Putin’s defence minister ‘should have shot himself’, says Russian-installed official in rare public backlash

Chechen leaders also ridicule generals saying senior officials should be stripped of their ranks

A Russian-installed official in occupied Ukraine slammed Vladimir Putin’s defence minister saying he should consider killing himself due to the shame of defeats at the hand of Kyiv’s forces.

In an astonishing public insult to Russia’s top brass, Kirill Stremousov lambasted the “generals and ministers” in Moscow for their failure to understand the problems on the ground.

"Indeed, many say: if they were a defence minister who had allowed such a state of affairs, they could, as officers, have shot themselves," he said in the four-minute video message. "But you know the word ‘officer’ is an incomprehensible word for many."

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group of mercenaries, also ridiculed Russia’s generals, saying that the senior officers should be stripped of their ranks and sent barefoot to the warfront to atone for their sins, as they criticised the military for being riddled with nepotism.

The Russian defence minister is under fire along with his generals for poor planning, shallow logistics, as well as using outdated tactics and for failures in information warfare.

Discontent has also begun to bubble up among even loyalist state TV hosts.

"Please explain to me what the general staff’s genius idea is now?" Vladimir Solovyov, one of the most prominent Russian talk show hosts, said on his livestream channel.

"Do you think time is on our side? They (the Ukrainians) have hugely increased their amount of weapons... But what have you done in that time?"

While it is unclear if the rare public backlash targeted at the military is coordinated, it comes at a time when Ukraine’s forces are swiftly recapturing more territory, especially in the south.

Ahead of Mr Putin’s 70th birthday on Friday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that the country has recaptured more than 500sqkm of territory and dozens of settlements in southern Kherson alone in October.

"There are successes in the east as well. The day will surely come when we will report on successes in the Zaporizhzhia region (in southeastern Ukraine) as well, in those areas that the occupiers still control," he said.

Thousands of Russian troops have retreated after the front line crumbled, first in the northeast and subsequently in the south.

Several factors are at play in Kyiv’s rapid gains including western military aid and tactical mistakes from the Russian army, said Ukrainian military analyst Oleg Zhdanov.

“On the Kharkiv front, we are advancing in a broad sweep," he told Ukraine’s Apostrophe TV. "On the southern front ... the aim is to trap and push Russian forces either onto the west bank of the Dnipro (river) or back to the city of Kherson."

Additional reporting by agencies