Month: December 2025

• A former commander of Russia’s ground forces gave a rare candid take on the war in Ukraine.
• Col. Gen. Vladimir Chirkin said Moscow was “once again unprepared” for war in early 2022.
• He said Russian intelligence had misled the Kremlin about political sentiment in Ukraine.

A former chief commander of Russian forces blasted the Kremlin’s intelligence services last week for their early performance in Ukraine, saying they prompted an unprepared Moscow to launch its full-scale invasion.

The remarks by Vladimir Chirkin, a colonel general who led Russia’s ground forces from 2012 to 2013, are unusually critical for a top Russian military official, even among those no longer serving.

“Everyone, if you recall, started saying in February 2022 that the war would be over in three days. We’ll beat them all now,” said Chirkin in an interview on November 27 with Russian radio outlet RBC.

“But unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. I would give our entire Russian intelligence community a failing grade,” he added. The general’s criticism was highlighted among Ukrainian circles this week by Denis Kazanskyi, a Ukrainian political journalist.

In the RBC interview, Chirkin said that Moscow had “traditionally” miscalculated the balance of power, underestimating its enemy and overestimating the performance of its own forces.

“To be fair, I don’t intend to criticize anyone, but in my opinion, Russia was once again unprepared for war, as it had been in previous years and centuries,” he said.

Chirkin said that Russian leadership had been misled into thinking that 70% of Ukraine’s population supported a pro-Russian government.

“It turned out to be exactly the opposite. 30% for us and 70% against,” he said. “During the first few weeks, we were taught a seriously cruel lesson.”

Chirkin also said Russian forces likely suffered in the early stages of the invasion from the “Tbilisi syndrome,” which describes the situation in which troops are afraid to make tactical decisions without orders from their superiors.

Chirkin’s assessment aligns largely with Western and Ukrainian analyses of the war’s early months, which found that Russia severely misjudged its ability to seize the Kyiv region. After weeks of confusion among its troops, poor logistics, and a failure to achieve air superiority, the Kremlin withdrew from the capital area in late March.

The general’s candor appeared to surprise even his interviewer, RBC’s Yuri Tamantsev.

“To be honest, I didn’t expect such frankness at the very beginning of our conversation,” Tamantsev said.

Russia has outlawed sharing “false information” about the war in Ukraine, which can carry a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. Human rights groups, however, say the law has been used to punish Russians who protest or criticize the invasion.

Still, Chirkin, whose military rank is the rough equivalent of a three-star general in NATO, stopped short of publicly finding fault with Moscow’s stated premise for invading Ukraine.

The rest of his interview with Tamantsev focused on how Russian warfare has evolved over the last few years and how its troops might achieve Moscow’s vision of victory.

Chirkin was stripped of his rank and command in 2013, when he was accused of bribery. He was convicted in August 2015 of accepting a bribe of 450,000 rubles and sentenced to a labor camp for five years, but the sentence was commuted in December.

The colonel general, who said the bribe was a result of fraud by his subordinates, had his rank reinstated.

• YouTube launched “Recap” on Tuesday, its first year-end roundup for users.
• While Spotify Wrapped dominated social media this week, YouTube’s version barely registered.
• Some users say Recap fell short, with inaccuracies and missing data.

While the internet is buzzing over this year’s Spotify Wrapped — especially with its new “listening age” feature — another platform has slipped out its year-end recap with much less fanfare.

YouTube unveiled “Recap” on Tuesday, its first attempt at a Wrapped-style experience. The platform said “Recap” is available to US users with a global rollout coming later this week.

The feature compiles up to 12 cards that showcase users’ top channels, interests, and how their tastes have shifted over time. It also assigns them a viewing personality based on their watch history.

Meanwhile, Spotify Wrapped kept its signature stats — minutes listened, top artists, and artist messages — and introduced a slate of new features this year. Users get a “listening age,” a fan leaderboard, placement into one of six listening “clubs,” and a listening archive that highlights their most memorable streaming days.

Consumer apps, from novice linguist favorite Duolingo to athlete-focused Strava, have rolled out these annual reviews in recent years to build buzz and keep users coming back. Spotify started the feature in 2015, so it has a big leg up on YouTube.

Users online praised Spotify Wrapped

Online users made their pick clear. Social media posts praised Spotify for leveling up the experience with new features, while many called YouTube’s Recap a flop.

In a discussion thread on Reddit, many users wrote that this year’s Spotify Wrapped was better than last year’s, with some highlighting the listening archive as a notable addition.

“I liked the little report (despite being generated by AI) at the end because it pinpointed a special day in the year for me,” a user on Reddit wrote.

“They clearly listened to what people complained about last year with the lack of actual data and random AI,” the user added.

I also found the listening report delightful. It surfaced a day when I had what Spotify called a “one-song relay” — I looped a track 70 times. It was the day I discovered KATSEYE, the global pop girl group featured in Gap’s ad, making the recap feel oddly personal and accurate.

In another Reddit discussion thread, users were up in arms over their “listening age.” Many said the number Spotify assigned them was wildly off — either far younger than their real age or much older.

As Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulous wrote, the feature has gotten some of our colleagues’ ages hilariously wrong. I was given a listening age of 20 — a decade younger — likely thanks to a year of streaming K-pop hits and other trending tracks. My editor, in her 30s, was told she had the listening habits of a 71-year-old because she loves 70s folk rock.

A friend of mine called Spotify “rude” for assigning him a listening age of 41. He’s only a few years off, which suggests how touchy this metric has been for some users.

Debates about the listening age have dominated social feeds and group chats. YouTube Recap, meanwhile, has attracted almost no excitement, and its reviews have been overwhelmingly negative.

YouTube Recap is ‘AI garbage’

On Reddit, users said YouTube’s new Recap missed the mark. Many complained that it got their stats wrong and skipped the features they actually care about.

“YouTube is the main platform I watch, so I was excited to see they added a recap this year,” wrote one user, who started a thread titled “2025 YouTube recap is AI slop.”

But their excitement quickly faded. The feature listed their top viewing interest as “sewing tutorials,” even though the user said they had “never watched a sewing tutorial.”

“It’s clearly just AI garbage,” the user added.

Many agreed that most of the stats were “flat-out wrong,” with several highlighting that the feature seemed to skew viewing interests toward AI-related topics they never engaged with.

Another Redditor wrote that YouTube didn’t include two of the most fundamental metrics: total videos watched and total watch time. They called the Recap feature “lame,” and another user replied, “That’s all I really cared about.”

I opened my YouTube Recap on my personal account and was met with tacky, techno-club music straight out of the early 2000s.

By the third slide, YouTube listed my top interests as “iPhone features,” “pop culture news,” and “personal finance tips.” I spent a couple of weeks earlier this year watching iPhone reviews while debating whether to buy the iPhone 16, but that phase was brief. I’m fairly certain most of my YouTube time went elsewhere.

A few slides later, YouTube said my top channels were a news documentary account and “Netflix K-Content.” That made the earlier “iPhone features” ranking feel even more random.

Without the basics, such as watch time, the rankings didn’t feel complete or meaningful.

The recap then classified my traits as “tech-savvy,” “culture-curious,” and “financially aware,” and summed up my personality as a “curious mind.”

It wasn’t as fun as Spotify Wrapped, which sorted me into a club called the “Full Charge Crew” and crowned me the “Leader” because my listening “strongly aligned with club values.” Wrapped gave me a distinctive club identity and a slick logo I could compare with friends, making YouTube’s generic “curious mind” feel flat.

YouTube Recap’s take on my evolving viewing habits wasn’t much better. The feature said that in early 2025, I was focused on “Pop Culture,” even though that period was clearly my iPhone-review rabbit hole. And I’m sure I watched pop culture videos consistently throughout the year, not just in one window.

To be fair, this is YouTube’s first attempt at a Recap, and it feels like a version 1.0. Until YouTube nails that part, Wrapped will keep winning.