"It Sank"

On Saturday, 12 August 2000, the nuclear submarine K-141 "Kursk" was on a training mission in the Barents Sea, near the Kola Bay. On board the submarine were 24 P-700 "Granit" cruise missiles and 24 torpedoes. According to the official version, due to a series of violations in handling the training ammunition, a torpedo exploded in the torpedo compartment, causing a fire and triggering the detonation of other torpedoes located in the first compartment. The series of explosions disabled three compartments of the "Kursk" and the command post, after which the out-of-control submarine sank to the bottom, where, upon impact, the remaining ammunition detonated. There were 118 crew members on board, all of whom perished.

In September 2000, during an interview, American television journalist Larry King asked Putin a direct question: "What happened to the submarine?" To which Putin, with a cynical smile, replied:

"It sank."

Reflecting retrospectively on the years of Putin's rule (although it would be more appropriate to say reign), it is worth noting that the sinking of the "Kursk" set the tone for the entire Putin era, serving not only as a harbinger of future tragedies, murders, and catastrophes worldwide provoked by Vladimir Putin but also as a kind of rhyme to what is happening right now within Russia itself.

The nuclear submarine "Kursk," which sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea in August 2000, and the Kursk region, into which full-scale war unleashed by Putin came in August 2024, are linked by a bitter historical irony. At the core of both tragedies lies the same person, with his cynicism, treachery, cowardice, and disregard for the lives of his subjects—Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, what the former "minion" of Sobchak, the complex-ridden, vindictive, and embittered FSB officer Vladimir Putin considers his strength is actually his weakness: the predictability of his reactions to the next incident, in this case—on a federal scale. Just as with the sunken submarine, the bold raid of regular Ukrainian armed forces into the depths of the Kursk region (and now partly the Belgorod region), the occupation of the town of Sudzha by Ukrainian troops, and their advance directly towards the regional centre, Kursk, has gone unnoticed by the Kremlin dictator.

Putin prefers to remain silent, distancing himself from the problem, leaving lower-ranking officials to deliver the unpleasant news to the deceived Russian electorate. His strategy was the same during the memorable march of the late head of Wagner PMC, Prigozhin, on Moscow—then, if you recall, the Wagnerites took Rostov unopposed and were already preparing to move further. Throughout this time, statements were made by Ministry of Defence officials, Russian Z-military bloggers, and even Kadyrov's men, but not by Putin. Prigozhin then stopped without any visible objective reasons, thereby signing his own death warrant. There are no reasons to stop the advance for the Ukrainian armed forces, so they will continue to move forward as far as their resources allow. To this point, Putin has only managed to label the breakthrough as a "provocation by the Kyiv regime" and ordered the announcement of a "counterterrorist operation" (CTO), thus downplaying the real problems Russians face in this sector of the front and generally ignoring the fact that full-scale hostilities are now taking place within Russia itself, whose residents Putin had guaranteed protection and security. This was the basis of the dictatorship's contract with the people, and this contract was broken only in the third year of the full-scale war, which had no justification for its beginning.

So far, it can be said that due to the Kremlin's silence and the sluggish attempts to redeploy Russian military units to the Kursk region (so far, neither the promised Sevastopol marines nor Kadyrov's fighters have reached the theatre of operations), the Ukrainian armed forces will continue to advance. As for the residents of the Kursk region, numerous private videos have already confirmed that, by and large, they do not care under which flag they live and in which currency they receive their salaries—rubles or hryvnias. With such an attitude, the capture of Kursk no longer seems like an overconfident boast, especially since members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) have already advised Kursk residents to behave "calmly and amicably, following all instructions and cooperating with the Ukrainians to maintain order in the region" in the event of Ukrainian troops entering the city.

This recalls an old historical anecdote about how newspaper headlines changed as Napoleon approached Paris—from "The Corsican monster" to "The Emperor has arrived in the capital." As social media users joke, in the case of the Ukrainian advance, the headlines will be as follows: "The Ukrainian monster has invaded Sudzha"; "The cannibal is approaching Korenevo"; "The neo-Nazis have entered Maryino"; "The former comedian has taken Lgov"; "The head of the Kyiv regime Zelensky is approaching Pryamitsino"; "His Presidential Majesty Volodymyr Zelensky is expected today in the loyal Kursk People's Republic."

However the Ukrainian raid on Kursk ends, sooner or later, the endless presidential term of the international criminal Vladimir Putin will also end. If he is fortunate enough to survive to face trial in The Hague, he will be able to give one more interview—the statement of the accused. And then, one of the journalists may ask him the final question: what happened to Russia during your years of rule?

And Putin will have only one possible answer: "It sank."