Good morning. Ukrainian troops have made further advances in the Kursk region of Russia, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said yesterday. Meanwhile, Kyiv said it had launched a “major” drone attack on four Russian airbases, and the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region declared a state of emergency. And while Kyiv insists it has no intention of trying to hold Russian territory permanently, there is little doubt that it intends its cross-border incursion to bring home the cost of the war to the Russian public.
So how do ordinary Russians view the surprise attack on their own territory – and what is Vladimir Putin doing to try to shape their response? For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Dr Olga Vlasova, a visiting scholar at King’s Russia Institute in London who researches Russian state propaganda with a focus on the “politics of pacification”, about the impact of Ukraine’s incursion on perceptions of the war. Here are the headlines.
