If we hope to stop an aggressive Russia, its citizens must suffer the consequences of a war provoked by their government. Until it knocks on the door of the average Russian, there is no chance of changing public sentiment," says Agnieszka Bryc, PhD in political science.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
Kaja Puto: Ukrainian troops are advancing deep into the Kursk region. According to reports from Russian bloggers, they have also begun to dig into positions. What does Ukraine want to achieve in this way?.
Agnesia Bryc: The goals of the Kursk operation were given by Heorhiy Tychy, spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. It's basically to protect the lives of Ukrainian citizens and territory from Russian attacks. He added that Kyiv is not interested in occupying the occupied part of the Kursk region. We also know that the idea is to make it more difficult for Russia to mount an effective offensive elsewhere on the front line.
The latter was quite clear to the military. Before we knew the position of the authorities in Kyiv, military experts indicated that Ukraine was clearly trying to disperse the Russian offensive on the Donbas front, where the situation is really difficult. Forcing them to redeploy some of their forces to the north, to the Kursk region, could slow down the advance on Toretsk, Pokrovsk and Verkhiv Yar and prevent the Russian army from breaking through the front. Whether this maneuver will succeed, we do not know.
The Kremlin, on the other hand, immediately assumed that Kyiv wanted to strengthen its position in future talks. Rightly so. If the Ukrainian army succeeds in entrenching itself in the seized area, then it will get its hands on the land-for-land negotiating card. And this turns the tables, i.e. demolishes the Kremlin's strategy to get Ukraine to accept Russian terms, i.e. de facto capitulation.
Is this going to be the new Russian narrative? We wanted peace, but they attacked us?.
Of course. Already Russian propaganda is publicizing reports by the US daily The Washington Post that Russia and Ukraine planned to send their delegations to Qatar and negotiate in Doha the terms of a suspension of attacks on critical infrastructure before the Kursk operation.
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A more important issue, however, is the need to convince Russians that the authorities are in control of everything and that the Ukrainian invasion is a temporary situation. For this reason, a state of emergency has been ordered in the border regions and an anti-terrorist operation has been declared. This allows Putin not even to look towards the war doctrine, according to which nuclear weapons can be used if the territorial integrity of the state is threatened and self-defense is necessary. Putin is well aware that his protector, namely Xi Jinping, does not want to hear about nuclear escalation, and he himself does not want to admit that this is the first time since World War II that an enemy army has entered Russia and occupied its territory.
Putin also mentioned the guilt of a "collective West" that wants to blow Russia apart from the inside.
It could not be otherwise. Putin's entire neo-imperialist policy is based on building the myth of the hostile Anglo-Saxons, i.e. the Americans and the British, and their NATO stooges - that's about us, Poland and the Baltic states, who have been doing everything to destroy Russia for years. So, if Ukraine manages to maintain bridgeheads in the Kursk region, it will "turn out" that the Russians repulsed there not terrorists, but a powerful NATO armored army. Putin is preparing a narrative for every scenario. Rightly so, as he is uncertain whether he will be able to contain the crisis.
And how has the media propaganda reacted? In the first days of the Kursk operation, leading propagandists spoke in a rather tentative manner. A tweet by Russia Today editor Margarita Simonjan that read: "let's pray".
Simonjan uploaded this tweet at the very beginning of the Ukraine rally. In addition, in great exultation and without context. At first it was unclear what she actually wanted to pray for - Russia? Territory that is passing into enemy hands? Then it turned out that it was for war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny, who was severely wounded in the Kursk region.
It seems that Simonjan - like other propagandists - acted spontaneously, still without instructions from the Kremlin. When it turned out that Poddubny was alive but seriously wounded, they changed the narrative. Today we know that they were instructed not to comment on Russian losses, and instead to focus on human stories and the successful evacuation from the occupied territories.
At the same time, they had to push the emotions of the Russians in a safe direction. It was no coincidence that the vice chancellor of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy compared the events in the Kursk region to Chechen leader Shamil Basayev's raid on Dagestan in August 1999. It became a pretext for Putin to launch the Second Chechen War, which ultimately proved to be a defeat for the Chechen independence movement and Putin's first victorious war.
The OGPU's WCzK telegram channel, which has a reputation for being well-informed, reports that chaos reigns in many localities in the Kursk region, with looting spreading.
Chaos and state abandonment were written about not only by this channel linked to Russian special forces on Telegram. It was also reported by other military bloggers. The Russian infosphere was flooded with dramatic accounts of people who, abandoned by the state, had to fend for themselves and flee amid heavy exchanges of fire. There were proclamations from distraught residents of Sudja, who asked Putin to intervene. This is nothing new, in crisis situations Russians usually have to fend for themselves. Citizens, after all, are not a priority. Let's see - the evacuees were resettled not deep inside Russia, but in other occupied territories, mainly Zaporizhzhia. And the financial assistance to the displaced is less than modest. It is 10 thousand rubles, or about 450 zlotys.
In his statements, Putin tries to blame the evacuation problems on representatives of local authorities. This is a classic Putin trick - the bad boyars are at fault, but the situation will be saved by the good tsar?.
Exactly. This is how Putin manages every crisis situation. First, he keeps quiet. If the problem cannot be kept silent, then the "good tsar" scolds the regional authorities, points the finger and orders, for example, that the Kursk region be cleared of terrorists, or distributes money - here we have financial aid for displaced persons. This time Putin faces a big risk. He can't hide the fact that a foreign army has occupied part of Russia. Especially since for almost two decades he has built himself up on the imperial narrative and the image of the one who, like the tsars once did, "collects the Russian lands."
That is, the words of Volodymyr Zelensky that Putin began his reign with the Kursk [the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000 - author's note] and will end with it may come true?.
This would be a beautiful bracket, but everything depends on the development of the situation. First, on whether Ukraine holds on to the Kursk region, and second, on whether Putin manages to maintain the existing trust of the Russians. Hence the narratives to keep the public calm are so insanely important. We will have to wait for opinion polls, the more reliable ones - conducted by the Levada Center or Russian Field [independent opinion polling centers - author's note].
For public sentiment to twitch, the impulse must be really powerful. First, the loss of territory must be permanent. For example, until Putin would be forced to trade it for Ukrainian occupied territories and explain it to the citizens, whom he has been instilling for years with Greater Belarusian chauvinism and neo-imperialism. Good luck with that. Second, the Kremlin's information campaign would have to prove unconvincing. However, so far it is doing well. Third and finally, the West must stop being silent.
This means .
The Kremlin's crisis is an opportunity that must be seized. We didn't take advantage of the Prigozhin putsch, and that was a major power crisis in Russia. We recognized Putin's re-election in June, even though the election was not democratic and the result was real. The mistake is that we don't want to see cracks in the monolith of Putin's regime. In addition, we let ourselves be intimidated into thinking that a crisis in Russia would be a disaster for international security.
Instead, we should send three clear signals. The first - the West is ready for any confrontation with Russia. The problem is that the Kremlin is convinced that the opposite is true. It is right, because Russian deterrence is working, and Western deterrence should be. The second - the West is ready to talk to any successor to Putin. This would encourage those who, contrary to what Kremlin propaganda has told us, have political ambitions. The third is a green light for full self-defense of Ukraine. Kyiv has the right to defend itself against Russia by attacking targets deep inside its territory, destroy the Crimean bridge and the aggressor's war infrastructure.
If we hope to stop an aggressive Russia, its citizens must suffer the consequences of a war provoked by their government. Until it knocks on the door of the average Russian, there is no chance of changing public sentiment.
But after all, it has already knocked - in the form of partial mobilization. It has not provoked major protests..
That's true. But the protest was there, only that it was passive. Instead of taking to the streets, hundreds of thousands of people left Russia in panic. The regime was clever, however, because the mobilization did not actually affect the big cities, where the main opposition circles operate, but the regions of Russia. The question today, then, boils down to whether the Kremlin can withstand the pressure created by the Kursk operation, and how it will respond if this one develops. If further spectacular failures occur, the Kremlin monolith may begin to crumble.
And Russia would become a democratic country?.
But no, this is wishful thinking. We are talking about knocking out imperial teeth. Let's remember that Russia retreats only when it stands on the brink of disaster. In this case, that edge could be a lost war, loss of territory and economic crisis. In the new situation, in exchange for saving it from another geopolitical catastrophe, the West could demand at least the exchange of political prisoners, the holding of free elections, the restoration of a liberal opposition. Since the Russians reject democratic values, all they need to do is preserve political pluralism and abandon their imperial ambitions, and they will no longer pose a threat to their neighbors and the international order.
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Agneska Bryc - PhD in political science. Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Security Studies at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. Member of the Council of the Center for Eastern Studies. She works on Russia's foreign policy and Israel's security.
