Occupied areas seized by Ukraine are suddenly giving a glimpse of a post-Putin Russia.
JAMES BROOKE
August 20, 2024
The New York Sun
Ukraine has blown three river bridges, trapping hundreds of Russian soldiers in a pocket in Russia’s Kursk region. Desperate to keep supply lines and escape routes open, Russian army engineers built a pontoon bridge across the Seym. Yesterday, that also was blown up.
Last week, Russian civilians were largely evacuated from the threatened area, which borders Ukraine. Stragglers crossed the river by boat. Yesterday, a video emerged from Glushkovo, capital of the now-isolated district. It shows two Russian Chechen soldiers looting a MegaFon cell phone store.
If the 20-mile wide pocket falls, Ukraine would seize an additional 250 square miles of Russian territory, increasing by 50 percent their ‘buffer zone’ in occupied Kursk. Last night, President Zelensky said his troops control 92 settlements and 483 square miles in Kursk. He said: “The Russian border area opposite our Sumy region has been mostly cleared of Russian military presence.”
President Putin, perhaps to change the press focus, flew Sunday to Azerbaijan, where he held trade talks yesterday. Analysts say that a hallmark of the Russian leader’s quarter century in power is to let his subordinates deal with bad news.
During Ukraine’s 2-week long cross-border incursion, an estimated 2,000 Russian soldiers — largely draftees — have surrendered to Ukrainian units. The American petition creation site Change.org has hosted several petitions from mothers directed to Mr. Putin. They ask him to spare young draftees from combat. “Elite, heavily armed brigades against our children with rifles,” one Russian mother, Irina, wrote about Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk. “Every day, more parents find their children in videos and photos among the captured.”
Short of soldiers, the Kremlin now sends to Kursk soldiers of the Russian Space Forces. Although the name evokes Star Wars, these are lightly trained soldiers who largely pull guard duty at Russia’s cosmodromes.
As Ukraine expands its toehold in Western Russia, the Kremlin is not rising to the bait. It reportedly has moved only several thousand veteran troops from the front line in Ukraine’s southeast. Instead, a costly Russian offensive bears fruit as Russian troops threaten Pokrovsk, a key logistical hub with a pre-war population of 60,000. Last night, Ukraine’s military said its soldiers fought 63 skirmishes during the day against Russian forces on the Pokrovsk front.
Pressure on Pokrovsk comes as Ukraine’s tally of dead and wounded Russian soldiers yesterday hit 600,470. In February 2022, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Russia’s armed forces had 900,000 soldiers. Although Europe’s largest fighting since World War II is largely off camera, 2024 is proving to be the bloodiest period of the 30-month war. Since January 1, Russian casualties have averaged 1,000 a day. Ukrainian casualties are not known, but are believed to be far lower.
In Kursk, where the Kyiv-controlled area may soon expand to the size of Rhode Island, videos posted online show an alternative Russian reality is taking hold in the occupied area. “At least you fed and gave us water. These bastards left us without water and bread,” one Suzhda resident, Andre Fedorivich Gorbachev, tells a Ukrainian soldier at the wheel of his jeep. Referring to Mr. Putin, he urges the Ukrainians: “Fight the fascists. Please hang the bastard!”
In another video, a middle-aged Russian woman thanks two Ukrainian soldiers who had just given her a box of food. She says: “Dear boys, come here so I can hug you.” Then, she hugs the nearest soldier.
Civilian interviews with men holding guns can be taken with a grain of salt. Yet as the Kremlin dallies in its counter offensive and these videos penetrate Russia’s internet firewall, they could provoke new thinking in the world’s largest dictatorship. The videos offer a glimpse of a different version of Russia in the future. In Sudzha, a Lenin statue has been removed.
In several villages, Ukrainian soldiers pose for selfies burning Communist flags, the red banners venerated by Mr. Putin. In a new twist to the daily diet of videos of surrendering Russian soldiers, one new video shows two Russian soldiers hauled into captivity. They had shed their uniforms for civilian clothes and were found hiding in a basement.
In another video, a tank wheels through a village, bearing the flapping white-red-white flag of pre-Communist Belarus. In Kursk, Belarusan volunteers fight alongside Ukrainians. They hope their next fight will be against the 30-year-old dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko.
Belarus is 100 miles west of Kursk, and does not border the Russian region. Perhaps preventively, Mr. Lukashenko told Russian state TV Sunday that he has moved nearly one third of his 60,000-member armed forces to the border with Ukraine. He said he has mined his side of the border “like never before.”
By blowing bridges over the Seym River, Ukraine creates a 25-mile long east-west natural barrier for its buffer zone. This would stretch about 40 miles east from Tyotkino, on the Ukrainian border. Day after day, as Ukrainian troops take more villages and more prisoners, analysts ask: where is the Russian response?