Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization of the Russian population on Wednesday morning. In a televised speech, Putin accused “the West” of turning the Ukrainian people into “cannon fodder”, international and Russian news agencies reported. The measure would be necessary to “liberate” Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. The partial mobilization will begin immediately this Wednesday – a decree to that effect has already been signed.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu clarified after Putin what the partial mobilization entails. Some 300,000 reservists will be called up to fight on the Ukrainian front in the near future. According to the American Institute for the Study of War, Russia has a total of about two million reserviststhough few of them have been trained recently.
Putin also had some threats to the West ready in his speech. If Russia is threatened, “we will use all the resources we have.” “This is not a bluff,” Putin warned. “Those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing winds can turn in their direction.”
Referendum
Hawks in Putin’s government have been pushing for mobilization for some time, because otherwise the war in Ukraine would be unwinnable. According to others, the measure is a risky step, because young Russians from large cities such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg must also be sent to the front, which can lead to social unrest. The call to mobilize has grown louder in recent days due to Ukraine’s recaptures last week in Russian-occupied territory.
On Tuesday, the war escalated further when authorities in the Zaporizhzhya region and the self-declared people’s republics of Luhansk and Donetsk announced that they would hold a referendum between September 23 and 27 on whether these areas should belong to the Russian Federation. A similar referendum is likely to be held in the southern Kherson region soon. It is expected that the results of these polls will be determined in advance and that the pro-Russian authorities will commit fraud to their own advantage.
Putin was originally supposed to give his Wednesday morning televised speech Tuesday evening, but it was postponed for unknown reasons. This may have had to do with Putin’s desire to reach more Russians – including those in the Far East for whom it was already nighttime in the Moscow evening.
Also read: Moscow opts for further escalation with annexation of occupied territories
This article is also part of our live blog: Putin announces partial mobilization in televised speech