1/ Citizens of the puppet 'Donetsk People's Republic' (DNR) are complaining en masse that they are not being paid their promised compensation for deaths and injuries caused to local residents by the war. The DNR itself admits that it owes more than 38 billion rubles ($467m). ⬇️
2/ Relatives and soldiers of the DNR's armed forces – which have been decimated due to being used as so-called 'meat waves' against Ukrainian positions – have been posting numerous videos complaining about the lack of compensation payments and appealing to Putin for help.
3/ In one video, a wife says: "Starting from September 2022, funding for lump-sum compensation for wounded and killed DNR servicemen for 2022 was terminated. We submitted documents to the commission of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy of the DNR.
4/ "There are a lot of us. We applied to all authorities. From the presidential administration to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation.
5/ "All our appeals are forwarded to the government of the DNR, which redirects them to the Ministry of Labour, and the answers come from there that there is no funding. We write to the deputies and there are no results."
6/ According to the wife of one wounded soldier, his unit "collected all the necessary documents promptly, the medical examiner issued a conclusion of a severe injury.
7/ "In November we submitted all the documents for payment, and for seven months there have been no payments, the allowance during treatment is 30,000 rubles ($371). The answer is the same, there is no funding."
8/ People seeking compensation have complained to the DNR state prosecutor's office, which admitted that an audit had "established the fact of lack of funding for this type of payment, which requires an amount of more than 38 billion rubles."
9/ It's very unlikely that the DNR will be able to pay the sums it owes, as its finances are precarious, its economy is a mess and it's kept afloat only by Russian government funding.
10/ The Russian government has shown little concern previously for the welfare of DNR soldiers and their families, so there seems to be little likelihood that the relatives' video appeals will achieve much. /end
1/ As Russian progress in Ukraine slows to a crawl, frustration is mounting among warbloggers about why Russia isn't yet 'fighting for real'. One proposes a list of what should be done, from seizing the eastern half of Ukraine to emulating 2022's infamous Hostomel air assault. ⬇️
2/ Russian warblogger Yuri Kotenok advocates:
"1. Stop playing second fiddle in the war by seizing the initiative. For example, by imposing a pre-emptive blockade on the enemy’s ports and transport links, rather than responding to attacks on ships in the Black Sea and Azov Sea.
3/ "2. Do not agree to a compromise; do not be taken in by the temporary and ostentatious ‘peacefulness’ of the Trump/Macron camp and suchlike, or by the, to put it mildly,…
1/ Russia has doubled the rate of personal income tax to cover the budget deficits caused by the war in Ukraine. However, as a gloomy Russian commentary notes, it's likely to have dire effects on the economy and the country's already declining demographics. ⬇️
2/ 'Political Report' writes:
"In 2025, Russian authorities doubled personal income tax collection at rates exceeding 13%, turning citizens' incomes and savings into one of the fastest-growing sources of budget deficit financing."
3/ "The federal treasury received 763 billion rubles [$9.72 bn], up from 339 billion rubles [$4.32 bn] the previous year.
1/ Gas prices were lowered, restrictions were lifted, and queues vanished temporarily for a visit to Irkutsk by Vladimir Putin. Russians are calling it a modern-day Potemkin village, but it appears to show how hard Putin's underlings try to hide Russia's problems from him. ⬇️
2/ The original Potemkin villages were said to be fakeside river towns built by Grigory Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine the Great in 1787 (though it appears to be a myth). However, it was an attempt to fake success, rather than hiding failure from a leader inhabiting a bubble.
3/ The Russian Telegram channel 'Honesty, and that's final' reports on unusual events that happened during Putin's recent visit to the western Siberian city of Irkutsk:
1/ Russia isn't winning in Ukraine and it's all the fault of Russian society, says an angry Russian warblogger. Seeking an explanation for why (in the eyes of warbloggers) Russia has not yet started "fighting for real", he blames ordinary Russians for apathy and cowardice. ⬇️
2/ Russian society has been massively atomised under the rule of Vladimir Putin, with the near-destruction of most civil society organisations (apart from a limited number approved of or tolerated by the state). Passive subservience is welcomed; collective action is discouraged.
3/ This nuance seems to have passed by the author of the 'It's Time To Go Home ZOV' Telegram channel, who thinks that his fellow citizens, rather than the oppressive regime they live under, are to blame for the current situation:
1/ Wildberries sellers are generally blaming the Russian government, rather than Ukraine, for their losses. It's an interesting and striking dynamic, which Russian warbloggers say the Russian government itself has created through its suppression of bad news. ⬇️
2/ Over the last couple of weeks, Russian social media has been flooded with videos of distraught Wildberries sellers weeping over their huge losses as a result of Ukrainian drone strikes against warehouses across Russia.
3/ Tens to hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses have lost much if not all of their stock, with total financial losses just from inventory alone already reckoned to be in the billions of dollars. Ukraine, however, has received surprisingly little blame.
1/ A rare Russian armoured assault on 22 June ended in disaster, with the loss of numerous vehicles and the reported deaths of scores of Russians. Russian warbloggers are scathing about the losses, seeing the attack as incompetent. ⬇️
2/ FT military correspondent Andrey Filatov is highly critical, using a standard euphemism for the Russian army to evade censorship:
3/ "The enemy's video report is all standard fare: analog FPV, fiber optics, Mavics. The new thing is a strike wing approaching a stationary "shed" [turtle tank] All these threats can be worked on, but they're not for the brilliant commanders of the Laotian army...