After six months of war, it is still unknown what the Russian president will do next

You can normally expect Russian state TV's flagship weekly news programme to trumpet Kremlin successes.

But Sunday's edition opened with a rare admission.

"On the frontlines of the special operation [in Ukraine], this has been the toughest week so far," declared sombre-looking anchor Dmitry Kiselev.

"It was particularly tough along the Kharkiv front, where following an onslaught by enemy forces that outnumbered ours, [Russian] troops were forced to leave towns they had previously liberated."

For "liberated", read "seized". Moscow had occupied those areas months ago, but after a lightning counter-offensive by the Ukrainian army, the Russian military has lost considerable territory in north-east Ukraine.

Still, Russian state media are putting a brave face on things. Officially, what happened in Kharkiv region isn't being referred to here as a "retreat".

"The Russian defence ministry dismissed rumours that Russian troops fled in disgrace from Balakliya, Kupiansk and Izyum," claimed the latest edition of the government paper, Rossiyskaya Gazeta. "They didn't flee. This was a pre-planned regrouping."

In tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets, a military analyst took a different view: "It's already clear that we underestimated the enemy. [Russian forces] took too long to react and the collapse came… As a result, we suffered a defeat and tried to minimise the loss by withdrawing our troops so they weren't surrounded."

This "defeat" has sparked anger on pro-Russian social media channels and among "patriotic" Russian bloggers, who have accused their military of making mistakes.

So has the powerful leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

"If today or tomorrow no changes in strategy are made," Mr Kadyrov warned, "I will be forced to speak with the leadership of the defence ministry and the leadership of the country to explain the real situation on the ground to them. It's a very interesting situation. It's astounding."

It's more than six months since Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the days that followed, I remember Russian politicians, commentators and analysts on TV here predicting that what the Kremlin calls its "special military operation" would be wrapped up within days; that the Ukrainian people would greet Russian troops as liberators, and that Ukraine's government would collapse like a pack of cards.

It didn't.

Instead, more than six months on, the Russian army has been losing ground.