Overseas media including The Economist, The Independent, and Foreign Policy reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a bittersweet 70 on the 7th (local time) as the Ukraine war rapidly developed against Russia. I did.



The Ukrainian War has been a stalemate since the summer after Russia invaded Ukraine in February and quickly occupied the territory of Ukraine.



Recently, however, the tide has changed as Ukrainian forces have retaken Russian-occupied territories in the south and east.



The situation that is giving Putin a headache is happening both at home and abroad.



A strong counterattack by the Ukrainian forces puts the Russian army in crisis in the occupied territories of Ukraine. In Korea, resistance to the mobilization of reserve forces and public opinion against war are increasing, and cracks are being detected in the support of Russia by Central Asian countries.



Russia still occupies about 15% of Ukraine's territory, and in particular, recently annexed four regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporiza, and Kherson through a referendum asking whether the occupied territories belong to Russia.



However, the current situation is rapidly becoming unfavorable for Russia, with the Ukrainian army retaking a key point in a strong counterattack in the south of Kherson and in the east of Luhansk, and the Russian army in some regions is on the verge of isolation.



Immediately after the signing of the treaty of annexation between Russia and the occupied territories, the Ukrainian army is advancing toward Luhansk by recapturing Liman, an important eastern transportation hub, and is accelerating the restoration of the occupied territories, including recovering dozens of villages in southern Kherson.



This defeat of the Russian army is also causing divisions in the group of close associates to Putin.



The head of the Chechen Autonomous Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, close to Putin, and Yevgeny Prigozin, who heads the mercenary company Wagner Group, strongly criticized Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the frontline leadership for the recent defeat of the Russian army.



Kadyrov also demanded that the Lehman regional army be demoted to private and sent to the front line after the loss of the key eastern city of Lehman to Ukraine on the 1st.



The aides of the now imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny announced on the 4th that the Kremlin was resuming an opposition organization banned by the Kremlin as an extremist group, and asked supporters to participate in the anti-war movement by all means.



The unfavorable war situation in Ukraine and the backlash against the mobilization of reserve forces are changing public opinion in support of President Putin and the war in Korea.



One of the most famous female singers of the former Soviet era, Alla Fughacheva, described her 'mobilization' as 'mogilisation' on her Instagram, saying, 'Our children are dying for a vain goal'. and criticized it.



The mobilization order for reserve forces is receiving a lot of backlash, especially in regions with many ethnic minorities, such as migrants from Central Asia, causing protests and attacks on recruitment camps.



It is estimated that more than 200,000 people have fled to Kazakhstan, 70,000 to Georgia and 66,000 to other EU countries, despite Latvia and Estonia closing their borders to prevent Russian escape.



There are also signs that Russia's influence, which has acted as a political and economic leader in the former Soviet Union as a 'sheriff', is rapidly weakening among Central Asian countries.



The recent successive defeats of the Russian military have made the five Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, more suspicious of Russia's military power and international leadership.



Kazakhstan does not recognize the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), established by pro-Russian separatists, and is in a diplomatic conflict with Russia by refusing Russia's request to expel the Ukrainian ambassador to the country.



"In the long run, Russia's gambling in Ukraine may be the sowing of the seeds that lead to a sharp decline in Russian influence in Eurasia," Central Asian expert Janko Skepanovich pointed out in the recent diplomatic journal Diplomat. I did.