By Galina Korol | 2026-07-10

On Russian television, President Vladimir Putin is winning the war. He describes Ukrainian troops caught in encirclements, cities about to fall and an economy that always bounces back.

Step outside the frame, and another Russia appears. Ukrainian drones torch oil refineries hundreds of kilometers inside the country. Crimea is cut off from supplies. In several regions, drivers wait days in gas lines that stretch for kilometers, sometimes trading blows over fuel cans.

Putin's June 28 interview with Kremlin propagandist Pavel Zarubin was less a war report than an effort to defend the reality the Kremlin built. The trouble is that the real Russia keeps breaking in. One popular Russian Telegram channel reached a verdict on June 29: Putin was "just trolling everybody."

Victories that don't exist

Belarusian blogger Ivan Shavlov called the performance "laughing at the whole world" in a Facebook post, then took it apart.

Putin claimed Russian forces had nearly trapped about 5,000 enemy troops on the left bank of "the Stary Oskol river." Stary Oskol is no river, Shavlov noted -- it is a city in Russia's Belgorod region, 125 kilometers (78 miles) from Ukraine's border.

The gaps widened. On Sumy, Putin placed his troops "around 10.5 kilometers" (6.5 miles) off and "moving fast." DeepState and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) show more than 18 kilometers (11 miles), with no Russian gain there since late April.

On Kupyansk, Putin put troops 2.5 to 5 kilometers (1.5 to 3 miles) from the western edge, the city about to fall. DeepState, BlackBird and the ISW show Ukraine holds it entirely, and Putin already claimed its capture twice late last year.

On Kostyantynivka, Putin claimed "96 percent" was in Russian hands. DeepState maps show about half a gray zone, the rest Ukrainian, with fighting throughout. On Lyman, he said just 149 of 11,000 homes remained to liberate -- yet Russia holds none of it, Shavlov said, and DeepState and the BlackBird Group place the city fully in Ukrainian hands.

"He's losing Crimea, but he's making up successes on other fronts," Shavlov wrote. Putin, he added, "is unfamiliar with Russia, but he still regularly meddles in foreign countries."

Serhii Kuzan, chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, explained why Putin talks this way.

"If he doesn't demonstrate victory, all of his legitimacy, which is military legitimacy, will be shattered," he told Kontur. Putin was simply playing his assigned role as the war's chief spokesperson. At the current pace, Kuzan added, Russian forces would need a decade to reach Sumy, before counting Ukraine's growing combat strength.

Two versions, two audiences

Ivan Preobrazhensky, a political scientist focused on central and eastern Europe, flagged a telling detail: the transcript on the Kremlin website differs from the one on Zarubin's personal channel. The Kremlin shaped its version for home audiences, he told Kontur. Zarubin aimed his abroad.

The home version held no surprises: the war continues, Russia wins, the gas troubles are minor. The cut passage mattered more. There, Putin said none of the Anchorage summit deals had been met, yet a format survived, and Moscow stood ready to make concessions and keep discussing an end to the war with the United States.

That cuts against Putin aide Yuri Ushakov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who had called the "spirit of Anchorage" dead. Preobrazhensky read their words as "blackmail" -- pressure on Washington to return to the table fast.

Stanislav Zhelikhovsky, a political scientist and international relations expert, said Putin wants no peace. He cited a United Russia party speech just before the interview.

"Putin said he would not allow Ukraine to impose its conditions," Zhelikhovsky told Kontur, tying any pause in the offensive to ceasefire terms.

Does Putin believe it?

Does Putin grasp how far Russia is slipping, or is he performing? His aides soften the bad news, the experts agreed.

"They're afraid to give him negative information," Preobrazhensky said. "He's talking to commanders and forcing the intelligence services to monitor each other. But that doesn't save things."

Kuzan argued Putin sees it all. Inflating his own gains and shrinking the enemy's is straight from the war manuals guiding the Kremlin, and his refusal to make drastic moves shows he has the real picture. Zhelikhovsky agreed, citing Putin's intelligence background: such a man reads every source.

Putin's own words give him away. By branding strikes on refineries "terrorist actions," he conceded that Ukraine now reaches deep into the Russian war machine.

For Zhelikhovsky, the deception serves one aim -- manpower. Putin needs Russians to keep signing army contracts, so he cannot let them see the whole picture.

Preobrazhensky drew a darker portrait. "When Putin talks, he's basically always lying. He's a pathological liar," he said. Like other aging dictators, Putin waves off unwelcome facts and trusts the economy to rebound as it always has.

He also believes victory is near and Ukraine far weaker than it admits, Preobrazhensky said, so he keeps pushing. "There's little left to finish squeezing. If you keep squeezing, everything will crumble." The same faith fuels his pressure on Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, whose weak army Putin thinks can finish Ukraine off.

And so Putin keeps millions in an invented reality, sending them to die for it.

"But our strikes are a vivid picture," Kuzan said. "They're decimating this entire strategy of Russia's."