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Vladimir Putin has admitted that Russia is facing problems due to the Ukraine war. Is this a sign that after four years of conflict, the President is finally cracking? Ukraine's drone attacks on Russia have forced the country to begin rationing fuel, which has lead to long queues at petrol stations. Putin has confessed that Ukraine's attacks were ‘obviously creating problems’ but he claims it’s ‘not critical’. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #andrewmarr #russia #ukraine #russiaukrainewar #zelensky #zelenskyy #putin #europe #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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Vladimir Putin has admitted that Russia is facing problems due to the Ukraine war
0:05
Is this a sign that after four years of conflict, the president is finally cracking
0:11
Long queues at petrol station, fuel rationing and oil refineries hit. Russia's failure to defend itself against Ukraine's drone strikes is causing chaos in the nation
0:23
The country is practically running on empty, with citizens forced to walk to work
0:28
and in some cases, even quitting their jobs. Major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg
0:34
have been targeted for their oil supplies, arsenals and naval bases in what Zelensky has defended as a just response to Russia's attacks
0:44
But why isn't Russia defending itself better? Ukrainian long-range strike capacity has dramatically improved
0:52
Now, for a long time, Ukraine was expecting to get that kind of long-range strike capacity
0:56
from its partners. So, you know, it kept on asking for tomahawk missiles from the U.S. or those Taurus missiles from Germany
1:03
And when those weren't forthcoming, Ukraine was able to design its own, both its own cruise missile, which is the Flamingo variant, and a whole series of long-range strike drones that can effectively go anywhere inside Russia
1:16
Now, just to wrap up, it's really interesting because Russia's huge size has always, and its kind of strategic depth, has always been considered one of its greatest advantages
1:28
Ukraine, however, is turning that into a massive disadvantage for the Kremlin because what it's showing is that it means that Russia's air defence has to be so spread out across the country because it's so wide and vast that Ukraine can effectively pick and choose targets almost at its will now
1:45
Russian military strategy, as we know it, is not delivering a result on a pace and tempo as it was in 2024, 2025
1:55
And right now, it's not only about battlefield. It the scenes you mentioned that for the first time in Russian modern military history it vastness work against Russia because European part of Russia is under constant attacks zero economic centers zero centers where like most of the people are concentrated
2:16
basically. We tried to undermine zero war machine, so we are doing
2:20
our best, but again the ability to judge that we attained our goal would be bringing
2:28
Putin to the conclusion that keeping with this futile war is senseless
2:32
and he needs to negotiate, so it's still a work in progress. Mr. Mieloskov, I've been looking at the statistics
2:38
and Ukraine is now launching far more drones against Russia than Russia seems to be able to launch against
2:44
Ukraine. Do you think the Russians sort of military-industrial complex, to use the old phrase, is beginning to come apart
2:52
They have some problems in terms of increasing production of specific weaponry types, but
2:59
it's more about leveling the playing field. Because for some time, since 2022 till the end of 2025, Russia enjoyed a symmetric advantage
3:08
So they can target Ukraine in these combined attacks using UAVs, ballistic and cruise missiles
3:14
they attempted to undermine this like rare functioning while Ukraine was constrained
3:19
So right now it's more about leveling the playing field. Plus, we're still
3:22
disadvantaged in terms of the classic munitions. I mean, ballistic and cruise missiles
3:27
we are doing our best, but it's mostly about parity in one way, attack and decoy UAV
3:33
Russia is relying on Soviet era legacy systems, which were built to detect fast
3:38
high-flying aircraft and missiles instead of slow, low-flying drones. Heavy international sanctions also restrict access to Western technology, which cripples Russia's ability
3:50
to manufacture cutting-edge precision-led weaponry. Ukraine's drones are able to dodge these outdated systems even around the capital which is the most heavily defended part of the country Do you think you beginning to throttle the Russian occupation of Crimea We are doing a kind of a military experiment that is unprecedented in military history
4:15
because usually it's first lane conditions for some advances, like undermining a war
4:21
machine from the air and then advancing to liberate territories. Since Ukraine is constrained in terms of the manpower, we can do counterattacks
4:30
but not offensives, it means that we'll see to what extent only these long-range attacks
4:36
would prove instrumental in terms of delivering the result of, like, turning Russian position
4:43
untenable. We now have another air alert. I'm sorry. Yeah. We've heard the first public admission from Putin that things are not going well
4:53
there are problems, in his words. Do you think a Putin who feels that he's losing
4:58
is going to be more dangerous than Putin was even before? First of all, it's classic Putin when he admits some problems
5:06
but not the depths of the problem. And second, we have a problem because Putin reads situation differently
5:14
Despite the fact that on a battlefield, the situation is not as favorable, they are not advancing as quickly as they did
5:20
It doesn't mean that his strategic reading of the situation changed in Ukrainian favor
5:24
He's still seeing that, like, in next year, if he just keep fighting, something would change in Russia in favor
5:31
For instance, some, like, populist government would be elected in Europe, and Ukraine's support long-term would be undermined, and thus Ukrainian position would be undermined
5:41
So that's the major challenge for Ukraine and the partners, how to translate this battlefield success, the strategic strikes, problems with the shadow fleet into his readiness to negotiate without any preconditions
5:53
Yes, Putin can escalate, but he doesn't have any safe option, risk-free option
6:00
So he can mobilize more people, but again, it's risky. He can do unconventional escalation using nukes in other words but it also risky He can broaden the scope of aggression and affect Baltic states It also risky So he doesn have any safe free option
6:15
while it is obvious that the battlefield strategy, as we've seen before, is not delivering as it was delivering
6:21
Figures provided by Kremlin-friendly pollster FOM shows that Vladimir Putin's approval rating has dropped to 69%
6:29
the lowest level since the start of the war. I think if it ever got to the stage where the Russians weren't able to support military operations or even civilian population inside Crimea itself
6:42
That's bad news for them, really bad news. That would be a real blow that because Crimea has been sort of so far the crown jewel of Putin's entire reign in office, he hasn't even captured anything anywhere near as valuable in 2022
6:57
that would be the scenario where I could see it becoming a real threat to his regime
7:04
and his possible survival. Putin's decision to press on despite mounting public discontent
7:11
has created a dilemma for the president ahead of September's parliamentary elections in Russia
7:17
He either has to protect himself from the war's fallout or confront it head-on in an attempt to shore up the ruling party
7:26
United Russia relies on an elite network of oligarchs for political and financial backing
7:33
and it appears that the party is campaigning with the president for the first time in 20 years
7:39
Putin appeared at the party's conference to deliver a speech in which he reinforced Russia's
7:57
strength and confirmed his resolve to achieve Russia's military objectives. But with war fatigue
8:03
growing and Putin no longer able to hide the consequences of his war, is the tide finally
8:10
turning in Ukraine's favour
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