The colonel who circumvented censorship in Russia and criticized the war

Military analyst and retired colonel Mikhail Khodarionok, 68, stole the show this week when Circumvention of Russian state TV censorship and criticism of the invasion of Ukraine live.

“The situation, frankly, is going to get worse for us,” the former soldier said in an interview on the “60 Minutes” talk show hosted by Olga Scapieva, one of the country’s most pro-government journalists.

The reserve colonel also said that Russia needs to “see reality” and that the country’s main drawback is its “complete geopolitical isolation”.

“Practically the whole world is against us and we need to get out of this situation,” Khodarionok said.

The comments come amid a wave of arrests of critics of the conflict. About 32 people have been tried or arrested for demonstrating against the war, according to a Radio Free Europe survey by the Russian group Agora, which provides legal aid to victims of human rights abuses.

OVD-Info, a group that monitors repression in the country, mentions more than forty prisoners.

Who is Khudarionok?

Born in Tallinn, the then capital of Soviet Estonia, and graduated from the Higher School of Military Engineering in Minsk, currently the capital of Belarus, Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarionok started in the Soviet Air Defense Forces in 1971.

Between 1977 and 1980, he commanded the Combat Control Department of the Wireless Technical Forces. Then he became the commander of the anti-aircraft missile division and then a senior officer in the Soviet Air Defense Forces.

Since 1992, he was the chief operational director of the Russian Armed Forces until his retirement in the 2000s with the post of colonel.

He is a military man full of honours. He was awarded the Order of Distinguished Service of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades, the Order for Merit for the Fatherland, presented to him by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2020.

famous military analyst

The justification for awarding the award was “advantages in the development of the national press, high professionalism, and many years of fruitful work.”

This is because after going to the reserve, Khodarionok began working as a military journalist writing for Russian publications such as Military Industrial Mail and Aerospace Defense magazine.

He currently works as a military observer for the Gazeta.Ru publication and the radio station Vesti FM. She has a painting called “A Hora do Militarista” on the show “Das Três aos Cinco”.

This is not the first time that Khodaryonok has criticized the Putin government’s role in the Ukraine war.

Three weeks before the conflict began, the colonel published an article explaining that the country’s armed forces would not be able to defeat the Ukrainians in a few hours – contrary to what many Russian politicians had said.

He further indicated that the Russian army would not be able to handle the supplies and weapons of Ukraine’s Western allies, as well as carry out high-precision strikes to overthrow the government of the neighboring country.

He concluded by saying that “Russian experts should forget their hateful illusions.”