Deciphering Putin’s muted response to the Kursk incursion

Kiev’s offensive into the Kursk region was a typically bold move by the Ukrainians and one that caught Russia entirely by surprise. But perhaps its most surprising feature is Vladimir Putin’s response.

Given the Russian president’s repeated claims that losing its war against Ukraine would mean the break up of Russia by the West, it might have been expected that Putin would respond with outrage to the first invasion of Russia’s territory since the Second World War.

Considering the Russian president’s efforts to establish parallels between the Soviet Union’s fight against Nazi Germany and Russia’s war against Ukraine, he also missed an obvious opportunity to label Ukraine’s August 6 surprise offensive as the modern-day equivalent to Operation Barbarossa. This was when Nazi forces stormed across the western borders of the Soviet Union in June 1941 in a devastating attack.

But instead of ringing rhetorical alarm bells and calling on society in Russia to make sacrifices for the motherland, Putin has played down the presence of Ukrainian soldiers on Russian soil, taking a week to make his first public pronouncement on the incident.

Rather than depicting Ukraine’s actions as the start of a new and dangerous chapter in the war, Putin’s message to the Russian people is that everything is under control and there is no need to worry.

Russian armed forces have certainly not been idle over the past month. Attacks on cities and towns in Ukraine have continued and even intensified, while Russian troops fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine are pushing forward in their efforts to seize the city of Pokrovsk, a transport hub with strategic significance.

All of these responses, however, are effectively business as usual for the way that