The day after Russian President Vladimir Putin proudly proclaimed the illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, thousands of his troops withdrew from a strategic town there under Ukrainian fire.

On Saturday, the day after Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk region in a speech (which demonstrates the bankruptcy of Russian nationalism), Russian armed forces abandon Lyman, a city of strategic military significance within Kherson.

Prior to its recapture, the Russian armed forces relied upon Lyman as a key to its logistics throughout the western edge of Ukraine’s Donbas region, where Russia had continued to concentrate the spearhead of its military campaign for months immediately following the invasion in February of this year.

The recapture of the city demonstrates the degree to which Ukrainian armed forces, which previously failed to execute on tactics derived from a military strategy based on a central command, are capable of engaging in successive seizures of a region for the sake of encirclement. While the battle of Kharkiv, for instance, is the first example in an emerging pattern of attempted encirclements, the battle of Lyman is far more significant for its proximity to the ports of the Black Sea, an area of historic geopolitical importance. Based on its proximity the ports of the Black Sea, the fall of Lyman represents an unparalleled breakthrough for Ukrainian armed forces.

In response to the fall of Lyman, a widespread fear is beginning to eminent deeply throughout the circles of power within the Kremlin.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Putin, reacted to the fall of Lyman by raising a call for the use of a low-yield nuclear weapons.

Kadyrov, a prominent pro-war figure, is one of the most radical right-wing voices within Russian ruling circles, who has been pushing for months for a sharp escalation in Russian attacks on Ukraine through support for mobilization, encountered resistance to his call for the use of low-grade nuclear weapons from Dmitry Sergeyevich Peskov, the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Peskov, who is a much more favorable candidate for future leadership than Kadyrov, remarked in response:”This is a very emotional moment. The heads of regions have the right to express their point of view.”

“But even in difficult moments, emotions should be kept out of any kind of assessment. So we prefer to stick to balanced, objective assessments.”

Kadyrov’s clash with Peskov is one of many confrontations during the Ukraine war. Earlier in the year Kadyrov personally challenged Peskov, declaring him to be less patriotic than Kadyrov.

The request for Kadyrov “to set aside emotions” in regards to recent developments in the Ukraine war such as the loss of Lyman, however, belie a deep crisis within the Kremlin’s ruling elite.

Kadyrov — along with other powerful Putin allies — has demanded that Russia respond to Ukraine’s seizure of the strategic eastern city, Lyman, with “more drastic measures.”

In addition to the use of low-yield nuclear weapons, Kadyrov added that those measures should go “right up to the declaration of martial law in the border areas.”

Later in a reversal, Peskov, who fears a fall from favor within Putin’s own ruling circles, however, appraised Kadyrov as having made a valuable contribution to the Ukrainian war effort, saying: “He has a right to express his own point of view.”

In an admission of reckless delusion, Peskov recently admitted that he could not identify the borders for the territories recently annexed through Putin’s referendums in Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. In a recent conference, Peskov told reporters Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia has yet to finalize the borders of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. “We will continue to consult with the people who live in those regions,” Peskov said.

Prior to the annexation, Putin’s announcement of a partial mobilization of more than 300,000 reservists on September 21st, 2022 to the battlefield in Ukraine is officially described as full of “mistakes” throughout many of the heavily censored media reports. Russians evading the draft have escaped to neighboring countries like Georgia where caravans have led to a complete shutdown of border crossings. YouTube videos showing members of the OMON (Отряд Мобильный Особого Назначения) fighting resisting draftsmen on the streets have flooded social media channels, demonstrating hostility towards Putin’s decision.

According to data from the EU, Georgia and Kazakhstan have witnessed more than 220,000 Russian draftsmen fleeing the border since the “partial mobilization’s” announcement. Signaling a 30% increase in its numbers of fleeing Russian draftsmen, the EU reported more than 66,000. The combined total of these figures is nearly equivalent to the amount of reservist Putin sought by the partial mobilization itself.

Putin, as the primary leading figure among members of the Russian ruling elite, evoked the historically bankrupt policies of Russian nationalism as a justification not only for enlistment but for annexation. Confronted with the disastrous consequences of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, while pursuing the deeply ill fated illusion that Russia would become the beneficiary of diplomatically well negotiated relations with Western “partners,” the Russian oligarchy is now confronting the pernicious intrigue of imperialism.

The Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 not only enabled NATO to wage bloody imperialist wars from one end of the Middle East to another. It deprived NATO of its primary enemy, which had helped unify the alliance, and threw Eurasia, rich in raw materials vied for plunder, open to major US and European corporations. Tensions between the NATO imperialist powers, as they continue to compete for the division of the spoils of the world economy, are being to explode.

Russia has sacked the commander of its Western military district, the news outlet RBC reported on Monday, the latest in a series of top officials to be fired after a series of defeats and humiliations in the war in Ukraine.

On Monday Putin’s regime announced a replacement for Colonel-General Alexander Zhuravlyov, appointed to the Western military district no less than 16 days ago. Lieutenant-General Roman Berdnikov, who is a former graduate of the Suvorov school of military education, took Zhuravlyov’s position.

Commenting on the sacking of Zhuravlyov, Kadyrov, is quoted as saying, “Nepotism in the army will lead to no good.”

In an extraordinary display of frustration almost unparalleled within Russia’s ruling circles, Kadyrov added: “[The] commander of Russian forces in the area should be stripped of his medals and sent to the front line with a gun to wash away his shame with blood.”

The extraordinary display of frustration reveals the desperation among Peskov, Kadyrov and Putin in regards to Russia’s military strategy, at least to the extent that there is one at all.

“Until September, the Russian elites had made the pragmatic choice to support Putin as a guarantor against defeat,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Stanovaya

“But matters have progressed so far that they may now have to choose among various losing scenarios. That makes Putin far more vulnerable, for he may just find that he and the elites settle on different scenarios.”

In an interview with a pro-Kremlin radio host on Saturday October 2nd, 2022, Andrey Gurulyov, a retired general and member of the State Duma from Putin’s United Russia Party stated that he could not explain the fall of Lyman. In an uncharacteristic description of Russian troops, the vast majority of which are conscripts, if not economic conscripts, accusing the fleeing soldiers of perpetuating “a system … of constant lying” from top to bottom.