Top Russian Milblogger Praises Ukraine Army, Predicts Kremlin Spring Offensive Will Fail

One of the Kremlin’s most widely viewed advocates of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Yuri Podolyaka, on Friday, told Russian audiences the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) is superior to the Russian army in fighting efficiency, and that a spring offensive attacking Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions would probably fail with heavy losses to the attacker.

“Little by little, the advantage is going to our enemies. Very experienced guys are working there. They are highly qualified specialists. They know how things work, and they are working to take advantage of the technical superiority that they have. Unfortunately, they are succeeding. I know it seems [to Russian viewers] like we [Russia] have more strength and more resources, but the enemy is counterattacking, and he is succeeding,” Podolyaka said.

A former Ukrainian citizen transferring his loyalty to Moscow in 2014, Podolyaka, with his hugely popular Telegram news program “The World Today With Yuri Podolyaka” (Russian: “Мир сегодня с Юрий Подоляка”) has a Telegram audience of some 2.8 million subscribers and a YouTube audience of 2.7 million, making him one of Russia’s top two or three milbloggers.

In 2022, Podolyaka’s tactically focused broadcasts detailed Russian victories and even during winter 2025-26 confidently predicted impending Ukrainian collapse at the hands of overwhelming Russian military might.

Podolyaka’s Sunday report reversed years of messaging that the AFU troops were inferior to Russia’s military, and added his voice to a growing chorus of Russian influencers willing to risk up to 15 years of imprisonment (Russian penal code Article 207.3 “Public dissemination of knowingly false information about the Armed Forces”) in order to state openly that Russia’s battlefield position in Ukraine was stalled against strong Ukrainian defenses, and that Russia’s war situation was weakening.

Podolyaka said of Russia’s ongoing spring offensive now in progress:

“Unfortunately, I think that in the coming months we will not be able to change this situation. We just can’t. To our great misfortune. And it’s very important that this will be taking place in those months in which, by logic, we should be hitting them with our main effort in the 2026 campaign. How we can actually do that, honestly, it’s difficult to see. It’s absolutely clear there will be big [Russian] losses.”

Podolyaka went on to state Ukrainian long-range strikes against Russian rear areas are effective and that Russian defenses are unable to handle them, and that Ukrainian drone and electronic warfare capabilities are superior to Russia’s, and that that gap is widening.

“The enemy is working very effectively against our rear areas and is attacking our logistics… (and) unfortunately, we have no way to protect those areas effectively. We don’t have enough jamming equipment, and it’s not of sufficient quality,” he said. “If we have in mind the idea that the end of the war is already in our pocket, then unfortunately, I fear there will be very big problems. In the very near future. Our enemy is very, very effective. He learns extremely quickly. Much more quickly than we do. He quickly creates new tactics, and even a strategy of modern war; now, even NATO countries are starting to use it, because they admit that in this, the AFU is the leader in this area. I can’t say to you that they are weaker than us in this. Unfortunately, they’re stronger.”

One of the first high-profile Russian army supporters to go public with criticism was Ilya Remeslo, a longtime outspoken advocate of Russia’s domination of its neighbors and elimination of Ukraine as an independent state. In a five-point manifesto leading with “Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin,” Remeslo charged the Russian leader with incompetence, destruction of the national economy, stifling civil freedoms, and above all, starting an unwinnable war against Ukraine that has become a national disaster.

“We all thought Putin was the unifier of Russian lands. And now we’ve come to this: bloody assaults, the luring of contract soldiers by deception, and much more, as any participant in the SVO [Russian official euphemism for the Russo-Ukrainian War] will confirm. A completely dead-end war, enormous losses, it could go on for another 5-10 years – are you ready for that?… The war is being waged solely to satisfy Putin’s insecurities; we, ordinary citizens, gain nothing from it, only lose,” Remeslo wrote on March 18 to 90,000-plus followers.

“Bottom line: Vladimir Putin is not a legitimate president. Vladimir Putin must resign and be brought to trial as a war criminal and thief. Long live freedom, damn it!” Remeslo said.

Vladimir Kucherenko, a Russian journalist writing and broadcasting under the popular nom-de-plume Maxim Kalashnikov, in a Friday YouTube Vlog, directly accused Putin of leading Russia incompetently, and predicted that Russia’s ruling class will see throwing him out of power as the only way to maintain their position at the top end of Russian society.

“The current Supreme Commander-in-Chief is already being viewed by the elites as a toxic figure. They really want the war to end. But ending the war is one thing – and freezing the conflict is something completely different. He is not capable of either winning this war or ending it. He has driven the situation into a dead end from which he cannot get out. His rating is collapsing. And this makes him a toxic figure who no longer suits the Russian elites,” Kalashnikov said.

Other Russian bloggers have targeted the army leadership for poor leadership. Andrey Filatov, a Petersburg-based “war correspondent” with 170,000 followers, in a Sunday article entitled “Roads and Memories,” reported the Russian army has become an organization with an ingrained bias toward getting lower-ranking soldiers killed or wounded, and in which battlefield success means little.“When the Russian army arrived… they were young, motivated, physically fit, with good marksmanship skills… Over the past four years, those who survived and remained healthy among the lower ranks took up positions at the battalion commander level, and those at the top… well, they weren’t punished for wasting their manpower… As a result, we have an Army brain that can’t handle a modern war, and underneath them are the right ‘managers/drivers’… [pushing] only one survivor, the actual combatant… There has been no qualitative improvement in the army’s command and control,” Filatov said.

In a Monday opinion piece entitled “When the [vulgar word for Ukrainian] Tells Lies,” pro-Russia authors Dmitry and Ekaterina Korzin warned 1.1 million telegram followers that Ukraine is not only coping successfully with Russia’s spring offensive, Kyiv’s leaders are building up a massive attack force that will soon launch a counteroffensive with the objective of taking back Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions that, according to the Korzins, are now weakly controlled by Russia. Drone swarms already are patrolling sectors soon to be hit by the Ukrainian attack, the article said.

“Kyiv’s plans to deploy up to 1 million troops by 2026 have not been cancelled. This, unsurprisingly, would be deployed to [re-]establishing territorial control over the territories so far hypothetically liberated [by Russia],” the Korzins wrote. “On the [southern] Zaporizhzhia Front, the enemy has increased their [massed drone] use…by at least twofold.”