One of his key advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, was even more explicit, suggesting that the surprise incursion would boost Kyiv’s position in any potential future negotiations: “You can only squeeze something out, get something, if they understand that [the war] is not going according to their scenario,” he said. “Any possible Ukrainian operations in ‘Russian border regions’ will have an impact on Russian society and improve Kyiv’s position in future peace talks with Moscow.”
So, for all the talk of Putin’s end, the incursion’s aims are more limited — and that’s the right way to think about it. However jolting or embarrassing this has been for the Kremlin, it’s unlikely to spark Putin’s downfall. Moreover, it may even assist him, much like the infamous apartment bombings in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in 1999, which killed more than 300 people and injured a thousand more.
Putin was prime minister at the time of the murky bombings, and his handling of the situation — as well as a jihadist invasion of Dagestan — boosted his popularity, triggered the Second Chechen War and persuaded then President Boris Yeltsin to anoint him successor. Some suspect that Russia’s own security forces may have had a hand in the bombings — that they were acts of false-flag terror committed against his own people for political purposes. Whatever the truth, the attacks and the war helped Putin surf a wave of patriotism.
Predictably, the Russian leader and his chorus of Kremlin propagandists are already pointing to the Kursk incursion as evidence of their longstanding claims that the West and NATO are the real aggressors and intend to subjugate Russia. It’s a line that taps into the country’s perennial sense of victimhood and fear of being encircled by enemies. And historically, Russian patriotism shouldn’t be underestimated — especially when the fight is on home soil.
During the World War II, Russian soldiers didn’t fight out of love for Stalin. In fact, inept leadership, incompetent campaigning and enormous losses should have spelt a military disaster. But as American historian Roger Reese showed in his 2011 book “Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought,” the Soviet Union was still able to recruit thanks to the continued influence of patriotism, Soviet ideology and, ultimately, fealty to the idea of historic Russia.
This also offers a warning for the present day — Russia will maintain a numerical advantage over Ukraine, which is still struggling with mobilization and morale. And while Kyiv hopes to force Russian commanders to switch units from the Donbas to Kursk, Ukrainian commanders have had to redeploy units to mount and sustain the cross-border incursion as well. A war of attrition still favors Russia and Ukraine’s Western backers need to be honest about that and offer speedier and commensurate support if they don’t want the war to prolong indefinitely.
Of course, the Kursk incursion has understandably boosted Ukrainian morale — much as the commando raids Winston Churchill ordered in the early days of the World War II did for Britons — and it may well encourage some tiring allies to hold to purpose. But without much more proactive and forward-leaning supplies of advanced weaponry, and lifting restrictions on the use of Western-supplied long-range missiles, it’s hard to see how the war can be tipped in Ukraine’s favor. And with Moscow warning the West that this could trigger a wider conflict, escalation fears will likely prompt hesitation over how far to push a nuclear-armed rogue state.
Overall, Kursk has turned the tables on Russia, changing the tactical narrative — but it hasn’t altered the strategic one.