Following Nazi Germany’s invasion of the USSR in 1941, Joseph Stalin took 11 days to make a public radio broadcast to a shocked population—they had, after all, been promised that such an event was utterly impossible. Chaos reigned supreme, as German tanks thundered through thousands of kilometres of Soviet terrain, assailed local populations, and forced a panicking Red Army to flee. It looked like the USSR’s defences—and a terrified population’s fighting spirit—might simply evaporate. What became six months of perilous uncertainty only ended when Germany’s advance was halted outside Moscow.
A week into Ukraine’s offensive into Russian territory in its Kursk region, Vladimir Putin’s regime looks to be in a similarly tricky situation. The Ukrainian Army claims to have captured over 1,000 square kilometres of Russian territory all but unchallenged. Russian border guards have been filmed surrendering. Ukrainian soldiers are hoisting their national flag in Russian town centres. Russian officials have now admitted that, so far, 28 settlements have been captured. More than 180,000 Russian civilians have been forced to beg the leader for help, fleeing for their lives.
With an enemy apparently rampaging through Russian territory, stories of panic from the locals spreading rapidly, and a population already demoralized by two and a half years of bloody war in Ukraine, could history be about to repeat itself? This week’s events are hugely embarrassing and militarily damaging for Putin. Nevertheless, those hoping this moment will make Russians turn against their leader may be in for a disappointment. Indeed, counterintuitively, Ukraine’s invasion of Russia, the very country that invaded them, may only serve to bolster Russian fighting resolve.
Putin’s propagandists—and Putin himself—have been slow to respond to events in Kursk. When faced with an unexpected bad news story, the regime tends to take several days to experiment with different narratives, until pinning down the most effective story. This time around, while Putin has been mostly absent in the week since the invasion began, his spin doctors have been instructed to turn to a familiar theme: the attack on Russia is a replay of the Second World War, with German tanks—this time donated by Berlin—once more breaching the state’s borders.
However, there are two key differences from 1941. First, every Russian knows how the national story of the Second World War, which is celebrated with quasi-religious fervour in today’s Russia, ends: after the period of turmoil, the Russian population gloriously pulled together in an act of unparalleled national unity to cast out the invader and achieve an immense historical victory. Modern-day Russian patriots enthusiastically spout the line “We can do it again,” meaning re-enact this grand Soviet Union victory. Indeed, today’s attack, the propagandists claim, is a reiteration of the Second World War Battle of Kursk, one of the key turning points in achieving victory over the Nazi invader, and the single largest tank battle in the history of war.
Second, unlike in 1941, today’s regime has spent years telling the Russian population it should not just ready itself for a war with the West, but that the war has already started. In the decade since Russia’s annexation of Crimea, claims that Russia and Russians are under threat from a shadowy cabal of forces led by the “collective West”—the USA, NATO, France, Britain, Poland, and the Baltics—have reached fever pitch. Putin’s speech on February 24, 2022, when he declared a “special military operation” in Ukraine, was brimming with that narrative: the West attacked Russia in the 1990s by sponsoring “gangs of mercenaries” to “utterly destroy us.” The USSR tried not to “provoke” Germany in 1941 but was invaded anyway. Today, Putin claimed, “We will not make the same mistake again.” Even if relatively few Russians believe that Ukraine really is packed with modern-day Nazis, they are more attached to the myth that Russia is destined to be invaded by Western powers than any other. The events this week will be seen by many as a manifestation of that messaging in reality.
Propaganda over the last few days has compared today’s events with those of the 1940s. The fighting and chaos at the front in Kursk has not been hidden from the public. Ukraine, they allege, has, been bombing hospitals, schools, and apartment blocks. Fake and decontextualized footage shows Ukrainian troops shelling civilians and the rescue teams sent to help them. Doctors, nurses, and other volunteers are arriving from all over the country to assist. In a very modern twist on old-fashioned wartime engagement programs, propagandists are pleading with ordinary Russians to donate money by SMS and online payment systems for humanitarian efforts. Turmoil and suffering are thus paraded on television as evidence of the many forces that are arraying themselves against Russia—and therefore evidence of the need for a strong military and civic response.
Now the state’s elites, including Putin, are hammering that message home too. In a Security Council meeting between the president and regional governors, which was televised and covered in newspaper headlines, politicians were frank about admitting the scale of Ukraine’s penetration into Kursk (albeit cautiously avoiding the word “invasion”).
But they were equally clear about what Putin termed the “resolute” response from civilians. Kursk governor Alexei Smirnov praised local volunteers, who have supposedly been “unrelenting in their efforts to evacuate people.” The president claimed that he has observed “a rising number of individuals eager to join the ranks of those heroically defending Russia.”
A Ukrainian serviceman secures the retreat of fellow soldiers in formerly Russian-occupied Kyiv, Ukraine, April 2, 2022. Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo.
These reassuring messages might seem absurd—and are at this stage not backed up by any real evidence—but they play up the story that the present is, like 1941, a moment of great national unity. The attack on Russian soil is a trial from which the nation will emerge more united and more, to use a term regularly employed by Putin, “heroic” in its efforts to repel a land invasion of the nation. In this topsy-turvy world, Russia being invaded is simply more evidence that Russia must emerge victorious.
Some evidence suggests that Russian patriots, just as they did during the first months after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, are rallying around the cause. Even moderately pro-Kremlin groups on platforms like Telegram and the Facebook-like VK are full of users enthusiastically sharing footage of destroyed Ukrainian and Western-made military equipment on the road to Kursk, urging humanitarian efforts, and making comparisons with the last time the Russian army faced an invader on home soil. One user on a popular nationalist group asked if this means Russia will finally be able to “untie its hands” and unleash the full might of its civic, military, and nuclear arsenal. For these Russians, a smaller neighbour’s army—one that was meant to be overrun in a few days in a war started nearly a thousand days ago—rolling through Moscow’s borders is no disaster. It is an opportunity for national heroism.
When attacked most national communities experience a rally around the flag effect. Driven by anxiety and anger, civilians turn to simple explanations that favour jingoism and xenophobia. In a storm of confusion and fear, with no real opposition groups to counter state spin, the Kremlin’s propagandists are masters of providing aggressively simple messaging: Russia, again, is under threat from the West. Invasion is an opportunity for a historic national victory.
The effect may not last forever. Should Ukraine push on to take more territory or should the Russian army be drawn into endless conflict that sees huge numbers of displaced citizens flooding into the heartlands around Moscow, Putin will not be able to hide reality for long.
The Russian president certainly will not be happy with the events of the past week. A figure in the state apparatus will be scapegoated and fired—or worse—for the failure of defence. But Putin will stand firm at the helm of state. He may even become more popular in the short term. For now, the man in the Kremlin may not be as frightened as you might imagine.
