Ukraine has brought the war to the Kursk region, having captured more than 1,000 square km of border territory in a mere week and prompting the evacuation of more than 120,000 civilians. Marking the first time a foreign army has invaded Russia since World War 2, Ukrainian forces have managed to take control of close to the same amount of land that it has taken Russia’s army all this year to seize in Ukraine.

Yet, the gravity of this surprise attack on Russian soil has largely not registered with Muscovites. Kyiv, it seems, has not brought the war home as far as the Russian capital is concerned. Numbed by two years of war and uncertainty, Moscow’s residents largely seem indifferent to what is happening in Kursk. Many stopped paying attention to most coverage of the conflict some time ago, while others are happy to accept what they see on the television, where the Kremlin has sought to downplay any developments that would suggest that the war is not exactly going to plan.

When asking Muscovites about events in Kursk, I was mainly met with disinterest. Certainly, there are some areas of Russia that are suffering exhaustion from the war – whether because of Ukraine’s sustained campaign of drone strikes or large numbers of young men being drafted, some of which do not return. This is not the case in Moscow. Few drones reach this far, and the government has avoided drafting too many from the city’s population.

Instead, Moscow is exhausted from hearing about the war. The war is constant. There is little hope of any resolution to the situation anytime soon. And frankly, now that everyone has adapted to life under sanctions, international isolation and a war-time economy – the new normal – few notice how the conflict affects their day-to-day lives.

Still, a visitor might well note the Z signs on T-shirts and painted on car windows and plenty of recruitment posters on billboards along the major highways that weren’t here three years ago. These things have been around for long enough and are so ubiquitous that they aren’t very noticeable.

“I don’t feel disturbed by this news,” Rustam, a website designer in his late 30s, remarks when asked about the situation in Kursk. He is sitting outside a cafe. It’s a pleasant warm and sunny day. He looks bored by my question. “I’m sorry for what’s going on in the area of course, but I’m not worried about it.”

Russia should be able to clear Ukrainian forces out of Kursk within a month, believes Anton, who lives on a meagre pension following a career in the army. Like many in their 60s in Russia, Anton primarily relies on television for the news. He is still confident that Russia will achieve its objectives in Ukraine. Like many Russians, he sees the strategic goal as capturing everything east of the Dnipro River, with some demilitarised buffer zone created between Russian-occupied territory and the rest of Ukraine.

He believes this objective will be reached within a year.

Anton is clearly eager to talk about the topic and seems confident of his knowledge. But there is little hint of concern in his voice. He recounts his knowledge and views as if talking about football or the weather.

Indifference among Muscovites to what is happening in provincial Russia is common. Many Muscovites will happily admit this. Nastya, a housewife, used to live in the Far East, and remembers how people there would say that Moscow doesn’t care about them. And when she moved to Moscow, she understood this was true.

“Moscow is where things matter,” Dima, an oil and gas engineer in his 40s, says jovially after drinking several beers on a Saturday night. The war was a strategic mistake for Russia, he says, but now the country is committed, it must remain committed until the end. It is unclear what that end is.

There are murmurings in Western media that Ukraine’s incursion could lead the Kremlin to announce another mobilisation this autumn, after 300,000 men were pressganged into the army during the last partial mobilisation in 2022. The people I’ve spoken to generally didn’t seem very fazed by this prospect. Russia already has the military resources to take back full control of Kursk and continue pressing ahead in Donbass, was the general opinion.

But this might also be another symptom of the numbness that Muscovites feel towards the war. The first mobilisation sparked quite a significant backlash, which has made the Kremlin hesitant about ordering another one. But the prospect of a second mass conscription drive, two years later, seems to be met with general resignation.

“If it happens, it happens. Why think about it,” Dima says.

If one of the strategic goals of Kyiv’s incursion was to weaken Russian resolve, it appears to have had the opposite effect in Moscow. While few have paid much attention to the situation, those that have liken Ukraine’s “mistake” to the failed invasions by Nazi Germany in 1941 and Napoleon in 1812.

“They should remember how we respond in such cases,” Dima says.

And if another objective was to turn Russians against Putin, for failing to protect the homeland from a war that he started, this can also be considered a failure. Public support for Putin remains sky-high, according to the most recent polls, and no one I spoke with blamed the Russian president for what is happening in Kursk. Instead, the criticism was levelled against lazy soldiers at the border and corrupt and incompetent generals. In particular there seems to be a lot of ill will towards the chief of the general staff of the Russian army, Valery Gerasimov, along with former Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. Shoigu was replaced in May by Andrey Belousov, who so far does not appear to have faced many attacks, perhaps because he has not been in the role that long.

According to Anton, Shoigu had no idea what was going on in the war, and Gerasimov was corrupt. He blames what happens on poor intelligence. The problem is that everyone at every level of the military hierarchy lies to their superiors, he says, and so how can Putin be blamed as he could not possibly know what was happening on the front line.