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The scale of the Russian military's and political leadership's setbacks in Ukraine have become too vast for even state media and pro-war activists to ignore.

"The special military operation has completely failed," Igor Girkin, who gained notoriety as one of the main leaders of Russia's initial efforts in eastern Ukraine back in 2014, said in a video this week. "Since March, we have had a full-fledged war. But until now, Russian authorities, the defense ministry, and general staff have behaved as if there's no war."

Igor Strelkov, who is also known as Igor Girkin, the top military commander of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic," has thrived on the Telegram messaging service since the start of the war.Bulent Kilic / AFP via Getty Images file

Last week, he declared the war "already lost," and warned his audience of nearly half a million viewers that the war would continue until Russia's total defeat.

Girkin is himself a controversial figure among the marginal but increasingly vocal group of right-wing pro-war bloggers and activists who have thrived on the Telegram messaging service since the start of the war. Their views have traditionally run parallel to official state media messaging but are not firmly under the Kremlin's control. With Russian forces on the retreat, more and more they are accusing the leadership of betraying the troops.

"The Kremlin is worried about this panic sentiment," said Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The pro-war activists are seen as allies, they are part of the broad pro-Putin consensus in Russia, the disagreement is just about tactics. So, the Kremlin actually has limited means to deal with this camp. They can't turn against them and suppress them the same way they did the liberal opposition."

Even soldiers who have fought in what the Kremlin insists on calling its "special operation" are returning home, refusing to go back to the front, and challenging the official narrative surrounding the war. As Ukraine retakes territory, videos are appearing online appearing to show massive amounts of equipment abandoned by retreating Russian soldiers.

Image: A Ukrainian soldier standing atop an abandoned Russian tank near a village on the outskirts of Izyum, Kharkiv Region, eastern Ukraine on Sept. 11, 2022.

A Ukrainian soldier standing atop an abandoned Russian tank near a village on the outskirts of Izyum on Sept. 11.Juan Barreto / AFP - Getty Images

While the television has told the public that they've been fighting a good, clean war, soldiers are telling their friends, families and fellow citizens stories of a chaotic, unclear and troubled operation.

"Russian society, just as the Russian army, is decaying and falling apart because of corruption," Pavel Filatyev, a Russian soldier who has published a scathing memoir of the first two months of the war, told NBC News. "So the Russian army often is not acting carefully, they are acting unprofessionally, and a lot of mistakes are being made."

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