Russians ask Putin: why must we flee our homes?
The unprecedented incursion by Ukraine in a war that Russia expected to win within a few days has dealt a massive blow to Vladimir Putin.
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As the Ukrainian army swept into western Russia in the biggest incursion by enemy forces into the country since the Second World War, locals recorded a frantic video appeal to President Putin.
“We have lost our land and we have lost our homes. We fled under fire, through ruins,” said dozens of residents of the Sudzhansky district in the Kursk region. “We and our children have been left without a roof over our heads.”
Some took cover in basements as Ukrainian missiles exploded nearby. Others jumped into vehicles and evacuated the area. “Some left in just their underpants or nightshirts. The kids were terrified,” one said. Others were forced to swim across a river to escape the Ukrainian assault, one man said.
The Ukrainian troops, said by analysts to number up to 10,000, are thought to have advanced 20 miles into Russia since they began their incursion last week. More than 120,000 people have been evacuated from border areas amid scenes of chaos and destruction reminiscent of the terror Putin’s army has brought to Ukraine in the past two and a half years.
Near the town of Sudzha, 75 miles from Kursk, the regional capital, Ukrainian soldiers posted videos of themselves tearing down Russian flags above government buildings. Other videos showed the bodies of Russian soldiers in fields.
“We know nothing about the fate of about 2,000 people who are located in 28 settlements that are under enemy control,” Alexei Smirnov, acting governor of the Kursk region, said yesterday. At least a dozen civilians have died and more than 120 have been injured, he added. The claim could not be verified.
With communications down across much of the area, missing persons announcements have flooded VK, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook. “Please help me find my grandfather, I haven’t heard from him since August 6,” read one message.
Media outlets loyal to the Kremlin are thought to have been ordered to play down the scale of the incursion to prevent panic. However, Kommersant, a usually compliant daily newspaper in Moscow, reported on civilians fleeing and growing anger at officials.
“Where is our government? Where is the local administration?” one woman told the newspaper. Another said: “We don’t understand why they don’t tell us the truth. The enemy entered our territory, and on TV they keep saying: ‘This is an emergency’. What kind of emergency is it when there are foreign tanks on our land!” She described Russian defence officials as “corrupt” and “crazy”.
Putin ordered his military to “dislodge” Ukrainian forces yesterday. “One of the obvious goals of the enemy is to sow discord, strife, intimidate people, destroy the unity and cohesion of Russian society,” he said at a televised meeting with officials.
The unprecedented incursion by Ukraine in a war that Russia expected to win within a few days has dealt a massive blow to Putin’s reputation, according to Sergei Markov, a political analyst at Moscow State University who formerly advised the Kremlin on Ukraine. “It’s humiliation for Vladimir Putin and people, of course, are not happy,” he told Times Radio. “There are tens of thousands of refugees from these regions. It’s clear that the Russian army cannot handle the situation.”
Putin’s initial reaction to the attack was oddly muted. Speaking at a national security council meeting last week, he described it as a “provocation” and ordered officials to resolve the situation. He also found time, however, to sign off on a swathe of new laws, including one banning the sale of energy drinks to children.
President Zelensky has said the operation is aimed at bringing the war to Russia and making its people “feel” the consequences of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. An unnamed Ukrainian official told the AFP news agency that the incursion was an attempt to “destabilise the situation” in Russia.
The Russian military appears to have been taken by surprise by the speed of the offensive and analysts say it could trigger the dismissal of senior defence officials, including General Valery Gerasimov, head of the general staff. “This is a slap in the face for the president. We have been unable to push the enemy back,” an unnamed government official told the Politika.Kozlov website.
Videos on Russian social media showed abandoned cars strewn along the side of a road leading into Kursk. It was unclear what had happened to the passengers. “People are in denial. They really believe all that propaganda about our army not targeting civilians in Ukraine and they can’t understand why this is happening,” one local said, on condition of anonymity.
Dozens of young Russian conscripts may have been captured in the fighting, despite the Kremlin’s promises that only mobilised men or professional soldiers would be deployed to the front.
Putin has sought to convince his people that the war in Ukraine is aimed at toppling a “Nazi regime” in Kyiv that was carrying out the genocide of ethnic Russians. There is no truth to that claim. However, there are far-right fighters on both sides of the conflict.
One of the units involved in the incursion has been identified by Ukrainian media as the Nachtigall (Nightingale) Battalion, which takes its name from a battalion of Ukrainian nationalists that fought alongside Nazi forces in the Second World War in an effort to achieve independence from the Soviet Union. A Ukrainian military source confirmed the battalion’s existence to The Times.
DeepState, Ukraine’s leading military analytical website, has also apparently sought to rub salt into the memory of the Nazi invasion of Russia. In a post last week on Telegram, it said a drone unit that it described as the “Luftwaffe” had dropped cluster munitions on “Russian Communist” troops.
Ilya Yashin, one of the Russian opposition leaders who was freed in this month’s East-West prisoner exchange, said that responsibility for the incursion lay entirely with Putin.
“What is happening now was inevitable and was caused by Putin’s decision to order the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. When Putin’s propaganda was shouting that we would take Kyiv in three days, I told people that the war would definitely come to Russia. And that not only Ukrainians would suffer, but that they would, as well.”
The Times
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