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.
