Kremlin shocked, but undeterred, by Ukraine’s Kursk incursion

When Ukraine launched its Aug. 6 military thrust into the bordering Kursk region of Russia, it blindsided Moscow. And Russian authorities are scrambling to regain control over both the military situation on the ground, which is still ongoing, and the official war narrative.

Though the war has been an unavoidable fact for some Russians for more than two years, the Kursk incursion has brought it home to many more in an immediate and deeply distressing way. Ukrainian troops occupied dozens of villages and forced the evacuation of almost 200,000 people from the southwestern region.

Russian media have graphically covered the scenes of chaos and panic in Kursk, where war is suddenly engulfing recognizably Russian spaces. The reports convey at least some of the fear and despair of local people hustled onto buses, forced to leave behind their homes, belongings, even pets – as well as vistas of violence and destruction. 

That may have been part of the Ukrainian calculation in launching the attack, which by most accounts is an expensive operation that offers little discernible strategic advantage.

President Vladimir Putin suggested other motives at a meeting of the Kremlin’s Security Council this week. They included an effort to acquire Russian territory for use as a bargaining chip in upcoming negotiations, a hope that Russian forces will be diverted from the main battle fronts inside Ukraine, and an attempt to “create discord and division ... to disrupt the domestic political landscape.”

Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, says the Ukrainians also likely sought to embarrass Mr. Putin personally. “In that case they did succeed,” he says. “Putin may be offended, but he’s not going to overreact.”

A jaded Russian public

It’s hard to say how effective the Ukrainian gambit, as an attempt to shake Russian morale, may prove to be. Denis Volkov, head of the Levada Center, Russia’s only independent polling agency, says it’ll be a couple of weeks before any hard data on Russian public responses is available. But he recalls that previous Russian setbacks, such as 2022 military losses in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson regions, barely moved the needle of public opinion.

“I would guess that the majority will take the Kursk situation as a local, borderline affair,” he says. Russia is an enormous country by territory, and most people “go on living their own lives. The economy is better than ever, it’s summer vacation time, ... and there is a generally accepted point of view that ‘Why should one bother about something that you cannot change?’”

Sergei Davidis, a lawyer for the now-banned human rights organization Memorial, says the appropriate reaction of people should be outrage, because “it demonstrates the vulnerability of the Russian people and state. ... It shows the weakness of a state and army that are not capable of protecting their own territory and people.”

But even Mr. Davidis, like many other Russian analysts, agrees that it’s more likely that many “will support the war even more now that their own territory [is occupied], and think that must be reversed.”

“Having to choose between victory in an unjust war and defeat, with all the negative consequences for themselves, people will choose victory,” says Mr. Davidis, who now lives in exile.

As for the purported goal of diverting Russian forces from the main battle front in the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv regions, Mr. Markov says there has been some reallocation of resources, particularly the crack Chechen Akhmat special forces, to help stem Ukrainian advances in Kursk. But daily news reports suggest Russian troops are continuing their slow, grinding momentum along the main fronts without any visible changes so far.

Terrorism or war?

Russian propaganda has labeled Ukraine’s incursion as a “terrorist” attack, a claim that seems unlikely to get much traction even among Russians, despite the reported civilian devastation.

One practical reason for using the “terrorist” accusation, some analysts suggest, is to forestall any appeals for a massive reallocation of forces from Ukrainian battlegrounds to defend Russia’s own territory. For the most part, at least so far, the Russian forces being deployed to Kursk appear to be the national security units from the Federal Security Service, the National Guard, and others who would normally be sent to deal with a local event.

“Now Russia is collecting forces from inside the country, and there is no question of withdrawing significant forces from the front,” says Sergei Strokan, a columnist with the Moscow daily newspaper Kommersant. “And it does feel like a terrorist attack, as if people in Kursk are being held hostage in a hijacked airplane, or something. And if we say that Russia has been subjected to a state terror attack, it stiffens resolve. There is no option but to press forward and dismantle this terrorist state.”

Not everyone agrees with the “terrorist” narrative. “It’s a mistake of some Russian authorities to call it a terrorist attack,” says Mr. Markov. “It’s just normal war.”

Mr. Putin, who earlier declared that Russia intends to keep the four Ukrainian regions that it has “annexed” along with Crimea, also appeared to rule out any bargaining over territory in any future peace talks.

“What kind of negotiations can we have with those who indiscriminately attack civilians and civilian infrastructure, or pose threats to nuclear power facilities? What is there to discuss with such parties?” he said. Mr. Putin’s argument is almost point-for-point identical to that which Ukraine makes against negotiating with the Kremlin over territory.

The Ukrainian assault on Kursk is sure to embolden Russian hawks, who have argued from the beginning that the Kremlin is not prosecuting the war to the fullest extent, says Mr. Strokan.

“The longer this goes on, the more questions will be raised about how this was allowed to happen,” he says. “Russia was taken by surprise. It plays into the hands of those who have been calling for total war: taking off the gloves and making sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.”