Vladimir Putin’s radical turn in the conduct of the Ukrainian War may improve Russia’s fortunes in the conflict that began seven months ago in the neighboring country, but it has the power to bring it into the country.
The mobilization of at least 300,000 reservists could, in the medium term, solve the central knot of the Russian offensive, the lack of personnel. Images of single columns of tanks serving as targets for American portable rockets near Kiev at the beginning of the war, without infantry support, will illustrate military manuals as a tactical counterexample.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s government seems to have understood the problem and, in attracting Russian reinforcements for an announced offensive in Kherson (south), left the invaders’ supposedly strong defenses in Kharkiv exposed like an eggshell. Kiev broke them and regained about 5% of lost territory.
It was the last straw for the so-called Russian elite military party. Over a two-decade contract, Putin rules like the tsars, ruling over rival factions and serving as a single beam of power. In return, everyone receives their share of the booty, as control over sectors of the economy.
The most powerful group is the one from which Putin came, the “siloviki” (tough, in Russian), egresses from the state security apparatus. People like Nikolai Patruchev, the powerful secretary of the Security Council, or the former bodyguard of President Viktor Zolotov, head of the National Guard.
Through military bloggers fed behind-the-scenes information, hardliners have been demanding more objective action for months. For all the destruction it caused, Putin’s war is a half-baked effort, precisely because the president wanted to keep the conflict out of Russian everyday life.
It worked: in addition to 76% supporting the military, 83% approved of the president, according to data from the unsuspected and independent Centro Levada. And popularity is key to maintaining Putin’s status in his power arrangement.
Pavel, a resident of Rostov-on-Don, Russia’s most important regional capital close to Ukraine, sums it up. “Here, we continue walking on the sidewalks in the center and going to the restaurants next to the river. It doesn’t even look like people are killing each other here,” said he, who lost contact with a cousin who lived in Mariupol, a city taken by Moscow whose siege it was the toughest of the war so far and which is a mere 180 km from Rostov.
While the annexation through farcical referendums of areas that the Kremlin does not fully control takes place until Tuesday (27) and appears to be a fait accompli, the mobilization across the country, with scenes suggesting coercion in more remote regions, messed with that.
Not so much because of the departure of Russians from the country, exploited “ad nauseum” by the Western news but which seems far from a frenetic exodus, but because of the visible reaction in the middle class and among the elite.
“It had been announced that soldiers could be conscripted up to the age of 35. Papers are coming in for 40-year-olds. This is infuriating people, as if on purpose, out of spite. As if they were sent from Kiev,” said this Saturday (24) on Twitter Margarita Simonian.
She is the editor-in-chief of RT, the Russian state television network, and considered one of the most important propagandists of the Putin regime. Among other things, she has already suggested that World War III between Russia and the West has already begun, which matches Putin’s increasingly warmongering speech and his threat to employ nuclear weapons if his new conquests are attacked.
It’s the kind of dissent that says more than a line of cars on the Georgia border, but it also doesn’t indicate that the president is about to lose his seat. The structure of power under Putin is quite solid and the elite had no choice but to join him further under the pressure of Western sanctions.
Among the middle class, which no longer had a viable opposition and lost any voice of contradiction with the gradual hardening of the regime in the last two years, the feeling that can be measured in conversations is one of dismay. “Whoever can get out, I think they will, but it’s very difficult. Our life is here,” says Serguei S., a financial analyst in Moscow.
Indeed, new protests against the mobilization were registered in Russian cities this Saturday. According to OVD-Info, an NGO that monitors abuses, more than 700 people have been detained.
On the other hand, the admission of mistakes in the war and the concession to the vision of allies like Chechen leader Ramzan Kadirov shows that Putin felt the blow in Kharkiv. The hunt for scapegoats seems to be in full swing: this Saturday, the unusually frank resignation of the head of Russian military logistics, General Dmitri Bulgakov, was announced.
What is being outlined with the forced annexation of 15% of Ukrainian territory, of which it already has 7% since it absorbed Crimea in 2014, is a plan that could give Putin a way out of the war, or its freezing. .
Zelensky, for all his voluntarism, knows that the Russian has doubled down on prolonging the conflict, counting on the degradation of European support with the arrival of a winter without Russian gas to heat homes.
An alternative could be for the United States and its NATO allies to pay to see what Putin said on national TV was not a bluff, the nuclear threats taking the crisis to an unfathomable level.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
