Russia reacts to Ukraine’s battlefield successes with mobilisation, “sham” polls and “nuclear terrorism”

Vladimir Putin plans to triple troops on the ground and annex occupied territories, and threatens to bomb Ukraine’s nuclear power plants

Russian president Vladimir Putin has reacted to Ukraine’s recent successful counteroffensives by announcing he will raise a new army of 300,000 troops.

That’s two-to-three times the estimated size of the force he sent into Ukraine on February 24th to take over the country, and marks the biggest Russian mobilisation since World War Two.

Mobilisation was to…