The invasion of Kursk was a disaster, indeed remains a disaster as Ukrainian men continue to be ground down as I write these words. Any honest observer who followed the war in Kursk knew it would end like this. Some analysts have argued the main aim was to seize a Russian nuclear power plant as a bargaining chip, others that it was to divert Russian troops away from lines of conflict elsewhere. Nonsense. The primary objective was almost certainly to control the narrative of the war, the propaganda of it.
I note a piece by Glenn Diesen, geopolitical analyst and professor of political science at the University of South-Eastern Norway, on this “narrative control” aspect of the invasion of Kursk. He had it right: “The Western political-media establishment gets excited and more committed when there are territorial victories by Ukraine. […] However, the dangerous priority of narratives above reality is also an indication of how NATO countries have been trapped by their own propaganda. Most sensible military analysts must have known the invasion of Kursk would likely end in catastrophe…”
“End in catastrophe” it has. Regardless of what was going through the minds of Ukrainian leaders and their Western military advisors as they planned this invasion of Russian territory, since the weekend of Saturday March 8th 2025, their Kursk operation is disintegrating.
One aspect of Russia’s success in reclaiming its territory — and if you missed this, pay attention, this was audacious — was the raiding party which trudged, all soldiers stooped over, through 12-15km of narrow gas pipeline that had previously supplied gas to Europe. The move allowed the Russians to get behind the Ukrainian lines and launch an attack which was beyond surprise.
On March 10th, Simplicius the Thinker – a blog useful for garnering military information from the Russian point of view – posted a detailed piece focussed on Ukraine’s collapse in Kursk. Included is a nearly 12-minute-long motivational team talk from Major General Apti Alaudinov to members of his Akhmat special forces, who participated in the dramatic tunnel raid. The reason this speech is worth highlighting is that the topics he covered as he spoke to his men relate directly to a key theme in my previous Brussels Signal piece, which was coincidentally published the Friday of that weekend raid.
This key theme was the “Strong Gods” which inspire men to fight. They are “the objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies.” But since World War Two, Western establishment elites have assaulted the “Strong Gods” of European peoples as inherently oppressive and racist, worshipping instead hollow gods like GDP and performative humanitarianism.
Though the release of the Alaudinov video is undoubtedly part of Russia’s own battle for “narrative control and propaganda”, to use Diesen’s term, the speech might offer an insight into the mindset of Russia’s fighting men.
Alaudinov opens with a statement about the pivotal importance of their mission through the gas pipe: “This operation itself, it is designed to completely change the course of the war. This situation is really very serious. Serious how? […] When we fulfil this task, the course of the war will change completely.”
He then goes on to discuss how fear before battle is normal: “Any man, if he has a head and has a brain, of course he is afraid of something. There is no such person who is not afraid of anything at all. […] A man has the right to be afraid of something, but a hero is that man who can overpower his fear, pain, they can put it, as they say, under his heel and go on. That’s what a hero is.”
In having stated the importance of the mission, and then having acknowledged that it is ok for his men to be experiencing fear, Alaudinov lays out a collection of motivations, including some “Strong Gods” that his men can draw upon to overcome their doubts and apprehensions.
Indeed, if Alaudinov’s unapologetically muscular call to arms is applied to one’s own bonds with a particular people, nation, and faith, one might find that at least some of his words could put fire in Western blood.
Firstly, he harkens back to the military tradition of which the Russians are inheritors: “You and I have watched a lifetime of heroes in different movies. In Soviet times, the heroes we were shown were no more heroes than you are. You’re all heroes.”
Alaudinov then describes how the men around him had the courage to pull themselves away from their normal lives “to come to purely defend your father.” This is a nod to the echoes of the Indo-European warrior culture which spread over vast expanses of this continent, and which focused on ancestor worship and the veneration of the patrilineal hearth at home.
He then reminds his men of their competence as disciplined combatants and, in appealing to the Strong Gods of belonging to a particular people and place, tells them that, “We will win back our native Kursk region […] Each of you, as I told you, is a hero. Prove it to your household. Prove it to the country.” Next he argues for glory after death: “You and I are on a sacred path. And even if we are destined to die, die with dignity. Everyone should perceive his death and love it as much as his life. Then you will realise that there is no impossible task for you. You can die after living a hundred years and no one will remember you. Or you can die, having lived, maybe, a little life, but they will talk about you.”
“We know that we came here knowing that we could die, right? So we are, it turns out, willing to risk our lives in order to do what our homeland puts on us. Are we ready to die […], if necessary, for God, for our faith, for our Motherland, for our households? Are we ready to die?”
One of the last things Alaudinov does is to make a joke about the perceived sexual preferences of their enemy: “Well, I hope that you and I will do it in such a way that the enemy will really realise that normal guys came there. Not LGBT like they have, but normal guys.” This sort of thing seems to be a running joke amongst the Russians who, according to a recent piece in the Guardian, are vehemently opposed to the “effeminate moral degeneracy emanating from the continent they call ‘Gayrope’.”
Many of us fall into one of two camps as it relates to describing the root causes of this terrible war. The side of the Officially Approved Narrative roughly suggests Putin is some sort of Hitler-esque expansionist conqueror wishing to create an evil empire. The side articulated by the likes of Mearsheimer, Sachs, and Baud basically blames US-led NATO expansion and the subsequent mistreatment of ethnic Russians by ultranationalist elements who have been empowered since the 2014 Maidan Coup.
But regardless of which of the two camps one may inhabit, one cannot deny that the above-mentioned themes of inherited duty toward the hearth of family, an existential belonging to one’s native land, and the striving toward manly deeds for the good of one’s group, are all battlefield-proven over millennia to help men overcome the fear of death and act steadfast in combat. The very acknowledgement of this fact, however, begs an important question.
Given that the regime of post-national, progressive Europe appear increasingly intent on sending European Man off to war but have, up to now, sought to sterilize and mutilate his children because of “trans rights”, euthanise his elderly parents and melancholic friends under the guise of “compassion”, ram infinity immigration down his throat despite driving horrific criminality, destroy his family farm for supposedly Green reasons only to import produce instead from South America, ban his preferred politicians from holding government or even running in elections in the name of protecting “Our Democracy”, and then arrest or debank him for being “far right” if he complains about any of it: what Strong Gods remain standing for Europe’s deracinated, cosmopolitan, administrative hivemind to draw upon in calling the continent’s normies to arms, without them directly undermining their entire ideological project? A discussion for another day, perhaps.
Putin has not taken the bait: will Kursk offensive backfire on Ukraine?