Putin's problem: His ultra-nationalist base now wants total war against Ukraine

For months, Putin appeared to have established broad support for the war, while successfully drowning out dissent. But following a series of military defeats, culminating in the devastating rout in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, the president is facing pressure on multiple fronts.

Breaking with the official line, the ultra-nationalists have increasingly become a thorn in the side of Putin’s administration, causing Putin’s carefully assembled ‘power vertical’ to splinter from the inside.

Last week, Igor Girkin, a leading ultra-nationalist who led the pro-Russian separatists in 2014 trying to wrest the Donbass region from Kyiv’s control in 2014, told his 581,000 subscribers on Telegram that Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu should be executed by firing squad and that Russia should launch strikes on Ukrainian power plants.

Several people, including Girkin, have called for tactical nuclear strikes to be used on various targets in order “to drive 20 million refugees to Europe.” The tactic was encouraged again on Russia’s state-run Channel One, the leading propaganda outlet, by Igor Korotchenko, a military expert and editor of Russia’s National Defense magazine.