Good morning,
Putin’s War
Russian leader Vladimir Putin is about to escalate a conflict he can’t win, and he is taking us closer to nuclear war say experts, as he tries to illegally break away part of Ukraine and annex it to Russia.
Putin is dangerously doubling down instead of withdrawing his forces as we heard in his nation wide address this morning.
He announced Russia will support officially breaking away parts of Ukraine and he has again threatened the use of nuclear weapons, saying “I’m not bluffing” saying it was Russia first threatened by nuclear war, not the other way around.
Putin has announced partial mobilization.
Tuesday, I started hearing rumours swirling in Russia about martial law, and the idea soon the borders would close because Putin would announce mobilization - the calling up of 2 million reservists to the army in desperate need of manpower.
Later in the day Russian lawmakers passed new rules to make jail terms stiffer for soldiers who abandon their units and runaway. There has been a lot of that lately, as Russian troops have been running for their lives. And they imposed increased penalties for offences committed during mobilization (Up to 10 years in prison for desertion).
Suddenly so called ‘Kremlin backed separatists’ in Russian occupied territories in Ukraine announced snap referendums to join Russia. The referendums will be held over five days, starting on Friday, in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk - as well as Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in the south.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan immediately noted it’s impossible to hold referendums in areas currently being brutally fought over, and called the attempts by Russia “a sham” and said the “bottom line is Russian is throwing together referendums as they lose on the battle field”.
French President Macron also called it a sham as did many European leaders from Germany to Britain. Macron said “if it wasn’t so tragic we’d laugh. It’s an imitation of democracy”.
No one in the West will accept the results of a vote, you can already understand will end with Russia claiming the territories as part of Putin’s new Empire.
But Russia will quickly say any attack on those areas is an attack on Russia itself, and it is within its right to use whatever means to defend itself. Former Russian President Medvedev and member of Putin’s security council already posted on Telegram that Russia will be able to use all means necessary to defend that territory.
It’s not the first time Medvedev has threatened nuclear war on the west but thats now being echoed widely on Russian TV, as a leading commentator even called for nuking London on Monday when world leaders were gathered for the Queens funeral. The rhetoric inside Russia has become that bad.
Here’s why Putin’s new strategy is an act of panic and desperation and likely doomed to fail. Calling up reservists is a massive under taking and it will take months to train them and push them to the battlefield.
Even if Russia can bring in new soldiers to fight, much of the arms they need to fight were destroyed in recent battles in Ukraine. So Putin has also ordered factories to start producing more weapons, more quickly.
The Russian public will quickly turn sour on Putins war. It’s one thing supporting a conflict from your sofa in front of your TV, but when you have to go and fight in it, or your sons or daughters, it becomes quite another thing.
Mobilization will draw in Russians from big centres like Moscow and St. Petersburg, who up until now have largely escaped Putins war which after all, was begun for almost no other reason than to massage his ‘pandemic induced’ notion of a restoring a Russian Empire.
What’s critical at this stage of the war, as in all wars, is time.
Ukraine is advancing and the west is pouring in more weapons as we speak. These areas holding referendums are not static, and more territory will be reclaimed by Ukraine despite any sham votes.
Next Ukraine will soon attack Crimea itself, claimed by Russia in another sham vote back in 2014.
Putin as I know him, will carry on this war for years. He doesn’t care how many Russians die in Ukraine, and he won’t back down even as his economy is choked by sanctions and becomes a pariah state.
There is no reasoning with Putin’s Kremlin at this point. Only victory for Ukraine will restore stability in Europe. And that means backing a long war, about to become more bloody and brutal thanks to Putin’s Russia.
Dana Lewis