Things seemed to be going so well for Vladimir Putin — at home and on the battlefield.
Now Russia is the battlefield, after Ukraine’s stunning assault across the border turned the tables on Putin’s war and left his army scrambling to retake its own land.
It’s a remarkable turn of events after a year of things largely going Putin’s way, from the short-lived mutiny he put down to his resilient economy and months of grinding gains on the front lines.
The Russian leader sounded almost irate as he vowed to “squeeze the enemy” out of his country’s territory at a crisis meeting with top officials Monday, warning that Kyiv will receive a “worthy” response to its Kursk offensive.
Russia remains united, he said. The country’s troops, he boasted, have even accelerated their advance in Ukraine’s east. And those forced to evacuate their homes in Russia’s border regions will be well taken care of.
Yet the rosy picture Putin was trying to paint did little to disguise the reality: The Russian leader now faces one of the most damaging moments of his long tenure, with the Kremlin reeling from a foreign power invading Russia for the first time since World War II.
“He is upset that something like this could have happened,” said Callum Fraser, a research fellow in Russian and Eurasian security at the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, a London-based think tank. “One of the justifications that he routinely uses for the invasion of Ukraine is the security of the Russian state. The fact that Ukraine has launched this incursion into Russian territory, I think, is absolutely humiliating for him,” Fraser told NBC News.
Putin’s rival in Kyiv offered his own taunting assessment, noting the symbolism of the region now at the center of the war.
“Twenty-four years ago, there was the Kursk disaster — the symbolic beginning of his rule,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Instagram video message Monday, referring to the sinking of Russia’s Kursk submarine on Aug. 12, 2000, an accident that Putin was criticized for his detached handling of the crisis. “And now it is clear what is the end for him. And Kursk too. The disaster of his war.”
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It’s a stunning shift for Putin.
He claimed a landslide win in an effectively uncontested election in March to extend his rule for what could be another 12 years. His forces in Ukraine were chipping away at beleaguered defenses in the country’s east as Kyiv desperately awaited new aid from the U.S.
His geopolitical fortunes looked set to improve with former President Donald Trump flying high in the polls before President Joe Biden pulled out of the race. And just weeks ago, Putin was triumphantly greeting the spies and an assassin he brought home in the biggest prisoner swap since the Cold War.
But now, with battles raging inside Russia for an eighth day, Putin must account for how his intelligence chiefs and border guards failed to stop thousands of troops storming across the border.
Ukraine says the daring operation has allowed it to capture some 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of Russian territory, and videos geolocated by NBC News show Ukrainian soldiers posing gleefully in front of road signs and installing Ukrainian flags in some border villages. One shows a road lined with burnt cars and debris as smoke rises in the background.
Putin’s appearance Monday, his first major comment on the incursion, showed “a significant shift in the tone of voice” from his normally calm demeanor in such meetings, Fraser said.
“You can tell that he is absolutely terrified of the fact that Ukraine has made gains,” he added.
Putin’s legacy rests on the image that he has built for himself over two decades in power, as the only guarantor of stability and security for the Russian people. The events of the last few days are turning that on its head, analysts said.
“Certainly, it’s harder now for Putin to project the image of a Teflon president,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
There is also growing public anger to contend with.
Thousands of ordinary Russians have been forced to abandon their homes in the border regions since the incursion. Putin has promised them 10,000 rubles ($107), but some residents have voiced their anger with authorities over the speed and scope of assistance — albeit without directly criticizing the Russian leader.
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“There is nothing. It’s as if everyone has flown to another planet, and you are left alone. And the birds stopped singing,” an elderly man called Mikhail told Russian state television from one evacuated area Tuesday. “Helicopters and planes fly over the yard and shells were flying. What could we do? We left everything behind.”
One group of residents in the flashpoint district of Sudzha recorded a video message for the president, asking him for help after losing their homes and fleeing under fire.
While state media has been touting Russian efforts to push back the Ukrainians, the country’s coterie of influential military bloggers have raised questions about how Moscow was caught off guard.
Putin’s public appearance Monday was surprising for a president who usually goes into hiding during crises only to emerge once the situation is resolved, Giles said.
“What he does next, of course, will depend on how the situation on the ground progresses,” he added. “There are a number of different possible objectives that Ukraine could pursue, and it’s up to Russia to react and try to contain the damage.”
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