Putin Has Lost Control of the Narrative

Regimes that go to war usually work hard to convince their population that the decision to fight was justified and that any sacrifices will be manageable. In this spirit, Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried for more than four years to protect the population of Moscow from the consequences of his invasion of Ukraine. Festivals and other events have gone on much as they did before, and the effects of supply shortages in the capital have been limited. Even though more than 1 million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded, the government has apparently avoided enlisting too many from Moscow or St. Petersburg, preferring to take its cannon fodder from faraway Russian imperial possessions.But Putin can no longer lull Muscovites into thinking that his war does not involve them. Earlier this month, the annual parade commemorating the defeat of Germany in World War II was startlingly short and devoid of most of the usual military hardware, because the Russian dictator was terrified of Ukrainian drone attacks. A week later, Ukraine launched hundreds of drones and cruise missiles on the Russian capital. The action, an audacious counterstrike to a mass Russian attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities two days earlier, showed that multiple rings of air defense around Moscow have been thoroughly compromised. The narrative that Putin has constructed—about a mere “special military operation” that need not trouble Russia’s elites or middle class—is now unraveling completely. Any pretense that Moscow itself can stay out of the war has vanished.[Anne Applebaum: Putin’s war comes home to Moscow]In armed conflicts between nations, major momentum shifts occur when one of the combatants loses control of events—when its rulers can no longer convincingly tell themselves or their public that their side is on the cusp of victory. Although the 1968 Tet Offensive by North Vietnam and the Vietcong was a military failure, the attacks along the length and breadth of South Vietnam mad