“I look at my government totally different since the war started,” said Tatyana Efremenko, 39, whose son Nikita Efremenko was a conscript on the Moskva missile cruiser when it was sunk in a Ukrainian missile strike one month ago. She is still searching for her son. “There are some very harsh things I would like to say about our leadership, but maybe best if I don’t because they would put me in prison for it.”

In Russian-controlled east Ukraine, wives of fighters have complained on camera that their husbands were left behind as Russian soldiers retreated across the border near Kharkiv. “They aren’t deserters, just those who managed to get away with their lives,” one woman yelled at a local official…

And Igor Girkin, a Russian proxy field commander during the 2014 war who has been critical of the government during this conflict, appeared to feel vindicated: “I have already said several times what needs to be done in the current situation, when it has become clear that our forces are unable to deliver even a limited defeat to the enemy in ground combat and when we must prepare for a drawn-out, difficult, full-scale war.”