Apathetic Response of Russian People to Ukrainian Advance into Kursk Oblast May Be What Kremlin Wants But Won’t Help It Later, Starovoitov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 15 – The failure of the Russian people to rise up in response to the Ukrainian advance into Kursk Oblast may be exactly what the Kremlin wants as such apathy helps the powers that be to retain control, Sergey Starovoitov says. But such attitudes won’t help the Putin regime when it faces bigger challenges and needs to mobilize the population.

            The Russian political scientist who has worked on numerous campaigns and is the editor of the Club of the Regions portal says that had the Ukrainians invaded Kursk two years ago, the Russian reaction would have been different: people would have demanded a harsh response and lined up at military recruiting centers (realtribune.ru/na-infantilnoe-obshhestvo-nelzya-polozhitsya-v-kriticheskoj-situacii-sergej-starovojtov/).

            But in the intervening period, the Kremlin has routinized the war, encouraging Russians to think of it as a kind of background noise rather than a central challenge to the country. As a result, Putin’s ratings in the polls remain high and Russians are treating this incursion as just one more event in a longer story rather than some kind of existential threat.

            Officials in the Kremlin are likely celebrating their success in achieving such a change in Russian reactions. It certainly helps them now, Starovoitov says. But if this threat grows or if Moscow faces other problems for which it needs to mobilize the population, such apathy may not be a resource for the regime but become a threat.

            That is because if the Russian people react to such things with such apathy, they are unlikely to be willing to be mobilized. That such a danger exists is already evident in the insistence of many commentators that Putin would not dare to try to launch a general mobilization to expand his army and thus be in a better position in the Ukraine conflict.

            But Starovoitov suggests such apathy while perhaps easy to create may not be easy to reverse and that, as a result, the Kremlin may find itself in serious difficulties as challenges to the Russian Federation mount.