As Putin Marks His 72nd Birthday, the Two-Month Anniversary of Ukraine’s Invasion of Russia Is Being Played Down at Moscow

Given a choice of anniversaries today, official Russia is playing up President Putin’s 72nd birthday and playing down the two-month anniversary of Ukraine’s invasion of Russia.“God Save the Tsar,” ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin wrote on Telegram minutes after the stroke of midnight. He hailed Monday’s birthday of the man who has ruled Russia for nearly a quarter-century.Less official attention was paid to one of Mr. Putin’s greatest embarrassments — the first foreign occupation of Russian land since 1941. On August 6, Ukrainian troops invaded Russia’s Kursk region. Within days, they gained control over about 500 square miles of Russian land. Two months later, the Ukrainians are still there. The Kremlin prefers to change the subject — to Hamas, to Hezbollah, to the Houthis. The Kremlin’s initial October 1 deadline for expelling the invaders came and went. Today an estimated 38,000 Russian soldiers, largely draftees, make little headway against 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers, largely war veterans.Last month, a Russian counter-offensive retook about 10 percent of occupied land. Then it fizzled out. In mid-September, Ukrainian troops again crossed the Kursk border and established a second beachhead inside Russia. While world attention looks elsewhere, Ukraine uses some of its best imported equipment to invade Russia: Turkish-made Kirpi armored trucks, Swedish-made CV90 fighting vehicles, Swedish-made Stridsvagn 122 tanks, and German-made Leopard 2A6 tanks.Two weeks ago, in separate meetings in America with Vice President Harris and President Trump, President Zelensky made it clear that he plans to hold on to Russian land to use it as a bargaining chip in armistice talks. These negotiations are expected to start only after the American presidential election is settled.In Russia, the initial reaction to the invasion was shock and rage. Far from negligible, Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk forced the evacuation of 150,000 people and caused farming losses of almost $1 billion, the governor of Kursk, Alexei Smirnov, told a public forum last month.“Our country is not just on the brink of disaster or already right next to it; our country is already in trouble. In big trouble,” private military commander Georgy Zakrevsky raged the week after the invasion in a video widely circulated among Army officers. “Drones are flying all over central Russia, right up to Moscow and St. Petersburg. They even attacked the Kremlin. Our Black Sea fleet is being pushed out. It’s being pushed out as if we were not a great power with a great fleet, but some third-rate country.”The founder of the Paladin mercenary group, Mr. Zakrevsky pointed his finger at the prime culprit: “And all this was done by the so-called ‘president.’ The ‘Great’ Putin.”Two months later, passions have cooled. For two months Russia’s state-controlled media have treated the foreign invasion like a humanitarian disaster, akin to a small earthquake.Now, polls indicate that many Russians see the occupation simply as the latest indignity that they have to put up with. With American officials estimating that Russia will have to devote 50,000 experienced troops to dislodge the invaders, there is a good chance that Ukraine’s occupation will stretch into next year.“The Russian people have recognized that Moscow has suffered a defeat in Ukraine, and are now looking beyond it,” former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov writes. He says that Ukrainians have not accepted the loss of their territories in Crimea and the Donbas, but Russians seem prepared to accept the loss of land in Kursk region as something normal.For Kyiv, one goal of the invasion was to divert Russian troops from southeast Ukraine where military pressure is critical. Yet last week, Ukrainian troops evacuated from Vuhledar, allowing Russian troops to finally occupy the ruins of a city they had besieged for two years.Last month, President Putin gloated at an economic development conference in Vladivostok: “The enemy’s goal was to make us nervous and worry, and to transfer troops from one sector to another, and to stop our offensive in key areas, primarily in the Donbas. Did it work? No.”Claiming a steady hand on the tiller, he said. “By transferring rather large and well-trained units to these border areas with us, the enemy weakened itself in key areas, and our troops accelerated offensive operations.” As a retort, Mr. Zelensky said the Kursk operation did force the Kremlin to divert men and equipment from the southeast front line. This, he said, has allowed Ukraine to hold on to a key logistical hub in the Donbas, Pokrovsk.On Friday, Ukraine’s president met with soldiers at Sumy, Ukraine’s launchpad region for the August 6 invasion. Speaking to the soldiers, he said the incursion “has greatly helped” Kyiv to secure the latest military support packages from the West. He said: “We need to motivate the whole world and convince them that Ukrainians can be stronger than the enemy.”He later posted on Telegram: “It is crucial to understand that the Kursk operation is a really strategic thing, something that adds motivation to our partners, motivation to be with Ukraine, be more decisive and put pressure on Russia.”Britain’s new defense secretary, John Healey, agreed, telling Parliament, after an official visit to Kyiv: “The longer they hold Kursk, the weaker Putin becomes. The longer they hold Kursk, the better defended Ukraine will be.” In Washington, a Defense Department spokesman, Major General Pat Ryder, recently assessed Russia’s progress in reclaiming land in Kursk as “marginal.”While Russian public opinion seems anesthetized, some Russian soldiers clearly seethe over Ukraine’s continued occupation of Russian land. Two weeks ago, a photo surfaced on the Internet. It showed the body of a Ukrainian prisoner of war lying on his back with his hands tied. Plunged into his chest was a sword inscribed “For Kursk.”

As Putin Marks His 72nd Birthday, the Two-Month Anniversary of Ukraine’s Invasion of Russia Is Being Played Down at Moscow

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