Ukraine’s armed forces (AFU) have broken through the Russian border and occupied several villages and towns in the Kursk region, including the border district center of Sudzha. The Russian authorities and the state media machine failed to react quickly to what happened. In the midst of the fighting for Sudzha, Vladimir Putin met with government officials. Although he uttered the usual ritualistic words about helping the region (the government allocated 1.8 billion rubles to the region), he quickly switched the topic to make jokes about Finance Minister Anton Siluanov’s handosme suntan and praise the new Russian-made Lada car. The top brass of the Defense Ministry, including Andrey Belousov, refrained from commenting at all during the first days of fighting in the Kursk Oblast. The real scale of the AFU’s advance could only be assessed through the Telegram channels of the so-called «war reporters.»
Three months ago Putin brought in new leadership to the Defense Ministry, and many observers believed that Belousov, an economist, would be able to quickly turn the ministry around and transform it into an efficient machine. It is unlikely that his appointment would have had a serious and timely impact on the situation at the front, after all, it is the General Staff, which retained almost its entire leadership in the post-election reshuffle, that is in charge of that. However, Belousov’s arrival could really change the «civilian» part of the ministry’s operation: the economy and media activity. Pro-war propagandists and bloggers began quoting en masse the new minister’s saying «It’s okay to make mistakes, but it’s not okay to lie» criticizing the generals and clearly appealing to the new head of the ministry in the hope of winning his favor. Belousov’s dictum continued to appear in Z-Telegram channels after the AFU entered the Kursk region. So far, the authors of these channels do not dare to talk about the newly appointed Defense Minister, but they are beginning to suspect that Belousov’s arrival has not changed anything dramatically.
The ministry has remained a closed structure, focused primarily on satisfying Putin’s personal needs rather than those of the «ultra-patriots.» For the sake of self-preservation, it is more convenient for the ministry’s officials to embellish the situation on the front or to keep silence thereby prompting observers to try to interpret its hidden messages. Apparently, this strategy has always worked perfectly well when it came to Putin. As far as the population is concerned, both the pro-war part and the anti-war and passive parts of the public are not really impressed with the Defense Ministry’s performance. From time to time, the fog of war is lifted a bit when this or that official tries to make a statement to reassure the public that things are under control, only to make things worse. For example, Apti Alautdinov, the commander of the «Akhmat» battalion, publicly insisted (for reasons known only to him) that the AFU allegedly «does not have the means or resources» necessary to seize the Kursk nuclear power plant. Then war reporters picked up the story and started discussing the likelihood of Ukrainians taking control of the plant, which is located quite far from the border. The Ministry of Defense kept quiet or issued triumphant reports, dramatically expanding the range of possible scenarios in the minds of ordinary citizens. Indeed: only yesterday the Russian army seemed to be successfully storming AFU positions and capturing village after village in Ukraine, and today war reporters are discussing the possibility of Ukrainians seizing control of a nuclear power plant in the Russian rear!
The Russian authorities have repeatedly used the familiar tactic of sweeping the problem under the rug, waiting for it to go away, and then forgetting about it. It worked successfully during Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny last year and this year’s the terrorist attacks in Dagestan. But this tactic failed when it was put to the test by the AFU’s incursion into Russian territory. The official media and officials maintain that the Russian army has stopped the AFU’s advance, while military reporters loyal to the country’s top leadership and the new leadership of the Defense Ministry insist that the opposite is the case. Putin is busy with his usual routine, signing laws that ban trash streaming among other things, which is probably meant to signal to the public the business-as-usual mood. At the same time, rumors about the successes of the Ukrainian army and footage of captured conscripts continue to spread through Telegram channels, which have become one of the main media outlets used by Russian citizens. The war started for the sake of annexing «new territories» (Putin himself spoke of this as a clear intended result of the Special Military Operation) is turning into a possible loss of Russian territories. And this in itself is a serious blow to the Kremlin, to which the vertical of power has so far failed to respond.
The AFU invasion has another, perhaps more serious, consequence for the Russian leadership. Putin and his subordinates will now have to follow the agenda imposed by Ukraine, at least for a while. The Kremlin will be forced to take unpopular steps, such as a possible mobilization — ultra-patriots are already saying that the AFU managed to get through thanks to the shortage of manpower in the Russian army. Other steps are also possible, and they, too, are dictated by Ukraine: in the midst of a crisis on the front, the country’s top leadership may decide to replace the chief of the General Staff, which will inevitably bring chaos to the functioning of the army.
New status of the Federation Council
Changes continue to take place in the Upper House of the Russian parliament where the representatives of the regions meet. We have already written about the change in the order of its formation: now a very wide range of federal officials can become members of the Council, bypassing the residency requirement (a member of the Federation Council must have lived in the region he or she represents for at least five consecutive years, or a total of 20 years). They will sit next to a rather motley assortment of figures, whose presence in the Council is clearly dictated by current political exigencies. Three Russian governors have decided to delegate veterans of Russia’s war against Ukraine to to the Federation Council. A few weeks ago, the head of the annexed Crimea, Yuri Aksyonov, announced his desire to delegate Yuri Nimenko, a tanker, to the parliament’s Upper Chamber. Later, the acting governor of the Altai Republic, Andrei Turchak, included Major Amyr Argamakov in the senatorial trio (or «troika» in Russian), while the acting head of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, picked Colonel Alexei Kondratyev for his list. What is this «troika» anyway? According to the Federal Law «On the Basic Guarantees of the Electoral Rights of Citizens», before registering to run for the elections, each gubernatorial candidate, is expected to make a list of three potential senators from the executive branch of his or her region. After winning, he or she delegates one of them to the Federation Council. At the same time, only Nimenko and Argamakov built their personal careers in the military. Kondratyev fought in the Chechen war, served in the GRU (foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of Russian armed forces), but has a wide experience in civilian jobs. Previously, he was the mayor of Tambov and a senator of the Tambov region. In this sense, Kondratyev can be called a representative of the elite, who already held high positions in the power vertical and was one of its participants. The war against Ukraine, in which Kondratyev took part, was hardly a serious boost to his career. Moreover, not only did he fail to move up the ranks, so to speak, but he also fell back to his former position in the system. However, the official media will present all three as «participants in the Special Military Operation,» whom the Kremlin is taking out of the trenches and is planting right at the top. It does so in order to attract more contractors to the Russian army: the authorities are trying to lure them by all means possible and with all kinds of payments and perks. However, two military men in the Federation Council is already quite a lot: and if the war continues, the composition of the Upper House of the parliament may be seriously altered by people who have nothing to do with legislative activity and politics whatsoever.
But the innovations do not stop there. Astrakhan’s governor Igor Babushkin, who is running for re-election, has included in his «troika» a former Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach, who had fled to Russia. This is not the first Ukrainian politician to be delegated to the Federation Council. Dmytro Vorona, a former deputy justice minister of Ukraine, represents the annexed part of the Zaporizhzhya region in the Upper House. However, Vorona has been living in annexed Crimea since 2014, was an adviser to Aksyonov, and has some knowledge of Russian politics. Derkach has no such knowledge, nor does he know the region he is supposed to represent. There are also members of the special services among the new additions to the governors’ «troikas.» Take, for example Andrei Kul’ba, deputy head of the Presidential Control Directorate and a former Federal Security Service (FSS) officer, who the Murmansk’s governor Andrey Chibis included on his list. Kul’ba has no connection whatsoever to the Murmansk region. Dmitry Demeshin, the acting head of Khabarovsk Krai, nominated Andrei Serezhnikov to join the Federation Council: earlier, Serezhnikov headed the region’s FSS, and at some point in his career he was at the helm of FSS in Chechnya. These nominations show that the Upper House is becoming a place of honorary retirement for law enforcement officers, which was not very typical for the Federation Council before when the practice of delegating siloviki to it was more of an exception.
So far, federal politicians and opportunists share the Upper Chamber with prominent regional politicians, but in the future the local component in the Federation Council will be eroded more and more. As a result, the Chamber, which is meant to represent local, regional interests will no longer correspond not only to the spirit (senators are already working for the Kremlin, not for the interests of regional residents), but also to the letter of the law. The Federation Council will simply be a place where certain perks and bonuses can be handed out to people who the system deems useful at the moment, and the legislative function will be reduced to rubber-stamping the laws and amendments needed by the Kremlin under the supervision of professionals at the head of the committees, such as Andrey Klishas. This institution will no longer retain any serious political function it once had. The siloviki have already hinted at this to the senators. The arrest of Dmitry Savelyev, the representative of the Tula region, which we covered last week, took place at a symbolically important meeting closing the autumn session, and FSS officers and Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov entered the hall during the farewell speech of the Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matvienko. For the law enforcement agencies, the ritual of Savelyev’s public arrest was more important than sparing the senators’ feelings and prestige.
