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Ukraine’s incursion onto Russian soil has triggered a round of finger-pointing in Moscow at the military.
Russian President Vladimir Putin held an operational meeting on Monday, according to the Kremlin, and said that his army needs to “push and drive the enemy out of our territories” and ensure border security. Ukraine currently holds control of 28 settlements in Russia’s Kursk region, according to local authorities.
Ukrainian troops launched their surprise offensive on Aug. 6, crossing the border into the Kursk region before expanding the campaign to the neighboring Belgorod region.
It is Kyiv’s most significant incursion into Russian territory since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began in 2022, providing a significant morale boost to Ukraine and its Western allies — and concerns inside the Kremlin.
“Now it is clear why the Kyiv regime rejected our proposals for a peaceful settlement plan,” Putin complained at Monday’s meeting. “The enemy, with the help of its Western masters, is trying to improve its negotiating position in the future.”
“But what kind of negotiations can we even talk about with people who indiscriminately attack civilians, or threaten our nuclear power plants?” he added. (Putin himself has been hit with an arrest warrant for war crimes over his assault on Ukraine, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday night blamed Russian forces for starting a fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.)
Putin said that Ukraine is likely to continue its attempts to “destabilize the situation in Russia’s border regions.”
‘This is serious’
But criticism is bubbling over whether Russia could have avoided the Ukrainian offensive — or at least better prepared for it.
“I was in the Kursk region, I saw how minefields are equipped, but they are ineffective without troops behind them. Who planned this? Who thought about it? This is serious,” Andrei Gurulev — a Russian lawmaker, member of Putin’s United Russia party and a former deputy commander — wrote on Telegram on Monday.
Gurulev said it is “impossible” that the Russians did not know about Ukraine’s plans. “One way or another, we have heard that second echelons, reserves have appeared,” he wrote, without specifying on which side those troops have appeared.
According to Gurulev, Russian border troops were the last to receive information about the ongoing Ukrainian offensive, leaving them scant time to act.
And he had a broader criticism for the army, after local media reported that the Russian Army chief Valery Gerasimov was caught spreading positive-but-false information while reporting last week on the Kursk situation: “Nobody likes the truth in our reports. We all want to hear that everything is fine.”
