Ukraine’s Gains in Kursk Show How Official Loyalty Overrides Truth in Russia

During last week’s active maneuver warfare, Ukraine seized a portion of Kursk Oblast comparable in size to the territory Russia has captured in Ukraine since the beginning of the year, according to estimates by the independent Russian news site Agentstvo, based on data from the Ukrainian open-source intelligence project DeepState.

In recent days, the incursion has slowed but not stopped. The boundaries of the war zone now within Russia’s territory have remained roughly stable, as reported by the Russian defense ministry and pro-war Russian bloggers and corroborated by NASA fire monitoring data. 

Russian command structures were remarkably slow in reacting to the assault. It was not until day four of the incursion that Moscow showed signs of grasping the gravity of the situation: emergency measures were declared, some troops were diverted to Kursk, evacuation efforts were launched, and minimal aid was promised to civilians.

Had it not been for this sluggish response, the outcome might have been far less advantageous for Ukraine. As much as two weeks before the incursion, the head of the Russian military, Valery Gerasimov, received intelligence warnings about a Ukrainian troop buildup along the Kursk region’s western border, Bloomberg reported, citing a source close to the Kremlin. Gerasimov, Bloomberg writes, dismissed the reports and failed to brief President Vladimir Putin about the potential border breach. This reluctance to report negative news is a deeply ingrained feature of Russia’s organizational structure. 

Worldview First, Reality Second

While the scale or operational objectives of the Ukrainian offensive remain unclear—perhaps deliberately so—it continues to shed light on Russia’s political and organizational structures. Time and again, Moscow’s system of government has proven incapable of functioning when confronted with realities that contradict the leadership’s plans and worldview.

The very decision to go to war was based on a certain vision that was disconnected from reality as several reports and investigations showed. The Russian authorities learned, the hard way, that their security agencies had failed in their plans for a swift regime change; that the operational, logistical, and technological preparations for the invasion were inadequate; and that their assumptions about Ukrainian leadership and society were wrong. Furthermore, Moscow failed to anticipate the willingness of Western nations to begin supplying arms to Ukraine. Yet we are into the third year of war.

Last March, Putin and his government failed to acknowledge the possibility that Russia could be attacked by an Islamic State offshoot. Despite intelligence warnings from domestic agents, the United States, and even Iran, security agencies were not prepared for the terrorist attack at a music venue just outside Moscow, which claimed at least 145 lives. In Putin’s worldview, such an attack was unthinkable, as he had declared a final victory over ISIS in December 2017. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Putin cast Russia as the victim and shifted the blame onto Ukraine and the West.

On numerous other occasions, Russian government structures have ignored real threats while exaggerating or fabricating others to align with the agenda of political leaders. The state continues to prosecute individuals associated with Alexei Navalny's organization, label citizens as “foreign agents” for expressing dissent against the war in Ukraine, and declare writers and theater directors “extremists.” Meanwhile, as the war drags on, the country faces a crime rate that continues to escalate.

Putin likely thought it was a shrewd move to enlist convicted criminals for his war effort. The cynical calculus was probably rooted in the belief that these individuals, already marginalized by society, could be sacrificed without sparking public outrage. As a result, tens of thousands of convicts, the exact number of whom is unknown, were pardoned by Putin and sent to the front lines. Many of those former prisoners returned home emboldened by their new status as “heroes” and began terrorizing their families and communities. 

In 2022, the number of domestic murders and attempted murders increased for the first time in 20 years, by 4%, the independent Russian news site Cherta reported. In 2023, the number of violent crimes committed by war veterans increased 13 times. Over just two years, Russians who had participated in the war in Ukraine accumulated more than 2,500 criminal convictions. In 2023 alone, over 190 criminal cases were opened against members of Wagner, the private military company once led by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to the independent news outlet Verstka. Twenty of these cases involved murder or attempted murder.

Disconnect from Reality as Virtue

The Russian government is built on a system of accountability to superiors, combined with a disregard for those below. This culture promotes loyalty and superficial appearances over the honest reporting of realities on the ground. The Russian military operates in much the same way, where the reluctance to report negative news to higher-ups is ingrained in the system. As experts from RAND note in their report on the armed forces of Russia and China, this tendency is a defining characteristic of the Russian military culture.

Every member of the Russian elite is acutely aware that punishment awaits those who show disloyalty, insubordination, or dissent against the ruler’s decisions. While corruption and bureaucracy are publicly condemned, they are tools of the power structure, used to maintain control over its key elements. 

Russia is not the only country where concealing the truth or lying to those in power is an organizational virtue. However, it is Russia’s leadership, with its repeated gross miscalculations that harm both others and itself, that serves as a cautionary example for government elites worldwide. The Russian government’s persistent disconnect from reality continues to erode its own stability. 

The opinions expressed in this article are those solely of the author and do not reflect the views of the Kennan Institute