The Kremlin saw the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a short and quick military operation.
Official Moscow thought that in a few days, possibly weeks, it would completely control its neighbors.
That was two and a half years ago.
The war in Ukraine is raging.
It's not going the way Moscow envisioned.
For the past 29 months, senior Russian officials have claimed that "everything is going according to plan."
That was the last thing President Vladimir Putin said in May, despite everything that happened in the previous two years: a large number of Russian casualties on the battlefield, numerous Russian ships that were destroyed in the Black Sea, drone attacks on Russian territories, bombing of Russian cities and villages near the Ukrainian border, the rebellion of Wagner's mercenaries who went to Moscow.
We add the latest Ukrainian attack on the Russian region of Kursk to that list.
- Ukrainians attack the Russian territory of Kursk: "We repel them," says Moscow
- Russia opened the Kharkiv Front: Why and what will happen next
- Is the Russian offensive in Ukraine going according to plan?
It is difficult to say what is currently happening in the Sudža district of the Kursk region.
It is not known how many Ukrainian units are inside, how much territory they have surrounded and what their ultimate goal is.
"The events in Kursk are shrouded in the infamous fog of war," writes the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaja gazeta.
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However, even in the haze, some things are clear.
It is clear that the recent attacks in the Kursk region confirm that the Russian war in Ukraine is not going "as planned".
The attacks appear to have taken Russia's political and military leadership completely by surprise.
Don't expect Moscow to even admit it.
It is more likely that Russian officials will use the Ukrainian attack to try to rally the public around the government and support the Kremlin's official narrative: that in this conflict Moscow is not the aggressor, and that Russia is a besieged fortress surrounded by enemies who plan to attack and destroy it.
The reality is that it is Russia launched a full invasion of the neighboring country.
Apparently there is a big difference in expression.
When Russia moved troops across the Ukrainian border in February 2022, the Kremlin called it a "special military operation" and claimed that Russia was "liberating" towns and villages there.
Moscow described Ukrainian resistance and the return of Russian troops as a "terrorist attack and provocation".
The attack of Ukrainian forces on the Kursk region and the fierce fighting in that area are a sign that war is approaching Russia.
But will this turn the Russian public against the war?
Not necessarily.
- The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Shoigu and Gerasimov
- "Meat Grinder": 50.000 Russian soldiers confirmed dead in Ukraine
- Ukraine hit a ferry in a port in the south of Russia, one person was killed
Last year, in 2023, I visited Belgorod, a Russian region bordering Ukraine, like Kursk.
That area was targeted from the other side of the border.
Everyone I met said that nothing similar happened before the Russian aggression against Ukraine, before February 2022 it was calm and quiet in Belgorod.
Instead of concluding that the "special military operation" was a mistake, most people I spoke with want Russia to step up its military operations and go deeper into Ukrainian territory.
Dmitri Medvedev, the former president of Russia, calls for exactly that.
"We can and should occupy more territory of Ukraine while it is still there.
"From Odessa to Kharkiv, Dnieper, Mykolaiv, to Kiev and beyond," he said in a post on social networks.
But Medvedev doesn't make decisions, Vladimir Putin does.
His answer is awaited for several dramatic days in the south of Russia.
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