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Ukraine’s unexpected incursion into the Russian border region of Kursk has brought the war home to many Russians in an immediate and deeply distressing way.

Ukrainian troops occupied dozens of villages and forced the evacuation of almost 200,000 people from the southwestern region. Russian media have graphically covered the scenes of chaos and panic. The reports convey at least some of the fear and despair of local people hustled onto buses amid vistas of violence and destruction.

Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Kursk and Belgorod, the first foreign invasion of Russia since World War II, has put the Kremlin’s mouthpieces into a tizzy as they simultaneously argue that the “provocation” is intended to “sow internal chaos,” but that, fear not, “order will be restored.”

Some speculate that if Russia is not able to quickly get its act together, it may turn to its old playbook of dirty tricks, hoping that a false flag operation could remedy the embarrassing problem of having gone from being “the occupiers of Ukraine,” to being “occupied by Ukraine.”

This might have been done upon Ukraine’s demand as part of their newly clinched security pact’s requirement for standardizing historical narratives.

The Warsaw District Court recently ordered the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) to reopen its investigation into “Operation Vistula”, which was the forcible post-war resettlement of ethnic Ukrainians and other Polish citizens from the southeastern part of the country. The initial one that was launched in response to a request by the president of the Union of Ukrainians in Poland, the head of the Lemko Union, and one Ukrainian who was subject to resettlement concluded that it wasn’t a communist crime.

Belgian authorities are expected to make a decision soon regarding Tajik refugee Sitoramo Ibrokhimova. She will most likely be extradited to the Rahmon regime, as was her sister, 27-year-old Nigora Saidova, who was sent to Tajikistan along with her seven-month-old daughter on charges of aiding terrorism, which, according to The Insider, were fabricated. In her homeland, Saidova was sentenced to eight years in the worst women’s prison, where prisoners face rape and torture. Poland has been denying refugee status to Tajiks year after year — they are among the top three in terms of refusals, after Russians and Iraqi citizens. Emomali Rahmon uses the fear of ISIS to persecute entire families of emigrants – these can be both relatives of terrorists and relatives of oppositionists, but, as The Insider and the Polish weekly Polityka found out, European authorities do not really understand the case materials and often extradite citizens to Rahmon against whom the charges are obviously falsified. According to human rights activists, sometimes those forcibly returned are extradited to Russians: they are interrogated on the territory of the 201st military base near Dushanbe – tortured and forced to confess about ties to Ukraine.

For over a week now, Ukrainian troops have been holding part of the Kursk region and, what’s more, expanding the combat zone. During this time, they have managed to occupy, according to various estimates, from 500 to 1,100 square kilometers and capture hundreds of prisoners. The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ offensive crosses the red line on the use of Western military equipment on internationally recognized Russian territory and clearly demonstrates that the presence of nuclear weapons does not guarantee protection from ground operations on the territory of the possessing state. But what are the ultimate goals of the Kursk operation? The Insider examines the main scenarios for the development of events.