For the Kyiv Postan English-language Kyiv newspaper that also publishes in Ukrainian, Putin’s announcements on the morning of September 21 have only one explanation: “The success of the Ukrainian army’s counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region and the liberation of many settlements in the south and east changed the course of the war. Vladimir Putin was obliged either to abandon his plan to occupy Ukraine or to proclaim mobilization and continue military operations. The President of the Russian Federation “has chosen the second solution, despite the risks associated with this decision”.
It was then Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu who said that the Russian army planned to call up 300,000 reservists, before pointing out that Moscow had “colossal resources in terms of mobilization, almost 25 million men”.
“Will the Russians support Putin’s decision? ”
But, wonders Kyiv Post, “les Will Russians support Putin’s decision? ” A question “essential”, car :
“It’s one thing to support Putin and rejoice in his imperial ambitions from his kitchen, it’s another to join the fights yourself or send your children to war.”
Referendums are a sign that the Kremlin is panicking
In addition to the partial mobilization, the Russian authorities also announced that referendums would be organised, on the subject of a possible attachment to the Russian Federation, between September 23 and 27 in the oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporijjia.
What, from the point of view of the Ukrainian activist and volunteer Yury Kasyanov, interviewed by the information site Obozrevatel, “testifies to the panic which reigns in the Kremlin” :
“The occupier claims new territories of Ukraine to have a free hand to press the ‘last red button’, namely nuclear blackmail.”
“Under the pretext of ‘protecting’ ‘its’ territories in Ukraine, the enemy could decide to use tactical nuclear weapons.” Proof, according to Kassianov, that “the Kremlin is lost and no longer knows what to do”.
Russians “do not care whether the relevant oblasts are fully occupied or not. […] They could in the same way announce a referendum in the kyiv region, take a small piece of territory in the Chernobyl zone ten meters from the border and proclaim the holding of a referendum”.
A vain attempt to raise the stakes
“These pseudo-referendums, says President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party, Servant of the People, in a statement published by the Ukrainian News Agency Interfax, will not stop the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian army and the liberation of all temporarily occupied territories.”
On the website of the Lviv daily, Vissoky Castleformer Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin however considers that he was “absolutely necessary” for Vladimir Putin “to raise the stakes precisely now”. “The farce of the referendums was planned for later”, he recalls, but by rushing this decision, the master of the Kremlin would have in fact “two objectives”.
Firstly, “deflect the anger of its nationalists and fascists after the defeat in Kharkiv. They are already beginning to denounce his weakness, and that is the beginning of the end. This attempt to quickly ‘sell’ ‘New Russia’ to them is intended to save the regime and Putin himself”. On the other hand, “force the West, and first of all the United States, to start talking to him again”.
Consequences not to be taken lightly
However, comments journalist and activist Serhiy Vysotskiy, also on the website of Vissoky Castle, if partial mobilization and referenda constitute “Putin’s penultimate asset in this game, the last [étant] nuclear weapons”, you don’t have to “not take 300,000 lightly [Russes] additional – that would be a mistake. This is the guarantee that the war will still last an indefinite time. Which means losses for us”.
“For us, it will be very difficult”, recognizes Vissotskiy. But, he concludes:
“Putin has no room for manoeuvre. A special operation can be folded by saying that the mission is accomplished. A war in which the entire population is mobilized, no. This is already a zero-sum game. A defeat in this war is guaranteed death. From the hand of the crowd or its entourage. But death guaranteed.”