Kremlin preparing Russians for defeats in Ukraine

As Ukrainian forces continue to set conditions for a long-anticipated counteroffensive, Moscow's pundit class is running short on optimism. Rather than continuing to say that Russia's "special military operation" is still going according to plan, Kremlin-controlled media appear to be actively preparing the domestic population to accept further setbacks on the battlefield.

"Russian federal talk shows and news broadcasts are pointing to all of the Western military aid that Ukraine has received," Kateryna Stepanenko of the Institute for the Study of War told Newsweek. "They really highlight the number of troops trained by NATO countries and the quantity of Western-supplied weapons systems."