2023-05-25 20:52:11
War in Ukraine
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The spectacular incursion of anti-Putin fighters into the Belgorod region this week has rekindled the debate regarding the weaknesses of Russian defenses. An ambient excitement largely fueled by the boss of Wagner’s mercenaries.
What panic for a few villages occupied for twenty-four hours and a light armored vehicle stolen… The incursion this week, in the border region of Belgorod, of a hundred Russian anti-Putin fighters, provoked, in the media and on the Russian social networks, a storm out of proportion to the real scale of the operation. From the first news mentioning the crossing of the border by the attackers, the networks were filled with alarmist and contradictory messages. The enemy would have already entered Belgorod, some wrote. He would wear Russian police uniforms, claimed a very shared message on regional Telegram groups, inviting to shoot on sight anyone wearing a police uniform.
The official press releases, stating first that the “Ukrainian saboteurs” had fallen into a trap, then that they had all been eliminated even as the fighting continued, provoked only a deluge of more or less anguished sarcasm. “We spent ten billion rubles to fortify the border of the Belgorod regionquipped on Monday the Gray Zone Telegram channel, affiliated
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