As Ukrainian forces continue to gain ground in the Russian region of Kursk, the humiliation for Vladimir Putin is growing. Faced with a mounting crisis, the Kremlin is responding in the only way it knows how: deflection and disinformation. A briefing by Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) published this morning argued that ‘Zelensky is taking crazy steps that threaten to escalate far beyond Ukraine.’ The SVR claimed that there is growing unhappiness in the US with the Ukrainian president over the incursion and that they are looking to replace him with a more malleable candidate – supposedly one who will better represent the West’s interests at future peace negotiations.
The intelligence service’s warning that Ukraine’s invasion of Russian territory – the first since the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 – could escalate is a reminder that Putin will be looking for a way to respond to what he has already deemed a ‘major provocation’. During a meeting of the Russian security council yesterday, Putin made clear he views Ukraine’s decision to attack Russian soil as ‘fulfilling the will of its western masters with their help’.
The reputational damage to Putin will be much harder to undo
The SVR’s unverified briefing reinforces the Kremlin’s propaganda of Zelensky as the West’s puppet. The narrative that the collective West is Russia’s true adversary in Ukraine is one that Putin has long deployed: he has referenced this in almost every major speech he has given since February 2022. The security service’s claim that the US is allegedly unhappy with Zelensky’s decision to enter Kursk and wants to replace him must be viewed in this context – and therefore taken with an appropriately large pinch of salt. It will make little difference to the Kremlin’s narrative that just yesterday on a visit to Kyiv the Republican senator Lindsay Graham called the incursion ‘bold, brilliant, beautiful’ and told Ukraine to ‘keep it up’.
The Kremlin’s escalating rhetoric comes as yet another district in the Kursk region – the Bolshesoldatsky District, the first not to sit on the border with Ukraine – has begun evacuating Russian citizens. This suggests that, contrary to the Russian army’s repeated assertions that they have halted Ukraines advance, the opposite is in fact true. It follows claims last night from the Ukrainian military that they now control approximately 386 square miles of Russian territory. Extraordinarily, the local Russian authorities have also conceded that the Ukrainian army now controls an area 7.5 miles deep and 25 miles wide – roughly half the area Kyiv now claims to hold. At the moment the true size of Ukraine’s gains are hard to establish.
In total, the local authorities have now evacuated close to 200,000 civilians from the Kursk region. The governor of the region, Alexei Smirnov, was nevertheless forced to admit in a meeting with Putin that at least 2,000 residents were unaccounted for in territory captured by Ukraine.
The authorities’ continued bungling of the evacuation will add to a sense of disquiet among Moscow elites as to how Putin and his armed forces could allow this attack to happen in the first place. Even if the Russian army is able to repel the Ukrainian advance and return civilians to their homes, the reputational damage to Putin will be much harder to undo. However many more days, weeks or months Ukraine is able to sustain their attack for, the repercussions for Russia’s army will rumble on for longer.
Catch up on the latest Spectator TV:
Comments