Anne Applebaum

And suddenly it's becoming clear to a lot of people, not just near the front line, but in Moscow and St.

Petersburg, that they are not winning.

And that's beginning to have echoes.

You know, you can see it in the Russian Internet.

You can see some responses online.

even from sort of, believe it or not, Russian influencers.

There are critiques of Putin.

There are people commenting, you know, why aren't we winning?

Why aren't we trying harder?

Some people talking about nukes.

Again, that always happens when the Russians are losing.

There's a sense of shakiness and instability.

And, you know, the Russians had this... Every May, they have this enormous victory parade.

And this year...

It was much shorter and it went forward without any – usually they have these big weapons.

They have tanks and military hardware.

And this year they didn't do that because they were afraid of Ukrainian drones hitting Moscow during the victory parade.

And that's palpable.

That's now clear to everybody in the country that they aren't winning the war.

And so the gap between Russian propaganda and reality is now becoming clear.