Putin ordered the officials to drive Ukrainian forces out – then reverted to scheduled meetings, including talks with regional governors and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the days that followed, without publicly mentioning the crisis. Putin held a regular meeting with his Security Council on Friday to “talk about new technical solutions” for the Ukraine war, before announcing plans to jet off to Azerbaijan as if there was nothing amiss at home.
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“This is Putin expecting other people to do all the hard work, and he’ll claim the credit for anything that goes well, and likewise, he’ll blame people for anything that goes badly,” Galeotti said.
Four days after Putin tasked Russia’s military with driving out Ukrainian forces, it was clear that an attack initially seen as a short-term nuisance – a “provocation” in Putin’s words – was increasingly likely to take Russian forces weeks or months to address.
“The Kursk offensive in the last two weeks exposed the Putin regime’s true nature: a system built on lies, indifference, and self-preservation at the expense of its citizens’ lives and safety,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled Russian tycoon and opposition figure jailed by Putin for 10 years, in a post Friday on X.
Less than two weeks into the stunning cross-border operation, Kyiv claims to have occupied about 1000 square km, with more than 180,000 Russians ordered to evacuate from their homes. Ukraine has sought to expand the fighting into the adjacent Belgorod region, but progress slowed after Russia deployed reserves and stepped up its resistance.
Gerasimov and the commander of the Akhmat special forces in the region, Apti Alaudinov, have repeatedly asserted that the Ukrainian advance had been halted, and by Friday the Defence Ministry claimed to have wiped out more than 2800 Ukrainian soldiers.
But Defence Ministry reports are dismissed as lies even on the Russian side, with nationalist military bloggers expressing outrage at ministry’s claims and publishing their own reports confirming Ukrainian advances. Defence ministry video of supposed Russian attacks on Ukrainians in Kursk turned out to be false, having been filmed in Ukraine earlier in the summer, The Insider discovered.
But the continued damage to Putin’s authority after a catastrophic war and repeated shocks does not translate to an internal threat to his power. Nor is there a risk his regime might collapse in the foreseeable future, according to analysts.
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Stanovaya said that many Russians, particularly members of the elite, had come to expect the worst in the war but realised that there was no alternative to Putin in Russia’s repressive political system.
“They are so used to shocking events. They’re so used to living in a very unpredictable situation, so it’s very difficult to surprise them. And they are also used to the feeling that they don’t have the power to affect anything, and they are helpless,” she said.
The crisis, she continued, had certainly undermined Putin’s authority – without necessarily undermining his grip on power.
Reuters
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