Throughout the quarter-century of Vladimir Putin's rule — he has served as prime minister or president since August 1999 — the former KGB officer has tried to sell the public an image of himself as a dictator, savior and defender of the Russian people.
Indeed, just as the Kremlin described its invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation,” it was presented as a humanitarian project to save Ukraine’s ethnic Russian population.
But the reality is very different: since the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022, Putin has repeatedly shown his inability to protect the Russian people.
Many Russian towns, including Moscow, have been targeted by drone attacks. In June 2023, Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin led a short-lived insurgency in which rebel forces marched from Ukraine into Russian towns, causing casualties.
Perhaps most humiliating for Putin was the rapid and sustained incursion of Ukrainian forces into Russia's Kursk region. Since Aug. 6, 2024, Ukrainian forces have occupied more than 490 square miles of Russian territory, resulting in the evacuation or flight of more than 100,000 Russians, some of whom said they felt “left behind” and were frustrated by the media's downplaying of the seriousness of the situation.
The Ukrainian advance is the most serious challenge to Putin's view of the war since the invasion began, and it risks making the Russian leader appear vulnerable and weak.
As a scholar of the former Soviet Union, I see echoes of the past in Putin's present, as he often struggles to respond decisively and quickly to the needs of the Russian people in times of crisis.
Ever since President Boris Yeltsin appointed the then-unknown bureaucrat as prime minister on Aug. 9, 1999, Putin has seemed more obsessed with the myth of savior than actually saving lives.
Battle of Kursk (reprint)
Kursk plays an important and complex role for Putin and Russia.
The 1944 Battle of Kursk was a decisive victory for the Soviet Union during World War II, or as many Russians call it, the Great Patriotic War. It's a powerful symbol of sacrifice and victory that has become part of Russian national identity under Putin's rule.
That's why Ukraine's rapid advance in the region in recent weeks – during which it has captured dozens of settlements and Russian troops – has come as a major blow to Moscow, with Russian media quick to compare the Kursk invasion to that of Nazi Germany and stress the gravity of the situation.
But Putin's response has been slow and, to many observers, puzzling. After days of silence and evasion, a visibly shaken Putin held a televised meeting with security chiefs and regional governors, promising a “befitting response” and paying 10,000 rubles ($150) to residents displaced by the incursion. But there were no clear instructions for large-scale evacuations or for the residents of Kursk until several days later.
As the Kursk invasion was underway, Putin left “the situation” to others, instead traveling to Azerbaijan to meet with President Ilham Aliyev and visit a horticulture farm.
Another lesson from the Kursk
Ukraine's invasion of Kursk and Putin's response to it are reminiscent of an even earlier “Kursk” crisis, the sinking of the region's eponymous nuclear submarine in 2000. The Kursk sank on August 12, 2000, after an explosion in a torpedo hatch during exercises in the Barents Sea, killing most of its 118 crew members.
About 23 people who survived the initial explosion barricaded themselves in a compartment of the submarine and waited to be rescued. The explosion was detected by seismographs in Europe, and many countries offered to help with a rescue, but Putin refused to accept foreign help until it was too late. On August 21, Norwegian divers reached the sunken submarine and found all crew members dead.
The Kursk disaster exposed what critics claim is “political paralysis” in the Kremlin, and President Putin, who has been in office for just a year, was directly criticized for remaining silent about the disaster for days.
Putin refused to interrupt his vacation in Sochi on the Black Sea coast and instead chose to fly to Yalta on Ukraine's Crimean peninsula on August 18, six days into the crisis, for informal talks with leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States hosted by then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
On August 23, 2000, President Putin reluctantly met with the families of the drowned crew in his hometown of Vidyayevo.
Despite tight controls on foreign media access, Putin's uncomfortable exchange with the angry and grieving mothers was broadcast on Russian television – a disaster for Putin's image.
Witnesses said Putin was furious at the media's portrayal of him and accused TV stations of hiring “$10 prostitutes” to ruin his reputation.
Failure to tackle terrorism
Since Putin met with the victims' families in 2000, Russia's tightly controlled media has become more aligned with the Kremlin's plan to portray Putin as a “protector.”
Believing in this narrative, pro-Putin media often portray Ukrainians in the current war as “terrorists” and “Nazis.”
But Putin’s response to the actual terrorist situation once again highlights his failure to protect Russian lives.
Take for example his response to the attack in Beslan, North Ossetia, five years after he took office: On September 1, 2004, a group of more than 30 armed militants stormed a school and took more than 1,000 people hostage, including students, teachers, and family members.
The hostages were held in a gymnasium without food or water until Russian special forces stormed the building on September 3. The siege ended in chaotic fighting in which hundreds of hostages were killed, including 186 children.
Survivors and their families have criticized the Russian government, including President Putin, for its mishandling of the hostages and have taken them to the European Court of Human Rights, where the court ruled that the Russian government had “failed to protect the hostages.”
Grieving Russians hold newspapers showing photos of the Beslan school siege. Photo: Yuri Kadubnov/AFP via Getty Images
Excessive force, inadequate response, and corruption are regular themes in Russia's response to terrorist attacks. In Putin's 25 years in power, Russia has seen more than 10 terrorist attacks, the most recent of which was an Islamic State affiliate attack on a Moscow concert on March 22, 2024, rivaling Beslan in death toll.
Putin visited Beslan on August 20, 2024, and attempted to link the attack to the current events in Kursk, saying that “enemies are trying to destabilize the country again.” What both cases have in common is Putin's failure to protect Russians.
Are they defending Russians or their own image?
The so far successful invasion of Kursk in Ukraine has seriously endangered Putin's image as a tough protector – and not for the first time.
No doubt, Russian propagandists will do what is necessary to defend the Russian president before a domestic audience.
But never in Putin's 25 years in power has this image looked more fragile. We now see an image-protector rather than a guardian.
Lena Slutsko Harned is Associate Professor of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
