Putin’s Mobilization: Preparing for a bigger, more desperate war on Ukraine

Overview: Russia begins massive Ukraine war call-up, spurring some men to flee

Reuters: KYIV/NEW YORK, Sept 22 (Reuters) – Russia pushed ahead on Thursday with its biggest conscription drive since World War Two, prompting some men to rush abroad, while Ukraine demanded “just punishment” for a seven-month-old invasion that has shaken the world.

President Vladimir Putin’s order to mobilize another 300,000 Russians escalates a war that has already killed thousands, displaced millions, pulverised cities, damaged the global economy and revived Cold War confrontation.

The mass conscription may be the riskiest domestic move of Putin’s two decades in power, after Kremlin promises it would not happen and a string of battlefield failures in Ukraine.

Anti-war protests in 38 Russian cities saw more than 1,300 people arrested on Wednesday, a monitoring group said. Some had been served summons to report to enlistment offices on Thursday, the first full day of conscription, independent news outlets said.

Prices for air tickets out of Moscow soared above $5,000 for one-way flights to the nearest foreign locations, with most sold out for coming days. Traffic also surged at border crossings with Finland and Georgia.

“Every normal person is (concerned),” said one man, identifying himself only as Sergey, disembarking in Belgrade after a flight from Moscow. “It is OK to be afraid of the war.”

A Russian man arriving at Istanbul Airport said he left partly over the Kremlin’s decision. “A very poor step it seems to be, and it can lead to lots of problems for lots of Russians,” said Alex, grabbing his suitcase at a baggage carousel.

The Kremlin said reports of a mass exodus were exaggerated.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged the United Nations to create a special tribunal and strip Moscow of its U.N. Security Council veto power as a diplomatic showdown loomed on Thursday in New York.

“A crime has been committed against Ukraine, and we demand just punishment,” Zelenskiy, dressed in his trademark green military T-shirt, told world leaders by video at the annual U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday.

The Security Council has been unable to take significant action on Ukraine because Russia is a permanent veto-wielding member, along with the United States, France, Britain and China.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will face Ukrainian and Western counterparts when U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan brief the 15-member council later on Thursday.

On the ground, Russia’s military fired nine missiles on the city of Zaporizhzhia, hitting a hotel and a power station, said regional governor Oleksandr Starukh. At least one person died with others trapped under rubble, he said. Zaporizhzhia is about 50 km (31 miles) from the nuclear plant of the same name.

In the Russian-held southern city of Melitopol, also in the Zaporizhzhia region, a blast hit a crowded market. The city’s exiled mayor said it had killed three soldiers and was staged by occupying forces to accuse Ukraine of terrorism, while a member of the Russian-installed local administration accused Ukrainian special services of trying to sow terror on the eve of a vote.

Pro-Moscow regional leaders announced referendums on joining Russia from Friday until Sept. 27 in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces – around 15% of Ukrainian territory.

Ukraine and its allies have denounced the plans as a “sham”.

Putin says Russia is carrying out a “special military operation” to demilitarise Ukraine, rid it of dangerous nationalists and defend Moscow from transatlantic alliance NATO. Kyiv and the West call Russia’s actions an unprovoked, imperialist land grab to reconquer a country that shook off Russian domination with the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the national security council, reiterated on Thursday Moscow’s threat to use nuclear weapons if necessary to protect itself and any incorporated territories. read more

Moscow does not fully control any of the four regions it is apparently seeking to annex, with only around 60% of Donetsk and 66% of Zaporizhzhia regions held by its forces.

Ukraine extended its hold on recaptured northeastern territory earlier this week as troops marched farther into areas abandoned by Russia, paving the way for a potential assault on occupation forces in the Donbas industrial heartland.

Russia and Ukraine carried out an unexpected prisoner swap on Wednesday, the largest since the war began and involving almost 300 people, including 10 foreigners and the commanders who led a prolonged Ukrainian defence of Mariupol earlier this year.

“We’re now out of the danger zone and on our way home to our families,” one of those whom Russian forces released, Britain’s Aiden Aislin, said in a video from a plane posted on social media. “By the skin of our teeth,” added also-released compatriot Shaun Pinner beside him.

Both men had been sentenced to death by a court in the Russian-backed breakaway region of Donetsk.

In Uzbekistan, where many move or travel to Russia for work, authorities warned of prosecution for citizens joining foreign armies. Russia offered fast-track citizenship to those who sign up and Ukraine said it had captured Uzbeks fighting for Putin.

Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade and Reuters bureaus; Writing by Michael Perry and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Mark Heinrich

Two Analyses:

New York Times: While many Western observers tend to view the Russian regime as a monolith, the reality is more complex. Though the war has significantly reduced the scope for dissent, there are still several competing ideological camps within the ruling elite capable of making their voices heard. For example, the so-called systemic liberals, mostly concentrated in state financial institutions and among oligarchs, have expressed concerns about the war’s consequences for the Russian economy. But it is another group, emboldened by the Kremlin’s failure to deliver victory in Ukraine, that is putting ever more pressure on the regime.

Call it the party of war. Made up of the security agencies, the Defense Ministry and outspoken media and political figures, it encompasses the entire radical nationalist ecosystem — and its adherents have been mounting a sustained critique of the Kremlin’s handling of the war in Ukraine. Powerful, well positioned and ideologically committed, they want a much more aggressive war effort. And judging from Mr. Putin’s address on Wednesday — where he announced the call-up of roughly 300,000 troops, gave his support to referendums in the four occupied regions of Ukraine on joining Russia and repeated the threat of nuclear escalation — they seem to be getting their way.

The party of war has been very vocal since April, when it became clear that the Russian Army was unable to conquer Kyiv and overthrow the Zelensky government. Moscow’s more modest goal — conquering the Donbas and securing a land bridge to annexed Crimea — appeared to be an intolerable retrenchment. Throughout, Russia’s hawks have benefited from an unexpected sounding board: the many Telegram channels, some of which have up to one million followers, run by war journalists embedded with the Russian Army. In a stream of constant commentary, the channels criticize the government’s indecisiveness and call for a full-scale conquest of Ukraine and the mass mobilization of the Russian population.

Through the summer, the level of criticism was manageable for the regime. But things began to change in August, when Darya Dugina, the daughter of one of Russia’s best-known imperial ideologists, Alexander Dugin, was assassinated in Moscow. The perpetrators and purpose of the attack are unknown. But the effect was clear. By bringing the conflict into one of the capital’s fanciest neighborhoods, the murder confirmed the hawks’ dim view of the war effort. Since Ms. Dugina’s death, the party of war has been using her “martyrdom” to renew calls for a full-scale war in overtly eschatological tones.

The military reversal of recent weeks has played into their hands. The infamous Chechen head of state, Ramzan Kadyrov, has called for “self-mobilization,” inviting regional elites to recruit at least 1,000 citizens each, raising about 85,000 new troops in total. The Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, another key figure on the nationalist right, called for a “maximum mobilization of forces and resources” and for the Kremlin to refer to the conflict as a war, rather than a “special operation.” And Yevgeny Prigozhin, the de facto head of a shadowy mercenary outfit known as the Wagner Group, has been recruiting prisoners to be sent to the front.

Their criticism has clearly cut through. While stopping short of mass conscription, Mr. Putin’s “partial mobilization,” as he put it, of some 300,000 troops is a major boost for the party of war. Likewise, plans to hold referendums in Ukraine’s occupied territories — Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, Kherson and Zaporizka in the south — are designed to redraw the terms of the conflict, in ways congenial to the president’s hawkish critics. There are signs too that Mr. Putin may escalate domestically, turning even more to repression.

The administration, for example, is stepping up indoctrination for schoolchildren and has instituted new restrictions on supposedly pernicious content in art. The security services, for their part, are laser-focused on stamping out dissent, arresting and jailing any form of opposition. In universities, students and professors are under growing pressure to cut links with their Western counterparts. Already extensive, these efforts could be pursued yet more doggedly, dragging many more Russians into the dragnet.

Such an approach is not without its risks. Among citizens, interest in the war and the accompanying rally-around-the-flag effect are waning. More intense repression coupled with an encroaching sense of the war’s human costs, as more of the country’s men are drawn into service, could turn them off it entirely. Young and educated Russians may leave the country in greater numbers than they already have.

There’s also no assurance that hard-liners in the ruling elite will accept domestic repression as a substitute for military success abroad — or that the influx of troops will substantially alter the dynamics on the battlefield. With an overdrawn and exhausted army, Mr. Putin must still find a way to deliver a military result that can be framed as at least a partial victory. It doesn’t help that the country’s major backers, China and India, have begun to voice concerns.

Even amid such difficulties, it would be a mistake to foresee a collapse of the regime, ensconced for two decades. But Mr. Putin, like any leader, depends on legitimacy to ensure his rule. And in the weeks and months ahead, he may discover that the ground beneath his feet has started to shift.

—— Marlene Laruelle. Ms. Laruelle is the director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the George Washington University and the author of, among other books, “Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West.”

The Institute for the Study of War, Update late Wednesday, Sept. 21 (Excerpts):

Putin’s announcement of “partial mobilization” on September 21 reflected many problems Russia faces in its faltering invasion of Ukraine that Moscow is unlikely to be able to resolve in the coming months.Putin’s order to mobilize part of Russia’s “trained” reserve, that is, individuals who have completed their mandatory conscript service, will not generate significant usable Russian combat power for months. It may suffice to sustain the current levels of Russian military manpower in 2023 by offsetting Russian casualties, although even that is not yet clear. It will occur in deliberate phases . . . likely precluding any sudden influx of Russian forces that could dramatically shift the tide of the war. Russia’s partial mobilization will thus not deprive Ukraine of the opportunity to liberate more of its occupied territory into and through the winter.

Putin emphatically did not say that the Russian nuclear umbrella would cover annexed areas of Ukraine nor did he tie mobilization to the annexation. He addressed partial mobilization, annexation referenda in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, and the possibility of nuclear war in his speech—but as separate topics rather than a coherent whole. The fact that he mentioned all three topics in a single speech was clearly meant to suggest a linkage, but he went out of his way to avoid making any such linkage explicit.

Putin framed his comments about the possibility of Russian nuclear weapons use in the context of supposed Western threats to use nuclear weapons against Russia. . . .

Russia’s partial mobilization will not transform the war this year and may or may not have a significant impact on Russia’s ability to continue operations at their current level next year. Ukraine and the West should neither dismiss it nor exaggerate it.

Key Takeaways

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announced “partial mobilization” will not materially affect the course of the war in the coming months.
Putin did not explicitly threaten to use nuclear weapons if Ukraine continues counter-offensive operations to liberate occupied areas after Russian annexation

One thought on “Putin’s Mobilization: Preparing for a bigger, more desperate war on Ukraine”

Ian Davis says:

September 22, 2022 at 1:11 pm

Those who read only their own “unbiased” media sources live in a world not that far removed from 1984.

The issue will never be what the “New York Times” or “The Institute for the Study of War” think. It will always be what the near future produces for those who live to see it. If one wants to understand Russia then Russian opinion should logically carry more weight than western opinion.

Ask yourselves where our planet currently is on “Kahn’s escalation ladder” and where things go if we continue to steadily climb it.

A Friendly Letter

Chuck Fager — Writer, Editor

Putin’s Mobilization: Preparing for a bigger, more desperate war on Ukraine

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One thought on “Putin’s Mobilization: Preparing for a bigger, more desperate war on Ukraine”

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