Is the Kremlin Preparing the Russian People for the Announcement That the War is Going Badly?

First, watch this:

Extraordinary exchange on Russian state TV’s top talk show about Ukraine. Military analyst & retired colonel Mikhail Khodarenok tells anchor Olga Skabeyeva “the situation for us will clearly get worse…we’re in total geopolitical isolation…the situation is not normal.” pic.twitter.com/ExMwVDszsk

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) May 16, 2022

There is a flavor of "Mother Russia is being stabbed in the back by NATO", but there is also a backhanded acknowledgement that the Ukrainians are becoming better armed and are far more motivated than the Russians.

Note also that they seem to have held hope that Rand Paul (who was not named) would be able to hold up American military aid to Ukraine, but they realize that hope is a forlorn one.

Between that, and the fact that Russian military bloggers have covered the slaughter of a part of a Russian motorized rifle brigade at the Siverskyi Donets River pontoon bridges may indicate that either a) you can't stop the signal forever; or b) the Kremlin is laying the ground for the end of the war on unfavorable terms.

The Ukrainians are making far better use of their artillery. I should have made a note of where I read the story, but the synopsis is this: Thanks, in no small measure, to Starlink, the Ukrainians have been able to widely disperse their artillery pieces while having all of the tubes within range of a target act as a single battery. In effect, they can bring mass artillery fire onto a target in a very short span of time. The Ukrainian guns "shoot and scoot", which limits the ability of the Russians to engage in counterbattery fire.

It would be very interesting if the Ukrainians were able to put counterbattery radar up to protect cities.

Another thing that is helping the Ukrainians as this goes on is that NATO nations are not just sending old Warsaw Pact weapons, they are increasingly sending state-of-the-art artillery to Ukraine. This is a win-win situation in that the Ukrainians are getting better gear and the NATO nations are getting to do real-world testing on their weapons.