of public criticism of the military. With this in mind, a few weeks ago the media got the green light to "suppress criticism" and "search for those responsible for failures". This can already be seen in the videos of a number of famous propagandists.
The authorities hope that the emergence of "low noise" can help strengthen public support for the war, if the state media can create a picture or the appearance that mistakes are taken into account and corrected, such as with the mobilization of the unfit for service.
The new approach is coordinated with Putin. According to sources familiar with the situation, the Russian president has held at least two closed-door meetings with a small group of Russian military correspondents since the beginning of the summer. One of them took place shortly before the decision to mobilize 300 000 people.
At the last meeting, the correspondents told Putin about the "terrible picture of the situation at the front". In just a few weeks, Ukrainian forces recaptured large areas of territory that Russian troops had spent months occupying. Some correspondents left that meeting wondering if Putin had any idea of the real situation at the front.