Cracks in the Russian wall.
‘The war is lost and must be ended.’
Cracks in the Russian wall.
‘The war is lost and must be ended.’
Grigory Yeremeyev, a sixty-nine-year-old regional law maker in the regional parliamentary assembly of Samara Oblast became the first sitting official to declare the Ukraine war lost, and point the fault directly as Vladimir Putin.
Yeremeyev said:
‘The war is lost and must be ended.’
‘The war has failed and is the shared responsibility of Putin.’
‘The goals of the war are now unobtainable.’
‘The war is not being fought for victory but for Putin to avoid being remembered as a defeated President.’
Other assembly members immediately shouted him down cut his microphone and filed a complaint against him for violating press freedom. Shortly afterwards he was arrested.
In 2025 more than six hundred Russian people were arrested and given harsh prison sentences for opposing the war. It is tempting to place this incident in the same category as other Russian protestors, but it is different.
Yeremeyev is, or was, a regional leader. He knew the consequences of his words before he spoke. He understood the fear his words would invoke in his colleagues. One can only imagine the anger and frustrations he must have felt to choose arrest and imprisonment before silence.
Samara is a small agricultural region in the south of Russia. Yeremeyev must have witnessed thousands of young men from Samar go to war and never return. He has seen the young women with no husbands, parents with no sons and a government that claims the war is for ‘Mother Russia.’
Despite government control of state media, it is impossible to hide the terrible casualties the war has produced, especially to the rural populations. It is impossible to cut every telephone from the front lines and impossible to convince people the war is going well when it only takes one truck driver returning from Kazakhstan to repeat what he has seen on international news.
In 2025 the average daily advance of the Russian army was fifteen metres. That is the same as crossing a road. The price in Russian casualties averages one thousand per day. That’s sixty-six dead or wounded men for every metre of empty, ruined land gained
Even Russian government broadcasters are showing a lack of enthusiasm. They have been making comparisons with the recent US operation into Venezuela and criticising the military while carefully avoiding any direct remarks towards Putin himself. Why, they asked, can the Americans mount a special military operation in three hours while a Russian one takes four years? They also reminded the public they have been at war in Ukraine longer than they were at war with German from 1941-45.
Yeremeyev and his people must also be aware of the climbing price of food, the lack of fuel for transport, power cuts, and inflation. To put oneself forward to be sacrificed in an authoritarian regime is a sign of frustration as much courage.
Messages from the Russian leadership maintain the same refusal to accept reality but this outburst is a significant crack in their propaganda wall. After four years the truth is building in pressure. Not because of the moral virtues of the leadership, but because pain and suffering is being felt across the whole of rural Russia.
Yeremeyev was heard by his people; his arrest increases rather than decreases the volume of his words. He is the first official protestor, but he will not be the last. The mothers, wives and children who have lost so much will soon come to ask the same questions Yeremeyev asked.
Politicians start wars, soldiers fight them, people die in them on all sides and far too often those who started them walk away unscathed.
There are others in Russia who have died for speaking out. The most prominent was Alexander Navalney who died in a Russian prison on February 16th, 2024. The six hundred arrested last year knew and accepted the consequences of their actions and sacrificed their freedom or lives, for the future of their people.
When Putin accepts defeat and the truth finally explodes out into Russian public view, it will be the one million graves of men and boys that carry a reminder of what happens when a nation is ruled by the tyranny of one egotistical man. (USA take note) The outpouring of grief, resentment and violence will be unstoppable.
I write to fight!
Slava Ukraini!
Robin Horsfall
(Give me a hand, become a paid subscriber)
Well written - am waiting patiently for Putins downfall to come.
But will the Americans realise the USA is becoming more like Russia every day?
Trump has had to withdraw ICE from Mines OTA due to te public outcry and the attacks on his Administration. Officials in the roles of Secretaries of State Departments are being grilled and found to have acted unlawfully and blatantly lied to Congress.
Both Rusia and the USA could end up having civil wars!