Yuri Fedorov: A Number Of Russian Officials Are Sending A Message

People are openly telling Putin that it's time to end the war.

Renowned military expert Yuri Fedorov believes that some members of the Russian elite are urging Putin to end the war. He told a reporter for the website Charter97.org about this on the sidelines of the Free Russia Forum, which took place in Warsaw on October 11:

— If we’re talking about the specific signal everyone is discussing, it was the statement by Sergey Sobyanin. The gist was this: it’s time to end it. Militarization and a shift to martial law—that would be a disaster for the economy. Something like that.

This kind of sentiment is evident in a large number of Telegram channels. It’s hard to say what kind of channels these are—they can vary widely—and only God knows who created them. Nevertheless, the general trend in this, I would say, pro-government Russian information sphere—aside from the official outlets, Solovyov, and others—is this: yes, we’ve gone down the wrong path. It’s time to wrap this up. For various reasons. There are military officials who say: we’re wasting money needlessly when tanks are burning up, and we need to invest in building a modern army, developing weapons, and so on. This isn’t an anti-war stance. But it is the stance of a certain segment of the military.

Then there’s the stance of the civilian bureaucracy, which faces the need to survive even as funds grow increasingly scarce.

The governor of, say, the Oryol Region is required to ensure the population remains satisfied and doesn’t revolt. And second, funds are being diverted to military purposes, and that same governor is being required to pay as much as possible to these very mercenaries.
And that’s where the problem arises: what is this poor governor supposed to do?

— Could this escalate into something more serious, or will it remain just isolated statements for now?

— It will escalate into something more serious when Putin is forced to call a ceasefire. And then the question will arise—one that people are already asking, but only behind closed doors: Why was this necessary if the war hasn’t been won?
I think the Russian elite would certainly welcome a victory in this war. But right now, it’s impossible to win the war. So, this war hasn’t been won. What next? It’s no longer in the interests of this group to simply wage an endless war. It’s in the interests of a certain segment of the elite who fear the war ending.

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