A year ago this week, President Vladimir Putin took to a stage in the Kursk region to mark the 80th anniversary of one of the Soviet army’s proudest moments in World War II.
Addressing a captivated audience, including soldiers returning from fighting in Ukraine, Mr Putin called the decisive victory in the Battle of Kursk “one of the great achievements of our people”.
Now, as Russia prepares to mark the 81st anniversary of that 1943 battle, Kursk is in the news again — but for a very different reason.
Ukrainian forces rapidly advanced into the region on August 6, seizing villages, arresting hundreds of people and forcing the evacuation of thousands of civilians. Russia was unprepared for the onslaught and is reportedly committing troops to repel some of Ukraine’s most battle-hardened units.
Mr Putin has a history of reacting slowly to various crises in his tenure, and he has so far downplayed the attack. But two and a half years after he launched a war in Ukraine, which he described as a threat to Russia, it is his own country that appears more turbulent.
He appeared uneasy at a televised meeting of his security staff about Kursk on August 12, interrupting the acting regional governor who had begun listing settlements seized by Ukraine. The president and his officials referred to the “events in the Kursk region” as a “situation” or a “provocation.”
State media also showed people standing in their lines, waiting to receive aid or to donate blood, as if the events at Kursk were a humanitarian disaster, not the largest attack on Russia since World War II.
During his 24 years in power, Mr Putin has portrayed himself as the only man who can guarantee Russia’s security and stability, but that image has been tarnished since the war began.
Russian cities have been subjected to drone attacks and shelling by Kiev’s forces. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the mercenary army, launched a brief rebellion last year to oust his military leaders. In March, gunmen attacked a Moscow concert hall, killing 145 people.
The Kremlin has given tacit approval to a sweeping purge of Defense Ministry officials, many of whom face corruption charges. Lower-level officials are also being arrested on charges of fraud, including Lt. Col. Konstantin Frolov, a decorated airborne brigade commander. “I would rather be in Kursk than here,” he said as he was led in handcuffs to a Moscow police station.
In another reminder that fortunes can change quickly in Russia, authorities have launched criminal cases against other officials and are trying to seize land belonging to some of the country’s wealthiest people in a posh area outside Moscow near Putin’s residence.
Although state TV still shows strong support for Putin despite setbacks such as the Kursk offensive, the opinions of his key supporters – Russia’s elite – are harder to predict.
Putin relies on their approval, said Ekaterina Shulman, a nonresident scholar at the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
He said, “They keep calculating 24 hours a day in their mind whether the status quo is beneficial for them or not.”
Since the war began, life has gotten worse, not better, for those elites close to Mr. Putin — top bureaucrats, security and military officials, and business leaders. While many have been enriched by the war, they have fewer places to spend their money because of Western sanctions.
Ms. Shulman said the question they are asking themselves about Mr. Putin is “whether the old man is still an asset or has already become a liability.”
Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Russia’s elites could be described as being in a state of “unhappy compliance.” They are dissatisfied with the status quo, he said, but are fearful of who would win if there was a leadership struggle.
Analysts say they will be hoping that Mr Putin’s response to the events in Kursk follows a pattern in which he initially reacts slowly to crises but eventually overcomes them.
This has been seen from the earliest days of his rise to power – starting with the sinking 24 years ago of a nuclear submarine named after the Battle of Kursk.
On Aug. 19, 2000, less than a year after Mr. Putin became president, the Kursk sank in the Barents Sea when one of its torpedoes exploded, killing all 118 sailors aboard. Mr. Putin went on vacation at the start of the crisis — drawing widespread criticism — and waited five days before accepting Western countries’ offer of help that could have saved some of the sailors who initially survived the explosion.
Mr Putin also appeared slow to respond to the rebellion of Wagner chief Prigozhin in June 2023, which became the most serious challenge to his authority yet.
After the uprising was over, Prigozhin was initially allowed to remain free, but Ms Shulman said it was Mr Putin who ultimately “got the last laugh” when the mercenary leader died in a mysterious crash of his private plane a month later.
As the Ukrainian aggression entered its third week, Putin tried to keep up with his schedule and a two-day visit to Azerbaijan without mentioning the crisis. On Tuesday, he mentioned it briefly and promised to “fight those who committed crimes in the Kursk region.”
Ms. Shulman said that because of his suppression of domestic dissent and his total control over the media, Mr. Putin might make the “absolutely reprehensible” decision to ignore what was happening in the Kursk region.
Still, Eugene Rumer, senior fellow and director of the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Program, wrote in a commentary that Mr. Putin’s grip on power “is unlikely to weaken as a result of this humiliation.” “The entire Russian political and military establishment is complicit in his war and responsible for this disaster.”
However, the longer the Ukrainian invasion continues, the more military and political challenges it will pose.
Russia appears to be struggling to find suitable troops to repel the Ukrainian attack. Despite promises that recruited soldiers would not be sent to the front, Russia is deploying them in the Kursk region without adequate training, according to a human rights group helping recruited soldiers.
Analysts say reserve forces are also being called up to avoid Russia having to withdraw its troops from Ukraine’s Donbass region, where Moscow’s forces are slowly advancing.
Because of manpower shortages, authorities are trying to entice Russians to serve by offering bigger salaries, calling up convicted criminals from prisons and recruiting foreigners inside the country.
Ukraine’s aggressive stance could make it difficult for the Kremlin to ignore the many consequences of war. Gould-Davis said a key question is what happens if Russia’s elites conclude that the conflict is “unwinnable or if … it will never end while Putin is in power.”
In the Russian city of Sudzha in the Kursk region, now under the control of Ukrainian troops, the suffering of residents was palpable. AP reporters on a Ukrainian government-arranged visit last week saw bombed-out buildings, a damaged natural gas pumping station and elderly residents living in basements with their belongings and food — images similar to those seen in Ukraine for the past 29 months.
It is not yet clear whether the second battle of Kursk, like the first, will prove to be a turning point in the war Mr Putin has started.
But, Ms. Shulman said, “as one in a series of unfortunate events, it creates the impression that things are not going well.”