“You’re throwing a billion-ruble party,” one pro-Russian blogger wrote in a widely circulated
post on Saturday, referring to the Putin-led celebrations in Moscow commemorating the 875th anniversary of the city’s founding. “What is wrong with you? Not at the time of such a horrible failure.”
Even as Moscow celebrated, he wrote, the Russian Army was fighting without enough night vision goggles, flack jackets, first-aid kits or drones. A few hundred miles away, Ukrainian forces retook the Russian military stronghold of Izium, continuing their rapid advance across the northeast and igniting a dramatic new phase in the war.