The expert: The military bloggers in Russia are frustrated

Open unease with the way the war is being waged has long been rampant among Russian military blogs, a driving force in the pro-Russian camp on social media.

The dissatisfaction is rooted in the Russian military's setbacks on the battlefield. In October, for the second month in a row, the Russians lost control of more land than they managed to occupy, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank.

And this after losing control of 300 square kilometers of land between March and September – ultimately a net loss of 80 square kilometers over the period.

The development on the ground comes at the same time as Ukraine claims that Russian monthly losses are higher than ever. 54,400 Russian soldiers are said to have been killed and seriously wounded in October alone, according to the Ukrainian military.

But from the Kremlin it sounds completely different. For example, President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Russian forces seized 1,301 square kilometers of land in Ukraine in September alone.

ISW called this "hallucinations" - and neither do the military blogs buy the picture of how things are going in the war.

- They don't believe what Putin says, says Ivan Filippov.