Russian President Vladimir Putin has for the first time ordered the mobilization of up to 300,000 reservists to fight in the Ukrainian War, a delayed admission that his 210-day campaign to subjugate his neighbor has failed in its aims — it has not toppled Russia’s government. Volodymyr Zelensky and has suffered recent setbacks.
In a pre-recorded speech on TV this morning (dawn in Brazil), the Russian also said that he will protect the populations of occupied territory that he intends to annex after referendums to be held in four Ukrainian regions in the east and south of the country from Friday. (23). And that he is willing to do that with nuclear weapons against the US and allies that support Kiev.
According to the president, Russia faces 1,000 km of front lines against the West in Ukraine — a reference to the fact that the US and allies have provided Kiev with billions of dollars in weapons and intelligence. “In its aggressive anti-Russian policy, the West has crossed all lines,” Putin said.
“Nuclear blackmail has been used, and we’re not just talking about the bombing of the Zaporijia plant. But also statements by senior NATO representatives about the possibility of using weapons of mass destruction against Russia,” the leader said – on Sunday ( 18), US President Joe Biden had warned the Russian not to use the bomb, hinting at proportionate reaction.
“I would like to remind them that our country also has various means of destruction, and in some cases they are more modern than those of NATO countries. When the integrity of our country is threatened, of course we will use all means at our disposal to protect Russia and its people. This is no bluff.”
Here, Putin was referring to the movement that led to the dramatic escalation, expected since the West gathered in chorus to condemn Putin and his war in the UN General Assembly debate, which began this Tuesday (20) with criticism of the Russian made including by the Secretary General António Guterres.
The Russian response came in the form of an announcement that administrators of the two breakaway republics of Donbass, the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine made up of the provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk, would hold a referendum calling for annexation. There, much of the territory has been out of Kiev’s control since 2014, in the wake of Putin’s annexation of Crimea, reacting to the overthrow of an allied government in Kiev.
They were followed by Russian puppets in Kherson and Zaporijia, occupied areas in the south of the country that establish a land bridge between the Donbass and Crimea. Anyone who chooses to be part of the Russian Federation, in consultations already denounced by Kiev and the West as farce, will be protected, Putin said.
Putin’s move seeks to isolate the government of Volodymyr Zelensky, which had regained occupied territory in Kharkiv (northeast) earlier this month, carried out attacks to the south and even against Lugansk, a province that the Kremlin had conquered in July.
The Russian plays with the risk of a Third World War, nuclear in essence, to try at least to freeze the established lines: today he controls almost all of Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporijia, including the mentioned largest nuclear power plant in Europe, but only 60% of Donetsk.
The logic is terribly simple: if they become part of Russia, in the Kremlin’s legal understanding, attacks on those areas become against the nation – and Russian nuclear doctrine predicts the use of the bomb, whether low-power tactical warheads for use against troops. or strategic, which aim to change the course of war with great destruction, if there is an existential risk to the country.
No one can say that Putin had not telegraphed this. Already in the inaugural speech of the war, on February 24, he only did not use the word nuclear to threaten to intervene. Afterwards, he mobilized his strategic forces and carried out weapons tests as messages.
It worked for a while. But the West responded by doubling down, and the US alone has already committed almost four times the Ukrainian military budget in 2021 to arms shipments.
So far, Putin has not changed the term “special military operation” with which he sought to limit the political scope of his war at home, but in practice everything has changed. In recent weeks, weakened by defeats, the president has seen the reported pressure among the country’s hard-line elite for more effective action grow.
Shortages have always been the central, though not the only, flaw of the Russian campaign, which suffered from an uncoordinated attack on three fronts in February and numerous tactical and logistical failures. In the end, however, Kiev’s fall did not come because there were few soldiers, which explains the loss of Kharkiv.
According to the explanation given later by Sergei Choigu, the defense minister, Russia will be able to call up everyone with some military experience, but not those who served as conscripts or students. That’s about 300,000 people out of a 25 million summonable universe, far more than the estimated 200,000 who participated in the initial invasion.
In all, the Russian Armed Forces have about 900,000 men on active duty, a number that will rise to 1.04 million in 2023. It has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Ukraine had, before the war, about 200,000 soldiers and 900,000 reservists, but it mobilized its entire male population from 18 to 60 years old in practice.
“I don’t know what will happen, if I will be forced to fight,” Moscow-based financial analyst Serguei S. said via text message. The mobilization rules are yet to be clarified by the government. “I’m really scared, we don’t know where this might end up,” added the 47-year-old, married with two daughters.
Choigu also released an estimate of Russian soldiers killed in the campaign for the first time since March: 5,937, up from 15,000 to 20,000 speculated by NATO. He also said that 61,000 Ukrainian soldiers died, while Kiev admits 11,000.
The Western reaction has been following the time zone, being recorded first among Europeans. Zelensky had already said that a mobilization would mean an admission of fear. “No amount of threats or propaganda can hide the fact that Ukraine is winning this war,” said UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace.
Joe Biden will speak at the UN on Wednesday, and is expected to summarize the response from NATO, which has already said it refuses any annexation of occupied areas. For eight years, the West has seen Crimea, otherwise a historically Russian region, absorbed without much more than sanctions and protests; now he fights a war with unpredictable consequences.
On the Russian side, its biggest ally, China, called for negotiations between the parties and said that its position, not to condemn Moscow, was known. Last week, Putin and Xi met on the sidelines of a forum in Uzbekistan and promised more military ties.
Both countries had sealed a political-economic alliance in the Cold War 2.0 shortly before the war, but its prolongation is a problem for the Chinese, who seeks to deal with their internal problems and is under pressure not to carry out the plan to annex Taiwan. , island that he considers his own.
The announcement of the mobilization shook the already weakened Moscow Stock Exchange, which fell 9.45% during the morning. Opposition activist groups, which have been virtually extinct, tried to stage anti-war protests on social media chains.
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