Paul Goble
Staunton, Sept. 2 – Muscovites may be able to ignore Ukraine’s intervention in Kursk because they generally don’t focus that much on anything that happens beyond the capital’s ring road, as a recent Levada Center poll suggests (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/a-clue-to-moscows-reaction-to-kursk.html).
But they can’t ignore Ukrainian drone attacks on defense facilities in their own city and that makes these attacks different and more important politically than many have yet appreciated. Radio Liberty has collected more than 20 posts by Russian commentators and ordinary Russians concerning these attacks (svoboda.org/a/dazhe-moskvu-zaschititj-ne-mogut-blogery-ob-atake-ukrainskih-dronov/33101746.html).
The message of the overwhelming majority of these comments is the same. The Kremlin “can’t even defend Moscow,” a far more serious conclusion as far as the politically significant Muscovites are concerned than any worries about what is happening in what many of the residents of the capital would consider “the provinces.”
At the very least, such feelings will increase skepticism among Muscovites about Putin’s stewardship of the war and may very well lead more of them to question or even challenge what the government is doing. That shift is likely to grow if Ukrainian drone attacks on the capital continue.
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