How are the Russians being kept informed about the unprecedented incursion of the Ukrainian army into the Kursk region?

For a week now, Ukraine has been carrying out a surprise attack on Russia. This large-scale military maneuver has undermined the Kremlin’s discourse, which is trying to reassure the population through media outlets close to the government and to minimize the Ukrainian operation on its soil.

For eight days now, all eyes have been on the Russian region of Kursk, bordering Ukraine, the target of an incursion by the Ukrainian army that surprised the Kremlin. The offensive, launched on August 6, has already caused the departure of more than 120,000 inhabitants, according to local authorities. For the moment, at least 12 civilians have been killed and more than a hundred injured, according to the regional authorities. From the daily Kommersant in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomoletspassing by Fontankathe main Russian media outlets logically devote their front pages to this unprecedented event, but most often to minimize the Ukrainian advances and to denounce a terrorist operation supported by the West.

Russian war correspondent Alexander Kots also claimed in the Komsomolskaya Pravdathat Ukrainian troops are beginning to run out of steam and that the front line is already stabilizing, that Russian reinforcements are on the way and that they will soon reverse the trend. The media, more broadly, are talking about supposed heavy losses on the side of the Ukrainian forces. “The border territories of the Kursk region are littered with corpses of Ukrainian fighters and turned into cemeteries of burnt enemy armored vehicles”assures the tabloid Arguments and Facts .

On Wednesday morning, many headlines widely reported the statements of Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Chechen Akhmat division. The military man claimed that Ukrainian troops wanted to capture the Kursk nuclear power plant, without any shred of evidence. He also denied that the Russian army had lost the town of Sudja, at the same time as a Ukrainian television channel was broadcasting a report filmed in the town. The Russian army, for its part, also said that it had “pushed back” Ukrainian attacks aimed at “penetrate deep” in the border region of Kursk, thanks to troops supported by aviation, drones and artillery.

It is difficult to assess the credibility of these statements. On Saturday, the Russian Ministry of Defense published images supposedly attesting to the success of strikes carried out against enemy forces engaged in the incursion. Except that it was an old video filmed in Ukraine, as the Russian investigative media outlet The Insider demonstrated the very next day. The incursion is still in a dynamic phase and the Ukrainian army has adopted “radio silence” mode, which further complicates the analysis of the situation.

Russian regional authorities, meanwhile, are coordinating evacuations on social media, while regularly sharing air raid alerts so that residents can take shelter. They are also calling on them not to divulge personal information, even to find missing relatives. All this while avoiding frightening the population. The regional governor of Kursk Oblast, Alexei Smirov, is trying to praise local solidarity and show the calm of the evacuations. On Wednesday, for example, he shared this video on Telegram of the head of the village of Tyotkino, who is leading several residents to shelter, in good spirits.

“The main information put forward in the media close to the Kremlin is that the Ukrainian incursion has been stopped, that the unity of Russian society is strengthening in this difficult ordeal, that it trusts the authorities, and above all, that it is not panicking.”explains in a YouTube video Katarzyna Chawrylo, an expert for the Poland-based think tank Center for Eastern Studies. The Ukrainian incursion is thus described as a “terrorist operation”, placing Russia as the victim of an enemy hostile to the rules of international law.

Kremlin staff have asked journalists to avoid “any sensationalist coverage” ongoing events in the Kursk region, independent media outlet Meduza reported on Thursday. They are also asked not to discuss the opening of a “new front” in this sector, and not to mention the potential advance towards the city of Kurchatov, where there is a nuclear power plant. And finally, to insist on the efforts made by the authorities, including Vladimir Putin, to help the populations.

Has the Russian president really taken the measure of this event? At the very beginning of the incursion, he had simply mentioned “a provocation on a large scale”according to the lexicon that is dear to him. The Kremlin, in any case, has not decreed martial law but a regime of anti-terrorist operation (CTO) in the regions of Kursk, Briansk and Belgorod. No doubt in order to minimize the scale of this incursion, analyzed Saturday The Institute for the Study of War, an American think tankand to avoid triggering a feeling of “panic or violent reaction within the country.” The CTO had already been decreed for one day, in May 2023, during a raid conducted by Russian fighters opposed to Vladimir Putin. But the case, this time, is much more serious.

At this stage, however, it is impossible to assess its consequences in Russian opinion. “They’re bombing? We don’t even know what’s going on. We’re not interested,” a Moscow resident confided to franceinfo on Tuesday. Another tried to assess the objectives of such an operation: “It’s probably a diversionary tactic because the New York Times and all the media say that, from a military point of view, it makes no sense.” And if commentators struggle to define a precise objective in this attack, this gives credence to their eyes to the “terrorist” nature of this attack.

Vladimir Putin also accused “the West, [qui] is at war with us”of being behind this operation, during a televised meeting on Monday, alongside security force officials. Washington had nevertheless explained that it had not been informed of this upcoming attack. “Not only were the US and UK aware, they also coordinated this planned attack.”commented Russian journalist Igor Korotchenko on the Rossiya 1 channel, on the show of propagandist Olga Skabeyeva. This is also the opinion of Roman, a 41-year-old Russian interviewed by AFP in Moscow. According to him, only a “small group of saboteurs” entered the region, armed by the West and NATO. The Russian army “will kill them, and that’s it”.