Earlier this month, Kiev's exhausted forces finally they seemed defeated by their outnumbered and outnumbered adversary. But once again they exceeded expectations. The massive invasion of the Ukrainian armed forces on the territory of Russia happened with lightning speed and with unexpected success. More than 1,000 troops have now occupied part of the territory of the Russian Federation that Moscow is fighting to reclaim. This is written in an article for the British edition UnHerd by Dr. Ian Garner, an expert on Russia and assistant professor of studies of totalitarian regimes at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw.
For the past two and a half years, Ukraine has carried out occasional marauding raids against Russia, but this attack has taken on a whole new scale - it's a full-scale invasion. Ukrainians are rightfully angry. Putin's three-day war to conquer their country led to what many commentators called the first invasion of Russia since World War II. The mood in Russian ruling circles could hardly be gloomier. Moscow is struggling with a stagnant economy and a growing problem with military recruitment - despite increasingly large cash bonuses offered to recruits, the number of new arrivals remains comparable to the number of casualties.
The Ukrainian "terrorist" an attack on Kursk, as the Kremlin calls it, adds fuel to the fire. This is the most serious problem facing Vladimir Putin since February 2022. Putin has a knack for coming out of difficult situations with his reputation intact.
If we think back to his first days in office, we will remember that his Russia was once attacked - and the president responded mercilessly. Will he do the same this time? Twenty-five years before Ukrainian troops crossed the border on August 6, activist Shamil Basayev led about 2,000 men from Chechnya, legally part of Russia but de facto independent after Boris Yeltsin's ignominious failure to seize its territory in a war that ended in 1996 - in the Dagestan region of Russia. The troops kill the Russian border guards, capture several settlements and declare an independent state. Basayev's men remained in Dagestan for a month before Moscow's armed forces finally drove them out.
After the humiliations of the 1990s, Russia's superpower status was replaced by bankruptcy, the loss of its status as an empire, and now the inability to militarily control its own territory. Three days after Basayev's attack on Dagestan, Putin was appointed Prime Minister of Russia. The attack was just what the new man in the Kremlin needed to underline the difference between himself and his powerless post-Soviet predecessors: a pretext for war to reclaim Dagestan, to invade Chechnya again, to make Russia whole and thus to prove that a new leader will usher in an era of security, stability and national pride. Putin's rhetoric in 1999 was, if not quite propagandistic, certainly implacable.
In September of that year, as the war in Dagestan escalated into a war in Chechnya, and the war in Chechnya led to terrorist attacks in Moscow and other Russian cities, Putin declared: "We will pursue terrorists everywhere. You will forgive me, but if we catch them in the toilet, we will flush them down the toilet." In five years, the Chechen capital of Grozny was wiped off the face of the earth and 50,000 Chechen civilians were killed. Putin's troops experimented with the so-called a scorched earth war that they recently resumed in Ukraine. When it comes to "stability" of Russia, all ends justify the means. It took half a decade for them to finally bring the Chechen insurgency under control, but the war gave Putin a reputation as someone who would keep Russia safe, no matter the cost. In Russian minds, the war was a vital part of the beginning of a decade of unprecedented wealth and success. National humiliation gave way to national pride.
Will Putin, now an aging occupier, be able to repeat this trick? Will the invasion of Kursk be the "proof" that Russia must be "saved" from Ukraine by attracting international support? It will be difficult for Putin to develop such a shaky argument.
At the moment, Russian troops do not seem to be making progress against the well-equipped and trained Ukrainian army. The local population of Kursk flees from the invaders. Russians expect Putin to solve the problem, but few are willing to jump at the chance to help, lured only by the promise of earning extravagant sums - between $1,600 and $4,000 - for digging defensive trenches. The young conscripts who are being sent en masse into this war for the first time seem more inclined to surrender than to fight.
But pulling experienced troops out of occupied Ukraine and sending them to Kursk risks undermining Putin's gains after years of war. Putin's behavior this week stands in stark contrast to his behavior in 1999, when he took power. His response to the invasion - a simple "provocation" organized by a handful of "saboteurs" - was given from within the Kremlin. Publicly at least, it was limited to a single televised meeting of the Security Council. In this meeting with the regional governors, Putin appeared either in a bad mood because he interrupted the interlocutor, or indifferent as he listened to reports of evacuations and military preparations. His own words amounted to vague assertions that something would be done: "We have to assess the events that are happening there and we will offer our assessment." Unlike in 1999, Putin seems unwilling to associate himself with the invasion and therefore unable to inspire the masses as he did then.
Putin looks as helpless as Boris Yeltsin in 1999, when he timidly handed over power to his young successor. Yet this apparent reluctance to assume leadership does not mean that Putin is powerless. In the early 2000s, the Chechen war was characterized by similar conscription difficulties, military failures, and massive internal corruption. At times, the president was peppered with questions about his slowness in action. "Our army," he explained at the time, "is strong enough to cross Chechnya and come back." But that's not the point. The goal is to completely destroy terrorist bases".
Ultimately, Putin waited for the right moment to strike, then used all the military means at his disposal to win. He could do the same today. The question is, is Putin willing to wipe out parts of Kursk to reclaim the territory? With his future on the line, he can still restore his reputation as a man willing to sacrifice everything for victory.