Accordingly, Russia’s severe military setbacks in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions could not fail to cause dismay, and sparked a widespread desire to find a scapegoat, forcing the powers that be to engage with the public more than usual. This, in turn, had the effect of emboldening the public to be far more critical of the military campaign, which had until recently been widely considered to be nothing but victorious.
On top of this, it also became apparent that the Russian establishment had no plan in place for presenting a united front over the implementation of the partial mobilization announced by the Kremlin.
Although the public reaction to the announcement was calmer than many had predicted, criticism of the military top brass over its erratic implementation was so widespread that it threw into question the seemingly self-evident theory about people rallying around the regime at a time of war. Combined with the shock of Russia’s military losses, it created the impression that the Russian political class was losing the ability to demonstrate any unity on difficult issues.
Against the backdrop of the mobilization, the announcement of the annexation of four “new territories” from Ukraine failed to spark any public euphoria, and indeed went largely unnoticed for many reasons. For a start, in contrast with the key port and popular holiday destination of Crimea that Russia annexed back in 2014, there is no coherent image of the Donbas or Kherson region in Russian historical memory. In addition, the public part of the annexation process—the sham referendums—was not portrayed very successfully. It’s entirely possible that had the Kremlin announced the annexation after the explosion on the Kerch bridge connecting Russia and Crimea, it would have been seen as a more dynamic and successful move, and might have attracted more attention.
Finally, the explosion and damage it caused to the bridge, built at great expense by Russia and only completed in 2018, was an obvious source of stress, since it immediately seemed clear that Ukraine was behind the attack. It might seem that the sinking back in the spring of Russia’s Moskva warship—the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship—should have been a far more significant and dramatic event, yet, psychologically, it was borne more easily by Russian society, which took until the autumn to start to notice that the Ukrainians’ military capabilities are in fact more or less comparable to its mighty enemy’s.
The Russian leadership’s response to this turn of events was to launch a wave of deadly missile strikes across Ukrainian cities on Oct. 10–11, followed by drone attacks in Kyiv on Oct. 17. The attacks look like an attempt by the Russian establishment to convince itself and others that Russia still has enough determination, energy, and resources to regain the military initiative.