Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was conceived within the Kremlin as a brief, sharp army operation.
The expectation was that it could take a matter of days, just a few weeks most, for Russia to determine management over its neighbour.
That was almost two and a half years in the past.
The struggle in Ukraine rages on. It has not gone in any respect as Moscow had meant.
However right here’s the factor. Over the past 29 months, so usually we’ve heard senior Russian officers claiming that the operation goes “in accordance with plan.”
President Vladimir Putin final stated that in Could, regardless of the whole lot that had occurred within the previous two years: the heavy Russian casualties on the battlefield, the destruction of a number of Russian warships within the Black Sea, drone assaults deep inside Russia (even on the Kremlin itself), the shelling of Russian cities and villages close to the Ukrainian border, the mutiny by Wagner mercenary fighters who had marched on Moscow.
Now there’s a new addition to the record: this week’s cross-border Ukrainian assault on Russia’s Kursk area.
First, a disclaimer: it’s troublesome to know precisely what is going on proper now within the Sudzha district of Kursk area. It’s unclear what number of Ukrainian troops are there, how a lot territory they’ve seized and what their last goal could also be.
At the moment’s version of the Russian broadsheet Nezavisimaya Gazeta declared: “Occasions on the Kursk entrance are shrouded within the infamous fog of struggle.”
However even in fog, some issues are clear.
It’s evident that what’s unfolding in Kursk area is additional proof that Russia’s struggle in Ukraine has not gone “in accordance with plan”. Occasions seem to have taken Russia’s political and army management fully without warning.
Don’t anticipate Moscow to confess that.
Extra probably, Russian officers will use the Ukrainian assault to attempt to rally the Russian public across the authorities and bolster the official Kremlin narrative that (a) on this battle Russia will not be the aggressor, and (b) Russia is a besieged fortress surrounded by enemies who’re plotting to invade and destroy it.
In actuality it was Russia that launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
There’s clearly a giant distinction in language. When Russia poured it troops throughout the border into Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin known as this a “particular army operation” and claimed that Russia was “liberating” cities and villages.
Moscow has described Ukrainian troops pushing into Russia as “a terrorist assault” and “a provocation.”
The assault by Ukrainian forces on Kursk area and the fierce combating there are an indication that hostilities are coming nearer to house. However will that flip Russian public opinion towards the struggle?
Not essentially.
Final yr I visited Belgorod, a Russian area which, like Kursk, borders Ukraine. It was being shelled from throughout the border. Everybody I met instructed me that nothing like this had occurred earlier than Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine: earlier than February 2022 it was all peace and quiet in Belgorod area.
However as an alternative of concluding that the “particular army operation” had been a mistake, most individuals I spoke to known as for Russia to step up its army motion and push deeper into Ukrainian territory.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is looking for precisely that. In a social media publish at present he wrote:
“We are able to and we should always take extra land of the Ukraine that also exists. [We should go to] Odesa, to Kharkiv, to Dnepro, Mykolaiv. To Kyiv and onwards.”
However Dmitry Medvedev doesn’t get to name the photographs. Vladimir Putin does. We wait to see how he responds to what have been a dramatic few days in southern Russia.
