Russian President Vladimir Putin is downplaying the seriousness of the incursion and buying himself time to respond as he deals with the domestic and international fallout from Ukraine's bold counterattack in the Kursk region.
More than three weeks have passed since Ukraine breached Russian defenses and seized about 450 square miles of territory, a senior U.S. intelligence official said.“I'm sure,” he said.Analysts say they don't expect Russia to launch a counterattack at Kursk, but that Putin is taking his time.
“Putin is a very risk-averse guy. He's very calculating and often really unwilling to make urgent and rash political decisions that would particularly affect the health of his regime,” said Katerina Stepanenko, deputy team leader for Russia and an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank.
Stepanenko said the attack on Ukraine was the first violation of Russian sovereignty since World War Two, but that Putin was trying to downplay its severity.
“You would think that any country facing an invasion on part of its territory, which has now been going on for more than 20 days, would take the opportunity to declare martial law, to declare mobilization, to declare war on Ukraine. But Russia has not done that,” she said.
“The biggest reason is that Putin is trying to downplay the story.”
While President Putin maintains overwhelming support among Russians, the August 6 Ukrainian attack on Russia marked a low point in public sentiment.
“We're seeing a moment of almost an exogenous shock to the Russian system,” said Jonathan Teubner, CEO of FilterLab AI, a research firm that uses artificial intelligence to analyze public opinion across a range of metrics.
Russia on MondayDevastating airstrikesMore than 100 missiles and an equal number of drones have been fired at Ukraine, targeting its energy infrastructure, reportedly damaging more than half of the country, killing at least four people, injuring more than a dozen, and damaging homes, power grids, and water facilities.
Opinion polls show growing anxiety about mobilization among a representative sample of Russian citizens.Russia's Levada Center announced this on Friday.The poll was conducted between August 2 and 28 among a representative sample of 1,600 people.
According to a Levada poll, the vast majority of Russians are aware of and concerned about the Kursk invasion of Ukraine.
But Putin has tried to downplay those concerns and divert attention from Russia's losses, including the evacuation of an estimated 180,000 people from the Kursk region.
Putin has stressed the patriotism of Russian volunteers and highlighted the Russian military's victory in the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.
“President Putin has told his people that the Kursk incident is not so serious that it should distract them from Russia's leadership on the battlefield in Ukraine, and that the Kursk incident is not so serious that it should be a call for mobilization and destabilize society from within, and I think that message is resonating,” Stepanenko said.
Levada tracks Putin's support85% of the populationLittle has changed in the past year.
But FilterLabs.AI's Teubner has tracked growing negative sentiment toward Putin among media outlets over the past few weeks in some regions where Russia has been recruiting soldiers and ramping up military production.
“If Putin's prestige and popularity declines in these key regions – especially if Russians perceive the war as going poorly – the Kremlin may find it more difficult to replenish its military,” FilterLabs.AI said.I wrote in my analysis on August 22nd.
“There's a lot of speculation and a lot we don't know about how Russia's power system actually works, but we do know that Putin is responding to public dissatisfaction,” Teubner said.
“In some ways, he's the same as Chinese President Xi Jinping.”
Filter Lab also looked at how Chinese and Iranian media responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. China and Iran are Putin's most important partners and have fueled the Ukraine war.
Russia uses Iranian explosive drones in UkraineIran reportedly acquiring more missilesMoscow and TehranSignature expectedA comprehensive cooperation treaty will be concluded by October.
But China is Russia's real lifeline to continuing the war: Moscow depends on Chinese commercial exports that can be used for its own military purposes, and Beijing is one of the few buyers of Russian oil, which is subject to sanctions by the United States and its allies.
“News in both Iran and China strongly reflects the views of their governments and both are very conscious of their ties to President Putin,” Teubner said.
Filter LabTracking negative narratives in Iran and ChinaHe was critical of Russian leaders immediately after the Kursk invasion, but has since shown signs of backlash.
“Instead of all of a sudden deciding to be very proactive about this issue, they decided to minimize it. They moved on to other issues,” Teubner said.
Liana Fix, a European fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said China was likely watching how it could exploit Russian vulnerabilities for its own purposes.
“From China's point of view, Russia's dependency on China – its dependency on dual-use products, its political dependency – [Beijing’s] “It's profitable,” she said.
“It's obviously embarrassing for Putin, but from China's strategic point of view, the more Russia relies on China, the more it benefits China.”
While China's official response to Russia's aggression in Ukraine was to repeat the boilerplate call on “all parties” to de-escalate, Fix said the fact that Beijing felt compelled to emphasize its statement showed it was taking the incident seriously.
“The fact that China felt the need to respond and make clear its condemnation of Ukraine's aggression shows that this is a big problem,” she said.
