Projecting control

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

Considering Putin’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 Russia has been fighting its war on Ukraine. But this strategy is not winning this war for Russia.

Putin’s “special military operation” that was supposed to deliver a quick and easy victory over all of Ukraine in just three days is well into its third year, and Moscow still does not control even the Ukrainian territories that it annexed and claims as its own.

Russia’s style of war is very wasteful of human life. The UK Ministry of Defence estimates that the Russian armed forces have suffered more than 600,000 casualties since the beginning of its mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia’s military is struggling to recruit enough men to replace those who have been lost, despite regularly increasing the salaries and benefits offered to anyone willing to join up.

Some reports are emerging of Russian troops being sent back to the front lines before they have fully recovered from serious combat injuries. These include images of soldiers using crutches to walk into battle. Many of the soldiers trying to halt and reverse the progress of Ukrainian forces in Kursk are young conscripts doing their year of compulsory military service.

Russia’s reliance on inexperienced troops with limited training to protect its border with Ukraine is an indication that Russia’s forces are stretched very thinly.

And Russia now has labour shortages outside the war zones. Although Russia has factories working around the clock and is paying high wages to attract the best workers, the shortage of people to do these jobs is constraining both the military and civilian economies. This means a shortage of bus drivers, shop and factory workers serving the everyday needs of communities as well as threats to Russia’s ability to produce weapons to use against Ukraine.

The Kremlin could have treated the Ukrainian invasion as an emergency and an excuse to access previously untapped resources from Russian society to fill these gaping holes in the war effort. The Ukrainian occupation of Russian territory could have provided a justification for a new round of military mobilisation to replenish the ranks of the armed forces. It could also have justified introducing new legislation to enable the state to direct labour resources towards those areas of the economy in greatest need.

This is the kind of measure that governments have introduced in wartime. For example, during World War II in Britain women were required to register for conscription and could be sent to work in factories or on the land.

So why did Putin pass up such a golden opportunity, both to strengthen his chosen narrative about the character and significance of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and to draw on more of Russian society to carry its burdens?

The answer may lie in a recent interview with sociologist Alexey Levinson of the Levada Centre, which is Russia’s only remaining independent polling organisation. Levinson described Russian society as emotionally numb in the face of Russia’s war in Ukraine. According to Levinson, most Russians prefer to ignore the war and carry on with their everyday lives as if it were not happening.

Putin may have chosen to play down Ukraine’s incursion onto Russia’s territory because he feared that Russian society simply would not respond to a wider call for support. A collective societal shrug of indifference to a declaration of national emergency by the country’s leader would have been deeply humiliating — perhaps even more humiliating than an invasion by foreign forces.

Whatever Putin himself really believes, he appears to realise that most of his fellow citizens do not buy his argument that the war in Ukraine is an existential conflict for Russia. While few Russians openly and actively oppose the war — in part, no doubt, because of the risks of fines and imprisonment — Levinson’s research suggests that their support is passive and might not survive being asked to make significant personal sacrifices.

The longer this war continues, the more difficult Putin might find it to insulate much of Russian society from its effects.