Russia Facing Biggest Crisis Since World War II, State TV Guest Says

A guest on a Kremlin propaganda program has questioned whether Russians realize the gravity of the situation in Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

In a clip tweeted by journalist Julia Davis, the film director Karen Shakhnazarov explained on the Russia 1 channel how he always considered "the worst-case scenario" and the war in Ukraine was no exception.

In March, Shakhnazarov gave an equally downbeat view of Russia's chances in the war, saying on the same program, "we need to admit that we could lose."

"Maybe I am alarmist," he said in the latest clip. But considering what might come in the war, "what we are witnessing is a situation that is a lot more complex and dangerous than what happened during the Great Patriotic War," he said, referring to the Russian name for World War II.

He said that unlike in 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded, there was no "unifying" Soviet ideology that could bind the people together.

"This danger is great," Shakhnazarov said, adding that Russia had been caught out by the delivery to Kyiv of medium-range missiles which could hit Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 that Ukraine has vowed to retake.

"What will happen in Crimea when the tourist season starts and the missiles start flying?" he asked, as he called for a realization that "this is a most serious confrontation" that is "fateful for us."

"This is truly a war," he said, and not a "special military operation" as the Kremlin describes it, which if Russia loses, means "we will disappear."

"There will be no mercy, look at their rhetoric, for them it is also a fateful war," he said. "We can't lose, if we lose, we will meet the fate of (Native American) tribes and then books will be written, 'How Russia lost itself and Eurasia.'"

The show's anchor Vladimir Solovyov took up the topic, saying that if Russia were to lose the ongoing war, "we're taking the whole world with us," as he revisited themes about how Moscow should draw on its nuclear capabilities.

Solovyov also made nuclear threats on his radio show Full Contact, following the reported interception by Ukraine of Russian missiles, including six hypersonic Kinzhals, which raised questions about Moscow's ability to evade Kyiv's Western-supplied defense systems.

"We haven't even come close to showing all our weapons," he said in a clip tweeted by the Kremlin Yap, who posts videos of Russian propaganda shows on Twitter.

Solovyov was referring to the potency of the Poseidon, an unmanned underwater vehicle reportedly capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear warheads.

He described it as "the perfect weapon against Britain."