In the days immediately after Ukraine's audacious August 6 cross-border invasion into Russia's Kursk region, the message dominating the airwaves on state-run TV and sympathetic media was this: Russian President Vladimir Putin is in charge. Russia's military will repel the Ukrainian incursion. The war against Ukraine itself, now in its 30th month, will continue to victory.
Now, as the Ukrainian successes continue more than two weeks in, cracks are spreading in the message that the Kremlin wants the Russian public to hear.
On the talk show hosted on state TV by Vladimir Solovyov -- an influential media personality known for occasionally outlandish propaganda -- some commentators have spoken openly about the Russian military's failures in Kursk and have warned that things are likely to get worse.
"We must proceed from the fact that we can lose," Karen Shakhnazarov, a prominent film director, said on August 13. "If there are more mistakes like this, we may lose. And this is not defeatism, this is not alarmism. This is an absolute understanding of the price that we and our homeland will have to pay."
"[We must] prepare for the worst-case scenario: these territories -- God willing, without people -- will have to be sacrificed," Maksim Yusin, a commentator known for his pro-government views, said on August 12 on the talk show Meeting Place, hosted on the Gazprom-owned channel NTV.
For the overwhelming majority of Russians, television -- dominated by state-controlled channels -- is the medium where they consume news. Coverage of the entire war against Ukraine has extolled the heroics of Russian soldiers and highlighted the grinding progress Russian troops have made -- even while downplaying, or ignoring, the eye-watering number casualties suffered since February 2022.
Dispelling A Myth
If nothing else, Ukraine's incursion dispels the myth of the might of the Russian armed forces, said Rustem Adagamov, a widely read liberal blogger who now lives outside of Russia.
"Not only does the Russian Federation not have an army to reach the English Channel or to capture something in Latvia or Estonia, the Russian Federation does not have an army to simply defend its own territory, to protect Russians," he wrote in a post on his blog. "It turns out that it is not capable of this at all."
Aleksandr Morozov, a political scientist who also now lives outside the country, said the way the Kremlin has responded publicly to the Ukraine invasion is damning.
"Let's imagine any other country: The president makes an address to the nation; there is an emergency meeting of parliament, etc.," he wrote on his blog. Instead, "we are historical witnesses of something amazing: the president holds some working meetings, parliament goes on vacation."
"There is deafening silence; neither the heads of the upper and lower houses nor the head of government, nor any state council, that is, not a single similar institution that might exist in other countries, has addressed the population with anything," Morozov said.
"For the most part, neither the authorities nor the people perceive this as an enemy invasion; rather it's viewed as a natural disaster," Aleksandr Plyushchev, a liberal-leaning journalist, said in a commentary on his YouTube channel.
The Kremlin and its various power centers -- the presidential administration, the Federal Security Service, and the Security Council -- are famously difficult to pry information from, particularly in times of crisis.
More Russians Anxious Or Concerned
However, a survey conducted by a government-linked pollster, the Public Opinion Foundation, known as FOM, found Russians are not entirely happy with what is happening. The pollster found a sharp jump in the number of Russians saying they were anxious or concerned. The survey, however, also found a slight increase in the level of trust in Putin.
Citing unnamed officials in the presidential administration and elsewhere, Meduza, the exiled Russian-language online publication, said the Kremlin is trying to find a way to level with the Russian public, but without causing panic.
"The Kremlin, with the help of propaganda, is trying to prepare Russians for life in the conditions of a ‘new reality' or a ‘new normal,'" the Riga-based outlet said.
The idea that the authorities might be trying to prepare the population for an extended fight on Russian territory, rather than working to defeat the Ukrainian troops, angered some commentators.
"What are you preparing people for, experts?! For the surrender of Shebekino, Bryansk, and, finally, Crimea?" Platon Besedin, a pro-government publicist wrote in a post to Telegram, referring to a Russian border town, a western regional capital, and the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula that was seized by Russia in 2014.
"Yes, in normal times, they would give you a helmet and send you to the front for this, but instead here we have only miracles!" he wrote.
'Putin's Next Moves Are All Bad'
Dmitry Gudkov, a liberal politician who was famously kicked out of parliament and now lives outside of Russia, said the Kursk invasion has brought the Russian authorities to a dead end.
"Putin's next moves are all bad," he wrote on Telegram. "But the further you go, the higher the risk of the people's muted discontent morphing into mass unrest."
Also telling is the label that the Kremlin has bestowed upon the invasion itself. The entire 30-month war on Ukraine is officially called a "special military operation," according to government regulations, not a "war."
Similarly, said Dmitry Kolezev, the former editor of the online magazine Republic, the Russian response to the Ukrainian invasion is described with the euphemism -- "counterterrorism operation."
"Perhaps the whole point is that the Russian authorities are avoiding calling a spade a spade," Kolezev wrote.
"Firstly, with all its might, the Russian state is showing that it does not need this: It does not declare war, does not impose martial law, but activates a counterterrorism operation," he said. "Should civilians take up arms here? And where can I get a weapon anyway?"
"By this logic, a civilian should move away [from the invasion] since this is a professional battle against ‘terrorists,'" he said.
