Russian State TV Says Country Needs Morale Boost: 'Alone Against the World'

A Russian state TV presenter has said on air that the country was "alone against the world" and was "drained" after more than 10 months of war.

Olga Skabeyeva, a Russian state TV anchor and political commentator, said that it "is hard not to see how absolutely everyone is being drained," before adding that "no-one doubts that we are exhausted," according to clips posted and translated by an adviser to Ukraine's Internal Affairs department, Anton Gerashchenko.

"We are very much waiting for positive and joyful news from Soledar, Bakhmut, [both in the eastern Donbas region] to raise our morale," Skabeyeva continued in the clip.

In a separate excerpt published by the same account, Skabeyeva called Russia "alone against the world," then specified her statement to mean isolated from the countries supplying military aid to the Ukrainian armed forces.

Skabeyeva is known for regularly hosting talk show 60 Minut ("60 Minutes") on the state-run Rossiya-1 channel, and has earned the nicknames "iron doll of Putin TV" and "propagandist-in-chief," according toInsider.

Back in April, less than two months into the conflict, Skabeyeva declared on the talk show that the conflict in Ukraine had escalated into "World War III" against NATO powers.

Skabeyeva said Moscow's forces were "fighting against NATO infrastructure, if not NATO itself," according to a clip translated and posted by BBC Monitoring journalist Francis Scarr.

Soledar and Bakhmut, pinpointed by Skabeyeva in the clips translated by Gerashchenko, have borne the brunt of some of the most fierce fighting in Ukraine in recent weeks.

Russian state news agency Tass quoted a statement reportedly published on Tuesday by Yevgeny Prigozhin—who heads up the Wagner Group, the mercenaries of which are fighting in Ukraine—that said Soledar was now under Kremlin control.

"Units of the Wagner private military company have taken the entire territory of Soledar under their control. The city center has been surrounded, and urban warfare is under way. The number of captives will be announced tomorrow," the statement read, according to the Tass readout.

Denis Pushilin, a Kremlin-backed official in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, told Russian state TV on Wednesday that Russian control of Soledar "paves the way for a turning point" in the war in the annexed region.

But Ukrainian forces batted away claims that Russia had taken control of Soledar on Wednesday. A spokesperson for the eastern military command, Serhiy Cherevatyi, told Ukrainian television Soledar "is not under the control of the Russian Federation."

He described the situation on the ground as "complicated," adding there "are fierce battles going on now."

Ukrainian forces had previously said heavy fighting was still taking place in the town. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar posted on her Telegram channel on Tuesday that the "enemy does not pay attention to the large losses of its personnel and continues to actively storm."

But in its daily intelligence briefing on Tuesday, the British Defense Ministry suggested that the Russian military and the Wagner Group forces were "likely in control of most of the settlement" after making "tactical advances" in the previous four days.

"Soledar is 10km [around 6 miles] north of Bakhmut, the capture of which likely continues to be Russia's main immediate operational objective," the government department continued.