So much for the unvarnished truth coming from Vladimir Putin’s supposed expert observers on the Russian war in Ukraine. The tsar sent a clear pour encourager les autres signal to Russian milbloggers yesterday by arresting a leader in that community — and a well-connected one at that, at least until yesterday. Or was it yesterday?

ISW reports that Putin’s had enough of criticisms of his leadership, even if that criticism avoided any hint of lese majeste. However, this seems a bit suspicious for other reasons, and may have been just for show:

Russian authorities detained the manager of several milblogger telegram channels on October 5, indicating that the Kremlin is likely setting limits on what criticism is allowed in the domestic Russian information space. Alexander Khunshtein, the deputy secretary of the General Council of Putin’s political party, United Russia, published footage on October 5 showing Russian authorities detaining Alexei Slobodenyuk.[20] Slobodenyuk is an employee of Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Patriot media group and the manager of several milblogger telegrams, the most prominent of which are “Release Z Kraken” and “Skaner.” The telegram channel “Skaner” has featured criticism of major state officials and military personnel, the most prominent of whom are Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, and Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. Russian authorities detained Slobodenyuk on accusations of fraud. His detention suggests that the Kremlin is attempting to set boundaries for which criticism is allowed in the information space and on which high-ranking officials milbloggers and journalists can criticize—Defense Minister Shoigu, Putin‘s likely scapegoat-in-waiting, now appears to be fair game, whereas officials close to Putin such as Lavrov and Putin’s spokesperson are off-limits.

Khunstein published the footage of the arrest yesterday, but … is that when the arrest took place? Despite his alleged prominent position within Prigozhin’s propaganda firmament, one cannot find much on Aleksei Slobodenyuk in searches of the internet — except for a report on his arrest. In August, about seven weeks before this announcement, the Committee to Protect Journalists objected to the arrest of Aleksei Slobodenyuk and others on fraud charges related to their work on the Telegram channel Scanner:

Also on August 4, the Basmanny court in Moscow ordered the detention until September 25, of Vladislav Malushenko, Yevgeny Moskvin, and Aleksei Slobodenyuk, media workers who run the Telegram channel Scanner on charges of large-scale fraud, according to multiple media reports. If found guilty, they face up to six years in prison, according to the Russian criminal code.

Authorities accused the trio of extorting money from Rostec, a state-owned defense conglomerate, in exchange for not publishing negative data about it, those reports said.

According to reports, Malushenko works for the Federal News Agency and Moskvin and Slobodenyuk work for the Narodnye Novosti publishing house, both workplaces reportedly linkedto Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The Scanner channel, which has about 178,000 subscribers and claims to “monitor corrupt government officials,” published allegations about corruption at jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, and the channel “is used to discredit those who disagree with the government,” according to investigative outlet Agentstvo.

So it appears that Slobodenyuk got arrested two months ago, for reasons that have little to do with Russian losses or criticism of the regime over competence. The Russian military wasn’t performing well on August 4, but the collapse didn’t begin until the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive almost a month later. Until then, the milblogger community had been a reliable propaganda arm for Putin, too.

If Slobodenyuk got arrested for fraud and extortion related to his work for Prigozhin on August 4, especially for threatening to reveal nasty business in Putin’s defense industry, it seems unlikely he’d be back at that same job two months later. Did Putin use the footage of an old and unrelated arrest to rattle the milbloggers who are beginning to stray from the True Tsarist Faith? That would be straight out of Orwell’s 1984, but that’s true more than occasionally in Putin’s world these days.

More interesting is the fresh target for milblogger criticism that Putin appears to have approvingly set up:

Increasing domestic critiques of Russia’s “partial mobilization” are likely driving Putin to scapegoat the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and specifically Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Putin deferred mobilization for all students, including part-time and masters students, via a decree on October 5.[13] Putin told Russian outlets that because “the Ministry of Defense did not make timely changes to the legal framework on the list of those who are not subject to mobilization, adjustments have to be made.”[14] That direct critique of the MoD is also an implicit critique of Shoigu, whom Putin appears to be setting up to take the fall for the failures of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The chairperson of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, Colonel General (Ret.) Andrey Kartapolov, also criticized the MoD on Russian state television on October 5. Kartapolov said that all Russians know the MoD is lying and must stop, but that message is not reaching “individual leaders,” another jab at Shoigu.[15] One Russian milblogger claimed that Kartapolov’s comments demonstrate that Shoigu will soon be “demolished” and “recognized as the main culprit” of Russia’s military failures. The milblogger reminded his readers that it was the Russian MoD and its head that made an “invaluable and huge contribution to the fact that we are now on the verge of a military-political catastrophe.”[16] Another milblogger defended Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen head Ramzan Kadyrov for criticizing the MoD, applauding them for driving necessary change.[17] Kadyrov’s announcement that Putin awarded him the rank of Colonel-General is similarly indicative that Putin is willing to appease the siloviki base that has taken continued rhetorical swings at the MoD establishment.

Putin will likely hold off on firing Shoigu for as long as he feels he can in order to continue to blame Shoigu for ongoing military failures and to build up support among other factions. Shoigu’s replacement will need to take responsibility for failures that occur after his tenure begins. Putin is already working to improve his support among the nationalist milbloggers and the siloviki such as Prigozhin and Kadyrov. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov old reporters on October 5 that Prigozhin “makes a great contribution within his capabilities” to efforts in Russia and Ukraine and declined to answer questions surrounding Prigozhin’s critiques of government officials.[18] A milblogger emphasized on October 5 that Putin “regularly hosts military correspondents, carefully reads their reports, asks the right questions, and receives objective answers,” implicitly contrasting that relationship with the dishonest way in which milbloggers believe the MoD interacts with Putin.[19]

In other words, Shoigu is the official sacrificial lamb. He’s about to be Emmanuel Goldsteined, whether Shoigu realizes it or not — and he probably does.

Not that it makes much difference at this point. The Russian collapse in the field in both theaters is so bad now that even an organized retreat looks like an improvement. The Washington Post reports on the more intentional fallback in the Kherson theater as Russia prepares to fight for the only significant communication link it now has to Crimea:

A day after Ukrainian forces reclaimed more territory in the southern Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, the jubilation of a breakthrough at this part of the front line was tempered by anxiety over an expected hard fight ahead.

Kyiv’s military here has pushed the Russians back by dozens of miles in some spots after struggling to advance for months. But after Ukraine’s remarkably successful counteroffensive in the northeast Kharkiv region, soldiers stationed near the southern front cautioned that the situation remains tense. Kherson is too important, politically and militarily, for the Russians to retreat as messily as in Kharkiv, they said.

“This is not Kharkiv,” Kostenko said. “There, they left all of their ammunition and vehicles and fled. Here, we don’t even have many trophies. They just retreated from the fight, took everything with them to their new position and are digging in anew.”

What the Ukrainians have observed is an orderly Russian pullback from some towns and villages in what could be preparation to tighten the front line around the city of Kherson, the lone regional capital Moscow’s forces have captured since their invasion began last February, and the neighboring town of Nova Kakhovka. It’s home to a hydroelectric power plant that also controls a vital water supply to Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. Seizing the plant and restoring the water flow, which Ukraine had cut off, was one of Russia’ top military objectives in the early days of the invasion.

That’s certainly an improvement on tactics from the Kharkiv collapse, but not an improvement in strategic outcomes. Wars are not won in retreats, and the Russians in Kherson are still going the wrong way while the Ukrainians are regaining ground across a wide expanse in the theater. Furthermore, the collapse in Luhansk will eventually cut off the Russian armies around Kherson, as Ukraine keeps pushing toward major railway centers in Kreminna, Svatove, and Sieverodonetsk. They’re getting closer to cutting off communications to Russian troops and flanking them in Donetsk:

Eastern #Ukraine Update:

Ukrainian forces made gains in northwestern #Luhansk Oblast near #Svatove on October 5. /1https://t.co/KBHCXtN1Qd pic.twitter.com/lhIAQvopW5

— ISW (@TheStudyofWar) October 6, 2022

Shoigu’s replacement will arrive just about the time of the final collapse. And at that time, no one will have to pull arrest footage out of the archives.