Crimea declares ’emergency’ also on banks, as viral Russian soldier threatens anti-Putin mutiny (Ukraine Battlefield update, Day 1,583)

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The occupation regime in Crimea has plunged into an even deeper crisis, the authorities have declared a state of emergency, which also applies to banks. Zelensky announced a 40-day operation to end the war. The regime has a multi-million problem with a soldier who wants to tell the truth about the war and is threatening Putin with a mutiny. A Ukrainian flag did appear on the Kinburn Spit, but it is still controlled by the Russians. The Russians are slowly retreating from Stepnohirske. Most of Rodynske is already under Russian control. The commander of the 425th Skala Assault Regiment has been temporarily relieved of command. Maps of the day – Kinburn Spit; area of Stepnohirske; Rodynske Videos of the day – Russian who threatens Putin with an uprising; events on the Kinburn Spit; Patriots over Kyiv; drone destroys BTR-82.

The occupation regime in Crimea has plunged into an even deeper crisis, with authorities having declared a state of emergency, which also applies to banks. So many videos are pouring in from all over Russia showing extremely long fuel queues in front of petrol stations that you could make a feature-length film out of them. Their authors mention not only shortages but also a sharp increase in petrol and diesel prices. It does not matter whether it is the capital Moscow or regions in the Far East, the problems and mood among ordinary residents are similar everywhere. It is a mix of surprise, astonishment, and fear of the future.

Ordinary Russians are troubled not only by uncertainty but also by the obfuscation by regime officials. A brief interview with finance minister Anton Siluanov, in which he claimed that fuel prices at petrol stations were not rising, met with a negative response, for example. “Aaah, well then. It just seemed that way to me,” the Telegram channel Romanov Light commented on the minister ironically. Take a look at the type of reactions from its readers under his video. It is a telling sample.

The general mood in Russia is really deteriorating sharply. Ukraine, on the contrary, feels it has the upper hand. President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday, after meeting SBU intelligence chief Yevhen Kmar, that he had approved “a 40-day influence operation by the Service (SBU) against the aggressor state in order to force it to end the war”.

However exaggerated it may sound today, the latest turbulent developments in Crimea and in the entire Russian information space are changing the overall picture of the war and perhaps even its direction.

The Russia-installed prime minister of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, on Friday announced a regional state of emergency across the peninsula. The official announcement stated that it would last from 13:00 until further notice. Particularly troubling for Russians are the lines stating that “this measure was adopted primarily to support the financial sector” and that “its aim is to make financial activities more efficient, including credit, contractual and other relations”.

The mayor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, also issued his own statement. He likewise mentioned addressing economic issues. “The legal regime of an emergency situation makes it possible to resolve, in an operational manner, issues of the stable functioning of all sectors on which the provision of people’s basic needs depends,” he said.

In other words, the crisis that began as a fuel crisis has now fully spilled over into business and the banking system.

The regime has a multi-million problem with a soldier who wants to tell the truth about the war and is threatening Russian president Vladimir Putin with a mutiny. The problems of the Russian army at the front are well known. So is the fact that the influx of volunteers willing to fight for money is shrinking. The Ukrainians claim that, based on their data, the Russian army has been shrinking for several consecutive months because the rate of losses exceeds the inflow of new recruits.

That is why there is more and more talk that in the autumn the regime will resort to compulsory mobilisation, which it had so far feared. According to some, it should take place after the parliamentary elections in September.

This may be unavoidable, because aside from the fuel problems, a certain Alexander Lunin and his Thursday video attracted by far the most attention this week. As the independent website Mediazona wrote, it was watched by almost 11m viewers in less than 24 hours, which is an extraordinary figure even by Russian standards.

Lunin, in the video, demanded a meeting with Putin in front of television cameras in a live broadcast, during which he was to be given the chance to tell the entire country what was happening to soldiers at the front. He did not even want to talk about the Russian offensive having stalled, but about thousands of soldiers being abused in pits (a frequently described form of punishment in the Russian army) because “they refuse to carry out stupid, suicidal orders” and because they refuse to hand over money to their commanders.

In addition to the content of the soldier’s message, what stood out was his explanation of how he had come to make it. He claimed he had been visited by high-ranking officials from the defence ministry and the security services who decided to use him to pass a message to Putin, otherwise they threatened him with an armed uprising. Why did they use Lunin in particular? He said it was because Putin had noticed him after seeing one of the seven hundred videos he had released this year.

Mediazona summed up all the known information about the man who attracted such unusually high attention. He comes from the Voronezh region and reached the rank of junior sergeant in the army. He is 39 years old and served in the 150th Motor Rifle Division, which belongs to the 8th Guards Army. Until 2023 he used the surname Pustovalov.

He claimed that he had been fighting in various conflicts since he was 19, during which he suffered multiple injuries, including a concussion. He admitted that he had serious health problems, including psychological ones.

He began fighting in Ukraine in December 2022, when he joined one of the volunteer battalions. He started as a rank-and-file soldier and ended up as commander of a reconnaissance platoon. According to him, he was expelled from the unit in 2025 after he published a video about two soldiers who were sent into an assault without weapons.

Major Telegram accounts largely avoid commenting on Lunin’s message, and he himself comes across as controversial. However, the enormous response triggered by his threat to overthrow Putin is, in this case, the most important thing.

A Ukrainian flag did appear on the Kinburn Spit, but it is still controlled by the Russians. This is an extremely narrow strip of land, just under ten km long, which juts out from the larger Kinburn peninsula. It is a strategically important piece of land because it points directly towards the mouth of the Dnipro into the Black Sea. Whoever controls it theoretically has under control everything that tries to pass through here.

In addition, it is the westernmost occupied territory in Ukraine that the Russians have managed to seize. The tip of the spit lies, as the crow flies, 80 km west of Kherson and just under 60 km east of Odesa.

The Ukrainian partisan movement Atesh recently claimed that Russian soldiers had withdrawn from the spit because they were no longer able to supply them. On Thursday, a video appeared showing a Ukrainian flag flying over it. However, it was not brought there by soldiers but was lowered from a drone.

According to some Ukrainian sources, the events were preceded by shelling of the area by HIMARS rocket launchers, which forced the Russians to withdraw, and now there is no one left to take the flag down.

The Russians, however, claimed that nothing had changed. “Our observers remain on the spit. No withdrawal is envisaged,” the Telegram account Romanov Light said, for example. It also wrote that the Ukrainian army was preparing for a landing and that in the village of Ochakiv, which lies directly opposite the spit, it was gathering landing craft and getting ready to disembark.

“Knowing the situation, I dare suggest how this ‘attack’ will end for the enemy landing force: do you remember the footage from 2023 in which the enemy, during the assault on Robotyne, was jumping from armoured vehicles into the grass and immediately left their legs in that grass? Here it will be the same, only instead of armoured vehicles it will be boats,” Romanov wrote confidently.

He was right that, even though the spit is not defended by large Russian forces, landings there have repeatedly ended in failure in the past and it is a very risky mission. The difference this time is that the Russian army has serious logistical problems that could play a role.

Ukrainian analysts from DeepStateUA also confirmed that the flag on the Kinburn Spit was lowered by a drone and that it is still under Russian control. Thursday’s “heated debate” was, in their view, influenced by claims that “do not correspond to reality”.

The same source stated that the Russians were still using this area to launch drones towards Mykolaiv and Kherson, that they still had electronic warfare assets there, and that the Ukrainian army was trying to “make their activities as difficult as possible”.

The Russians are slowly retreating from Stepnohirske. On the western flank of the Zaporizhzhia axis, Ukrainian units advanced in the area of the village of Prymorske. “The fighting has already shifted to the area of the village of Plavni, where the enemy is striking at the centre of the village and recording the movements of Ukrainian units,” Ukrainian analyst Petrenko said, based on videos.

What is worth noting is the way he drew his map. He marked the places where attacks on Ukrainian soldiers occurred, but still classified them as an area under Russian army control. For even the best-known Russian commentators, events like this are enough to claim advances by their units and redraw the front line in their favour.

Most of Rodynske is already under Russian control. The following map also comes from the same source as the one from Stepnohirske. It shows that the town of Rodynske on the Dobropillia axis is now almost completely lost. Most of it is already in red, and only about a third in the west is in the grey zone. It is a less well-known town than neighbouring Pokrovsk, but its defence has already lasted significantly longer.

The commander of the 425th Skala Assault Regiment has been temporarily relieved of command. The article by the Ukrainian website Babel, which we reported on Wednesday triggered a swift reaction. It reported on 26 suspicious deaths of recruits in this controversial unit, as well as widespread beatings and torture of its members.

The newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported on Thursday, citing the general staff and its own sources in the unit, that an investigation was under way, during which lieutenant colonel Yuriy Harkavy had been relieved of his command.

The investigation appears to be genuinely thorough. As Ukrainian journalists wrote, one part, which focuses on violations of soldiers’ rights, is being conducted by law enforcement bodies, and the other directly by the general staff, whose commission is headed by one of the deputies to the chief of the general staff, Oleksandr Syrsky. He has long been criticised, among other things, for conditions in Skala, which is under the direct command of the general staff.

The unit has already faced several serious allegations. Ukrainska Pravda cites, as one of them, the bullying of recruits during training, which was confirmed back in June 2025 by the office of the military ombudswoman, Olga Reshetylova. Instructors were banned from working with soldiers, but the official results of the investigation are not yet known.

Skala is also criticised for its heavy personnel losses, which, according to its critics, are the result of the unit’s irresponsible attitude towards its soldiers.

Video of the day

Footage like this used to be common; today it is already rare. A Ukrainian drone destroys a Russian BTR-82 armoured personnel carrier.

On Thursday, Kyiv was the target of an air raid. The Russians used ballistic missiles as well as Zircon missiles. These shots allegedly show Zircons being intercepted by the Patriot system. However, a large fire broke out after the strike.

What are the losses

No update on Friday.

Russia had demonstrably lost 23,668 pieces of heavy equipment by Tuesday (23,593 on Monday, 8 June). Of that number, 18,652 (18,585) pieces were destroyed by Ukrainians, 987 (982) were damaged, 1,199 (1,199) were abandoned by their crews, and 2,830 (2,827) were captured by the Ukrainian army. This includes 4,404 (4,397) tanks, of which 3,307 (3,300) were destroyed in combat.

Ukraine had lost 11,564 (11,425) pieces of equipment, of which 9,011 (8,888) were destroyed, 687 (680) damaged, 677 (670) abandoned, and 1,189 (1,187) captured. This includes 1,433 (1,426) tanks, of which 1,097 (1,091) were destroyed in combat.

Note: Neither side regularly reports on its own dead or destroyed equipment. Ukraine publishes daily figures for Russian casualties and destroyed equipment, which cannot be independently verified. In this overview we use data from the Oryx project which, since the beginning of the war, has compiled a list solely of visually confirmed equipment losses.