It is still unclear whether Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk Region has changed the calculus of Russia’s military leadership and the course of the war, but the Russian reaction to it has already highlighted the limits of the Kremlin’s governance model. Read on.

At the time of this writing, more than 1,200 square kilometers of the Kursk Region could be under Ukrainian control (according to Ukrainian claims). Five districts in the region have been evacuated with more than 100,000 people forced to leave their homes, but thousands of people are unaccounted for. Since the beginning of the Ukrainian army’s incursion, more than 400 so-called “Liza alerts” (for missing people) have been posted. The federal government is reportedly preparing a narrative acknowledging that it could take several months for the Russian army to regain control of the whole region – at this point it is unclear even whether Russian troops have been able to stop or slow down the advance of the Ukrainians. Confusingly, even as the Kremlin has decided to postpone scheduled municipal elections in the region’s affected districts, gubernatorial elections will not only not be postponed, but early voting will start on August 28, likely in an attempt to suggest that the situation is under control.  

True, Ukraine controls only a small fragment of this poor and sparsely populated (though not unimportant) region and the push of its troops has slowed down. The Kremlin’s fear is likely not that the Ukrainian army will carry on and take Moscow. However, the implications of the incursion already go beyond the Kursk Region and have exposed some of the Kremlin’s domestic worries: at least 45 conscripts were taken prisoner by the Ukrainian army (and according to a count by IStories many more disappeared), some have died, and as the authorities are reportedly preparing to send many more to the embattled region in order to avoid the need to regroup regular forces and to build additional fortification around major towns, petitions started appearing in several regions against the move, which regional officials will have to deal with. The incursion also exposed the weaknesses of Russia’s domestic governance model, stretched thin by two and a half years (and counting) of unexpected open warfare, in which the war has become an unquestionable and ever-present organizing principle.

Following the initial shock of the incursion, which initially did not only surprise and paralyze local authorities, but apparently also the army, the first reaction of the federal authorities was to keep the bad news as far away from themselves as possible. Vladimir Putin cut off Kursk governor Alexey Smirnov when he listed the problems and challenges triggered by the incursion. While some federal officials – including deputy Presidential Administration head Sergey Kirienko, deputy prime minister Marat Khusnullin and State Council secretary Alexey Dyumin, all of them curators of regional politics and money flows – visited the region, Putin or Defense Minister Andrey Belousov have not.

This was not a knee-jerk reaction: this is exactly how Russia’s multi-level governance is supposed to work. Over the past years the Kremlin has consciously built a system, in which complaints are collected and problems are identified by the federal government, bypassing regional authorities, which however receive a list of policies to implement, targets to meet and powers to do exactly this much. The system of regional “operational headquarters” (opershtabi), on which the Kremlin relied during the coronavirus pandemic to let regional authorities (and the local chapters of security services) deal with implementing centrally mandated, but unpopular policies such as lockdowns or vaccination, had been used during the full-scale war to help overt and covert mobilization, defense against drones, directing resources to the army, and, in border regions, even coordinating security forces and recruiting civilians – although, as it became obvious in the past week, without the necessary budgetary allocations.

To a large extent, the system still works like this. It was, once again, obvious from Putin’s words to Smirnov what the Kremlin expected the regional government to do: preserve and demonstrate stability, alleviate people’s fears, ultimately, to prevent the outburst of rebellions. Instead of listening to Smirnov’s litanies describing the magnitude of the problem, Putin stuck to the positives – for example, announcing one-time payments of 10,000 rubles to those having to leave their homes, later supplemented with 15,000 for those who had to leave their homes, from the government’s reserve fund. This a paltry sum compared to the 800,000 rubles that men in Kursk can currently receive if they sign up for military service, especially considering that the incursion can potentially continue for months. A 1.8-billion-ruble fund for housing needs was hastily added to the tally, along with payments for injuries or loss of life, albeit it is already clear that this sum will not nearly be enough.

While most of the money will come from federal funds, the implementation of these policies was again entrusted to the regional government, which was criticized by local residents when problems predictably arose with the disbursement of the payments, with rumors spreading e.g. that one had to submit claims multiple times or at specific locations. Several people have also demanded help to evacuate to regions farther from the Ukrainian border; the exodus of residents from the neighboring Belgorod Region has exposed differences in financial means. 

A notable element in the response to the Kursk incursion was how Roman Starovoit, now federal minister for transport, but until May Kursk governor, one of the rising technocratic outsiders appointed as governors over the past decade, activated himself. As if he were still governor, Starovoit promised to extend “maximum efforts” to deal with the incursion, and mobilized the resources of the Transport Ministry to organize additional trains and buses, and even to collect more than 40 tons of humanitarian aid. To an extent, this is likely due to fears of being blamed for the incursion, as it was during his tenure as governor that the region spent billions of rubles on defensive structures that benefited Starovoit’s cronies but were only partly built and completely failed to slow down the Ukrainian advance.

The failure of Starovoit’s defensive structures also show the flip side of regional and federal chasing the war agenda over the past two years as a means to gain clout and additional resources. Such incentives are inherent in Russia’s highly hierarchical system of governance, where officials are responsible entirely to their superiors, and the personalist autocracy that requires them to pursue acts of performative mobilization in line with the Kremlin’s political priorities to aid their own careers. Defensive structures are normally not the responsibility of governors, however, in border regions at the time of war they have represented a way to draw money, to satisfy associates, without ever seriously considering that these structures might be tested soon. They have served the purpose of political PR just as Starovoit’s cozying up to the Wagner Group and Yevgeny Prigozhin before the latter’s mutiny.

The former governor’s activities however also highlight a stubborn feature of the Kremlin’s personnel policy. In spite of attempts to homogenize and professionalize public administration over the past decade, when an unexpected crisis hits, informal mechanisms are still usually the key to resolving a problem. This is true regardless of type of regional leader that the Kremlin seems to favor. In 2024, after almost a decade of experimenting with outsider technocrats, three outsiders were replaced by local cadres as governors – including in Kursk – seemingly in an attempt to reduce unnecessary friction, while their predecessors were promoted to the federal government. But it appears that even after their promotion, the outsiders can still be expected to act as unofficial “curators” of their previous regions, while the actual powers of their local successors remain limited to the realms of implementation, communication and local outreach. It is difficult to imagine that after the failure of the Kursk fortifications, the Kremlin will not try to keep key regions on shorter leash – be they border regions or those providing industrial support for the war – and find a way to control spending even tighter, deciding that the opershtabi are not up to the task. Under such circumstances, the role of personal connections in the capital will only grow.

A side note here: while rumors of his appointment to take executive control of the response to the Kursk incursion have been officially unconfirmed, the incursion may still offer a way for Alexey Dyumin, too, to gain clout. At the very least, Dyumin in his capacity of presidential adviser and State Council secretary is almost certainly going to report to Putin about the failures to prevent or adequately deal with the attack, and the people responsible.

Indeed, the shock of the Kursk incursion can trigger personal consequences. These however will likely come later and in bulk, or disguised as ordinary retirement, in order to avoid the semblance that popular pressure can lead to significant changes. From the perspective of the authorities, it is important to underline who is in control and who sets the norms; this task the Kremlin is likely still able to accomplish with ease. But citizens will also know that they cannot expect much more from the government, and where it is needed, local initiatives that the authorities so fear, will try to fill the gaps, as they have so far. Without responsible, rather than just responsive governance, it is exactly the immediate rapport with citizens, which Putin demanded of Smirnov, that the current system is unable to ensure.