Vladimir Putin, according to Meduza, said Ukraine had made a new proposal: Kyiv was ready to stop drone strikes on Russian territory if the Russian army halted attacks deep inside Ukraine. The Russian president rejected the initiative.
He said such strikes cause greater damage to Ukraine than to Russia. Speaking about fuel shortages that followed attacks on oil refineries, Putin said those problems “are not of a critical nature.”
He also repeated that the main goal of the war, which Russian authorities still describe as a “special military operation,” remains unchanged: to fully “liberate” the annexed regions of Ukraine.
Meduza says the biggest Z-bloggers avoided giving a substantive assessment of the president’s remarks and mostly limited themselves to neutral news summaries. But the response from their audiences, in the outlet’s view, showed a more skeptical mood even among some pro-war readers.
Reactions to the posts
Under a post saying “The main task of the Russian army is the final liberation of Donbas and Novorossiya,” the 🤣 emoji received 2.4 thousand reactions, while 👍 got 2.2 thousand. Under another summary of Putin’s remarks on the war, reactions were listed as 😄 — 933, 🙏 — 338, and 👎 — 166.
In other channels cited by Meduza, posts about the president’s statements drew figures including 🙏 — 1.1 thousand and 🤣 — 469; 🙈 — 1.1 thousand and ♥️ — 516; 😄 — 1.5 thousand, 👍 — 427, 😐 — 178, 👎 — 116; as well as 🤔 — 551, 🙏 — 274, and 😱 — 88.
Against that backdrop, Meduza concludes that Putin’s determination to continue the war regardless of the consequences for people in Russia is receiving less and less approval even from part of a generally loyal audience.