The occupation of part of the Kursk region by Ukrainian troops is entering its second month. Much has been written about Ukrainian strategy and objectives, the timing of the offensive, and Russian responses. Rather than repeating various arguments, let us ask some simple questions. What does this bold operation tell us about the state of the Russian armed forces? About the mindset of the Russian leadership? About the state of Russian society? These are the questions we will try to answer.
Experts agree that the Russian armed forces were not prepared for such a scenario. Poorly equipped young conscripts were totally unable to counter around ten thousand seasoned, well-armed Ukrainian soldiers who led the assault, followed by engineering units to secure conquered territories. Russian prisoners of war number in the hundreds; a first exchange has already taken place, and Ukrainians will likely be able to save hundreds of their own in the future, including those sentenced to long prison terms in Russia. This lack of preparedness also shows that the days when Russia had an extensive spy network in Ukraine, including within the military and government, are long gone. The Russian army was not ready because it had not caught wind of the carefully planned operation.
Surprisingly, this unexpected operation failed to provoke a strong reaction from the leadership, including Vladimir Putin himself. The “sacred land of our ancestors,” which the regime seeks to conquer in Ukraine and for which it is willing to sacrifice tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Russian lives, does not stir much emotion in the supreme commander and his entourage when that land is… in Russia itself. Granted, the Russian command is regrouping its troops, pulling units from various regions of Ukraine, even from Kaliningrad, and calling on Wagner and Chechen forces for help but so far these have not managed to repel the Ukrainians. The reason is simple and cynical: the Russian army is continuing its offensive in Donbas, where Ukrainians are facing serious difficulties. For Vladimir Putin, the goal of fully conquering the Donetsk region is a priority: if he fails, the war is definitively lost. He thus expresses his fierce and genocidal hatred of Ukrainians by increasing barbaric strikes on Ukrainian cities, with heavy civilian casualties, as recently seen in Poltava and Lviv, but he does not want to ease the pressure on Donbas.
Even more astonishing, the Ukrainian incursion has not provoked particular outrage among the Russian population. It is as if the entire nation had been zombified, watching what happens to them as though it does not concern them. Ukrainian drones blow up military planes, refineries, fuel depots, ships, and submarines. Residents of nearby towns observe the gigantic fires through binoculars, exclaiming, “Wow, what a firework show!” as if it were a spectacle. Ukrainian missiles and drones rain down on Crimea, but tourists continue to flock there, though in smaller numbers, seemingly unbothered by the presence of air raid shelters next to every beach. The same fatalism enables mothers to send their sons to slaughter, because everyone else is doing it, because it pays, and ultimately because human life holds no value in Russia. A young man who fled abroad recounted how his own mother was determined to send him to war. “I’ll die there, mother!” he pleaded, trying to dissuade her. And she replied, “But maybe you’ll come back?”
While some ideologues, propagandists, and military bloggers express outrage over the occupation of a thousand square kilometers of Russian territory, downplaying the impact of the attack, the public’s reaction is calm, indifferent even. “Of course, it’s bad, but our troops will eventually restore order there,” people say. This is why territorial defense, so well developed in Ukraine, is ineffective in Russia. According to official information, volunteers (and it is unclear whether they truly are volunteers) in the Belgorod and Kursk regions number around 3,000, and these people are armed with hunting rifles, at best. Only a few, “the most experienced,” have received shotguns. The question of how to equip these groups is currently being discussed at the Ministry of Defense.
This popular apathy, people’s lack of awareness as historical agents, suggests that the collapse of Russia, which could occur with the fall of the Putin regime, may not be bloody. If the army failed to stand in the way of Wagner’s march on the capital during the ultimately aborted coup of June 2023, and if neither the army nor the population stand as one to fight the “invader” in the Kursk region, how are we to believe that the people of central Russia would rise to defend the “sacred land of our ancestors” in the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, and the Caucasus?
It is the fear of a violent breakup of Russia that restrains the American establishment from providing too much aid to Ukraine, and which pushes the Americans to limit the use of their weapons by Ukrainians. This fear is unfounded, just like the fear of Putin and his entourage using nuclear weapons. There too, the Russian leadership has vociferated in the past, but they have not acted when Ukrainian troops stepped onto internationally recognized Russian soil.
The only way to stop this barbaric and atrocious war is to allow Ukraine to win, even should Russia’s defeat lead to the fall of the Putin regime, or even the breakup of the “age-old union of brotherly peoples” (as the national anthem puts it). The breakup of a state that is strong only in its ability to wreak havoc, and which promotes a bloodthirsty and obsolete ideology, would be a historic opportunity for the oppressed peoples of the remnants of the Russian Empire — the Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs, and many others — to finally regain their freedom.
Born in Moscow, she has been living in France since 1984. After 25 years of working at RFI, she now devotes herself to writing. Her latest works include: Le Régiment immortel. La Guerre sacrée de Poutine, Premier Parallèle 2019; Traverser Tchernobyl Premier Parallèle, 2016.
