Emma Burrows in AP on the official reaction (and the lack thereof) to the Kursk incursion (the latest newspeak formula is "territorial uncertainty" - love it). The text provides some context for the "situation" (what Bertie Wooster used to call a "posish"). I come in with some attempts to describe what may be going on in the muddled minds of the Upper Ten Thousands about it all.НАСТОЯЩИЙ МАТЕРИАЛ (ИНФОРМАЦИЯ) ПРОИЗВЕДЕН И (ИЛИ) РАСПРОСТРАНЕН ИНОСТРАННЫМ АГЕНТОМ [ФИО] ЛИБО КАСАЕТСЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ИНОСТРАННОГО АГЕНТА [ФИО]"While state TV drives the still-strong support for Putin despite setbacks like the Kursk incursion, it’s harder to gauge the opinions of his key constituency — Russia’s elites.Putin is dependent on their acquiescence, said Ekaterina Schulmann, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.“The calculation that’s going on in their heads 24/7 is whether the status quo is to their advantage or not,” she said.Since the war began, life for those elites — Putin’s inner circle, top bureaucrats, security and military officials, and business leaders — has gotten worse, not better. While many have been enriched by the war, they have fewer places to spend their money because of Western sanctions.The question they are asking themselves about Putin, Schulmann said, “is whether the old man is still an asset or already a liability.”Putin also appeared sluggish in responding to the June 2023 uprising by Wagner chief Prigozhin in what became the most serious challenge to his authority yet.After the mutiny fizzled, Prigozhin initially was allowed to remain free, but Schulmann said Putin eventually “got the last laugh” when the mercenary leader was killed a month later in a still-mysterious crash on his private plane.As the Ukrainian offensive enters its third week, Putin sought to keep to his schedule and even embarked on a two-day trip to Azerbaijan, without mentioning the crisis. On Tuesday he briefly referred to it, promising “to fight those who commit crimes in the Kursk region.”With domestic dissent stifled and with the media firmly under his control, Putin can afford to make the “absolutely cynical” decision to ignore what is happening in the Kursk region, Schulmann said.It’s unclear for now whether the second battle of Kursk, like the first one, will become a turning point in the war that Putin launched.But, Schulmann said, as one of a “series of unfortunate events, it adds up to the impression that things are not going well.”https://apnews.com/article/russia-putin-kursk-elites-ukraine-war-invasion-72d96d8cb52c105e9289dc6909900b13
