A pundit on Russian state TV stunned his fellow guests by claiming the country needed to admit that they could lose the war in Ukraine.

Karen Shakhnazarov, a high-profile Russian filmmaker, said Russia needs to recognise that it is losing the conflict, and claimed individuals who said the West was about to fall were ‘deluding themselves.’

He also rubbished claims that Volodymyr Zelensky was a Western puppet ruler and said he was a ‘dangerous’ leader who was playing a ‘large role’ in Ukraine’s ongoing successes.

Shakhnazarov’s comments are considered highly unusual in that they were made on the nation’s state broadcaster Russia-1, where admissions of weakness are almost unheard of.

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Political pundits instead spend their time threatening the West with military action and nuclear war, and regularly predict the demise of nations such as the US, UK, and other countries committed to assisting Ukraine’s war effort.

A clip of Shakhnazarov’s outburst was shared on Thursday by BBC journalist Francis Scarr, who expressed his shock at the filmmaker’s admission.

‘I haven’t seen anything like this on Russian state TV since Ukraine’s counter-offensives last year, he said.

During the extraordinary clip, Mr Shakhnazarov said: ‘It really is a situation [in] which [we] may have the most serious consequences for us in the event of us losing.

‘And we need to admit that we could lose. I don’t agree with those who say, ‘Don’t say that! We’ll win.’

‘I don’t know about that. I don’t know. We need to admit that we could lose. If you don’t you’re not looking for different possible outcomes. If you believe that things will just happen by themselves—no, that’s not right.

‘It’s weakness! It’s not strength, it’s weakness. You have to be able to look the truth in the eyes. You have to be able to at your strengths and weaknesses and see the situation.’

‘We underestimated the West’s unity. We’ve constantly been saying that the West is on the point of falling apart, that there are demonstrations in Berlin or whatever. But it won’t happen.

‘Nothing is going to fall apart. When the West senses that it can win, it will try to win.’

Speaking of the Ukrainian president, he added: ‘We need to treat Ukraine and Zelensky seriously. He’s dangerous. He’s not stupid. He’s energetic. He’s playing a large role in this story. He’s not just a puppet.

‘We’re deceiving ourselves when we say that and somehow we need to draw some conclusions from this.’

Although such outbursts are exceedingly rare in Russian TV, they are not completely unprecedented. In February a former military press official claimed on-air that Moscow had lost over half of their elite airborne troops since the start of the invasion.

‘Many are saying that you can’t see the airborne troops on the frontline,’ said Mikhail Zvinchuk, creator of the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Rybar.

‘Unfortunately, this is the objective reality – by the start of mobilisation, our airborne forces lost 40-50 percent of staff.

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