Ukraine's incursion into Russia flips the script on Putin
fleeing invading Ukrainian troops sought shelter from strangers. Russian parents feared that their children might be sent into battle for the first time.
And in a televised crisis meeting Monday, President Vladimir Putin of Russia flipped through a white legal pad, reading aloud from handwritten notes, suggesting that his aides did not have the time to type up a speech for him as they usually do.
Ukraine's surprise incursion into a sliver of Russia's Kursk region last week has not shifted the overall course of the war, but it has already struck a blow well beyond the few hundred square miles of Russia that Ukraine now controls: It has thrust a Russian government and society that had largely adapted to war into a new phase of improvisation and uncertainty.
Putin has said nothing about the incursion since meeting with security and regional officials, a tense gathering in which the president at one point berated the Kursk governor for revealing the depth and breadth of Ukraine's advance into Russia. Near the border, where, authorities say, more than 130,000 people have fled or been evacuated, regional officials appeared unprepared for the crisis — prompting grassroots aid initiatives to jump in.
To opposition-minded politicians, including some of the few remaining inside Russia, Ukraine's incursion has offered a rare chance to puncture the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is steadily heading toward victory — even if it was far from certain that Russians would blame Putin for their ills. One opposition figure, Lev
