AND YOU THOUGHT JOE GAVE DONALD A WHIPPIN'?:

In the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin's top propagandists predicted a swift victory and derided the Ukrainian military as an unwilling bunch of incompetents. As the war dragged on, they continued to claim that Volodymyr Zelensky's government was about to fall. Faced with Ukraine's mounting counteroffensive, which is rapidly achieving impressive gains, Russian propagandists are now describing an enormous horde, armed with the best Western weaponry and swimming in foreign specialists.

With state TV studios full of doom and gloom, prominent pundits and experts seem to be preparing Russian audiences for future losses of occupied Ukrainian lands, which are being painstakingly reclaimed by the Ukrainian military. During Wednesday's broadcast of the state TV show 60 Minutes, host Evgeny Popov said: "We wish courage to our warriors, who are indeed doing very important work, they are resisting an enormous horde that has been trained in the West."

Evgeny Buzhinsky, a retired Lieutenant-General of the Russian Armed Forces, claimed that the Ukrainian military is overflowing with American participants: "There are not only advisers, but specialists. I think that there are thousands of American advisers and specialists on the ground in Ukraine, they're probably present in every unit."

During his Wednesday's radio show, Full Contact, top Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov--with a noticeably bruised face--surmised: "I'm worried. Naturally, we want for our guys to crush [the other side] and only to advance, but life doesn't work that way." Solovyov refused to address the source of his injuries, but in light of Ukrainian military gains, his bruised ego was likewise on full display.

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