Vladimir Putin’s slow reaction to the incursion of Ukrainian forces into the Kursk border region may nevertheless face the wrath of his former allies.
Russia was kept off guard during the offensive and is reportedly recruiting recruits to repel some of Ukraine’s toughest units.
Putin has a history of responding slowly to various crises during his tenure and has so far downplayed the attack.
During his 24 years in power, Putin presented himself as the wearer capable of guaranteeing Russia’s security and stability, but this symbol has suffered since the beginning of the war.
While state television fuels Putin’s strength despite setbacks such as the Kursk raid, it is more difficult to gauge the opinion of his main interest organization: the Russian elites.
READ MORE: Russia loses 1,200 in a single day as Putin faces humiliation in Kursk
Putin for his acquiescence, said Ekaterina Schulmann, a nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
“The math going on in their heads 24/7 is whether or not the prestige quo benefits them,” he said.
Since the start of the war, the lives of those elites – Putin’s inner circle, the most level-headed bureaucrats, security and military officials, and business leaders – have gotten worse, not better. improve. Although many have benefited from the war, they have fewer options to spend their money due to Western sanctions.
What they have about Putin, Schulguyn says, “is whether the old man is still an asset or is already a liability. “
Russian elites can be described simply as being in a state of “unfortunate compliance,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. They are dissatisfied with the prestige quo, he said, but they are concerned about who would do it. He would win if there was a fight for leadership.
They might hope, analysts say, that Putin’s reaction to events in Kursk will conform to a trend in which he first delays reacting to a crisis before managing to win it anyway.
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Putin appeared slow to respond to the uprising of Wagner leader Yevgeni Prigozhin in June 2023, in what has become the most serious challenge ever posed to his authority.
After the failed mutiny, Prigozhin was first allowed to remain free, but Schulmann said Putin ultimately “had the last laugh” when the mercenary leader was killed a month later in a still-mysterious twist of fate from his personal plane. .
As the offensive in Ukraine entered its third week, Putin tried to stick to his agenda and even embarked on a two-day trip to Azerbaijan, without mentioning the crisis. On Tuesday, he briefly referred to it, vowing to “fight against those who dedicate crimes in the Kursk region. “
With internal dissent stifled and the media firmly under his control, Putin may make the “absolutely cynical” resolution to forget what is happening in the Kursk region, Schulmann said.
Still, Putin’s grip on the force is unlikely to “weaken as a result of this humiliation,” Eugene Rumer, a senior fellow and director of the Carnegie Program on Russia and Eurasia, wrote in a commentary. “The entire Russian political and military status quo is complicit in its war and guilty of this disaster. “
However, the longer the Ukrainian offensive continues, the more demanding military and political situations it presents.
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