A year ago this week, President Vladmir Putin strode onto a stage in the Kursk region to commemorate the 80th anniversary of one of the Soviet army‘s proudest moments in World War II.
Addressing a rapt audience that included soldiers fresh from fighting in Ukraine, Putin called the decisive victory in the Battle of Kursk “one of the great feats of our people.”
Now, as Russia prepares to celebrate the 81st anniversary of that 1943 battle on Friday, Kursk is again in the news — but for a very different reason.
On Aug. 6, Ukrainian forces made a lightning push into the region, seizing villages, taking hundreds of prisoners and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians. Russia was caught unprepared by the offensive and reportedly is drafting conscripts to repel some of Ukraine’s most battle-hardened units.
Putin has a history of responding slowly to various crises in his tenure, and he has so far played down the attack. But 2 1/2 years after launching a war in Ukraine to remove what he called a threat to Russia, it is his own country that seems more turbulent.
He appeared uneasy at an Aug. 12 televised meeting of his security staff about Kursk, cutting off the acting regional governor who had started listing the settlements seized by Ukraine. The president and his officials referred to “the events in the Kursk region” as a “situation,” or “provocation.”
State media fell into line, showing evacuees…
