Reaction to Kursk Shows that ‘Mentally, Russia has Already Disintegrated,’ Tatar Activist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 17 – The popular reaction inside the Russian Federation shows that “mentally, Russia has already disintegrated and has been torn apart,” Tatar activist and commentator Ruslan Aysin says. And because that is the case, “there can be no talk of any unity or coherence of the territory in a political sense.”

            People are not responding by “storming military registration and enlistment offices in a desire to go to the front to defend the homeland from the enemy,” he continues. Instead, they are living their own lives and only going through the motions that the powers that be require (idelreal.org/a/iskrennostyu-zdes-ne-pahnet-ruslan-aysin-o-nastuplenii-vsu-v-kurskoy-oblasti-i-reaktsii-tatarstana/33081280.html).

            Those include sending humanitarian aid to Kursk and adjoining areas and offering to take in refugees, Aysin says; but in reality, those are exactly the same actions that the Kremlin has demanded and gotten since 2014 rather than any new popular response to what is very much a new challenge.

            Not only are the peoples of Russia not mobilizing in response to Kursk, but officials are turning on each other in trying to place blame for what has happened and even lashing out at pro-war bloggers for providing grist for the mills of Moscow’s opponents (ria.ru/20240816/bars-1966245521.html).

            That is not the picture of a country that has come together whatever Putin says, the Tatar writer now based in Turkey says. Instead, it is one where the old bindings except for brute force and repression are proving too weak to hold the country together for much longer.