“Kremlin response to Kursk incursion shows how Putin freezes in a crisis”
“When Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority is tested, his response often lacks quick, decisive action that lives up to his bellicose rhetoric.”
“Faced with crisis, Vladimir Putin tends to freeze.
Moscow’s slow, fumbling military response to Ukraine’s surprise occupation of parts of the western Kursk region is the latest example of the Kremlin chief failing to respond with quick, decisive action to match his bellicose rhetoric.
The Kursk incursion is the fourth major blow to Putin’s authority since his February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and highlights the weaknesses of a top-down autocracy that operates largely on fear and punishment.
In each case — after Russia’s failure to topple the Ukrainian government at the start of the invasion, after the Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin led a rebellion against the regular Russia military command and after Islamist extremists struck the popular Crocus City Hall concert venue — the Kremlin’s response has been halting, with Putin waiting 24 hours or more to offer any public comment.”
All for All trade. Nothing less.
“A Russian Mother’s Pleas to Find a Captured Conscript Are Met With Silence”
“Hundreds of green young recruits were captured during Ukraine’s surprise incursion. Putin had told their families they would be safe.”
“Russian conscript Vitaly Izmailov was sent to Russia’s border with Ukraine expecting a calm end to his year of mandatory service. With the main battles happening to the south and east, patrolling the frontier was seen as an uneventful assignment, dull even—the kind of thing a conscript could safely do.
But when Ukraine launched a cross-border attack on Aug. 6, the 19-year-old disappeared.
Izmailov’s mother has lodged desperate pleas for information, even appealing directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin in an online petition signed by the mothers of other soldiers who are missing.
“I’m not going to give up until I find him,” Yevgenia Izmailova said in an interview from the Russian city of Perm.”