Letter From the Editors
Ukraine stunned the world this week by pulling off an incursion into Russia. On Aug. 6, war bloggers were the first to report clashes along the border, with one Telegram channel posting that Ukrainian soldiers had advanced “several hundred meters” into Russia’s Kursk Province. As the day wore on, statements followed from the authorities. According to Meduza, the FSB Border Service said its agents had worked with Russian troops to “repel the armed aggression” along the border, while Kursk Province officials said that conditions at the border were “tense” but under control. Ukraine, however, disagreed, announcing that “Russia does not control the border.” And, at long last, Vladimir Putin made a statement on Aug. 7 describing the incursion as the latest “provocation” by Kiev.
In an article for NG, Ivan Rodin picks apart all these official statements and blogger reports to reveal inconsistencies that cloud the true state of affairs. According to him, though, this is no mistake. As he writes, “the ‘fog of war’ in the zone of direct combat will always be a good explanation for any surprises. And most importantly, due to the varying thickness of this fog, it is often difficult to understand if a given turn of events is caused by objective factors or subjective decisions.”
But, conflicting reports aside, what was the actual point of Ukraine’s incursion? As Yulia Latynina explains, its goals were to divert Russian troops from the front and to secure the Sudzha gas metering station to use as a cover. Ultimately, though, these tactical successes won’t amount to anything unless Ukraine can convert them into “something more strategic.” As she points out, “the outcome will be decided by the situation on the ground.”
Meanwhile, Kursk Province residents are getting a taste of how it feels to live in a war zone. Reporting from the area, Aleksandr Chernykh recounts how residents who fled Sudzha were bewildered by the authorities’ response. In interviews, they described frustration with the lack of information on evacuation, emergency housing in Kursk, and even whether Russia still controlled Sudzha. One woman begged for “at least some crumb of honest information from the government!” And another got particularly riled up: “The enemy has entered our territory, and on TV they’re yammering on about how this is an ‘emergency incident.’ How can you call it an incident, when foreign tanks are on our soil! This is already an out-and-out war!”
This woman’s anger stemmed in particular from behavior at the Russian Defense Ministry, which, she said, has “crazy corruption.” Indeed, a spate of arrests has been ongoing at the ministry since April, with many more officials detained for involvement in tenders for construction projects in occupied Ukraine, toiletry kits and food rations for soldiers there and even an MRI scanner for a Moscow hospital. According to a Defense Ministry source, Putin knew all about the corruption, but “was convinced that the Army really was combat-ready. The course of the [Russian] special military operation [in Ukraine] showed that this is absolutely not the case.” The goal of the arrests, then, has been “not to root out corruption, but to keep it under control.”
As defense officials were being rounded up, the law-abiding members of the Federal Assembly were busy passing laws – a total of 331 in the spring session alone. And a Federation Council commission has been working to tackle the ethical aspects of AI. (One wonders if lawmakers used AI to write all those laws so quickly.) In an editorial, though, NG warns that AI must be developed before it can be regulated: “We cannot allow Russia to be thrown off the line of the most advanced scientific developments by people who are reckless about the country’s future. We usually call these people timeservers.” And these timeservers are the exact ones responsible for the corruption at the Defense Ministry and the immense tragedy of the war in Ukraine.