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 begin within the day.
Putin stopped short of a general mobilisation of Russia’s estimated 20 million-strong conscription potential. “We are talking about partial mobilisation, that is, only citizens who are currently in the reserve will be subject to conscription, and above all, those who served in the armed forces have a certain military specialty and relevant experience,” Putin said on September 21.
“The announcement of general mobilisation will be a significant blow to the Putin regime, because it will mean an admission that Russia has not been able to fulfil all the tasks set, that Putin's so-called ‘special operation’ has not achieved results and that a real war is underway,” Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesman, Vadym Skibytskyi, told the Kyiv Post.
British foreign office minister Gillian Keegan called the move an “escalation” and told Sky News, “Clearly it’s something that we should take very seriously.”
Heavy losses have thrown Russia onto the defensive during the summer. Russian defence minister Sergey Shoigu admitted that 6,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the seven-month conflict, the highest number Ru
ssia has yet quoted. American military officials last month estimated Russian dead at 20,000. Ukraine estimates them at 54,000.
Russia launched a drive to recruit volunteers in early July, but has struggled to do so. Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesman, Vadym Skibytskyi, told the Kyiv Post that a Third Army Corps, which Russia had said would be formed by the middle of August, is still not fully formed or functioning as a single combat unit.
Putin’s partial mobilisation comes a fortnight after Ukraine reclaimed 8,000 square kilometres of territory in Kharkiv. That counteroffensive is ongoing, and is set to meet a separate Ukrainian counteroffensive pushing north from Donetsk province in the area of Sviatohirsk. Here, Ukrainian border guards opened fire on September 20, killing four Russian saboteurs attempting to cross the Siversky Donets river.
The Kharkiv counteroffensive meets the Donetsk counteroffensive
Source: ISW
After the Kharkiv counteroffensive, Russia has found it especially difficult to motivate troops in the field. Ukraine’s military intelligence reported on September 14 that Russia is now deploying special units to liquidate deserters. “The commanders of the 4th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd army corps received a message: ‘There is a blocking squad posted in the rear lane. All retreating troops will be destroyed. Commander's order number 222. Deliver to all posts’,” it said.
On September 20, Russian lawmakers increased punishments for soldiers who surrender, desert or fail to report for military duty to 10 years in prison.
“Sham” referenda
A day before Putin’s mobilisation speech, Russian occupation authorities simultaneously announced referenda for September 23-27.
These are to determine whether the regions Moscow has overrun – Luhansk and Donetsk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizhia in the south - want to remain part of Ukraine or secede to Russia.
The importance of the move is legal, said the Institute for the Study of War. “Putin’s illegal annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory will broaden the domestic legal definition of ‘Russian’ territory under Russian law, enabling the Russian military to legally and openly deploy conscripts already in the Russian military to fight in eastern and southern Ukraine,” it said.
European leaders roundly condemned the move. “This has no legal standing,” said French president Emmanuel Macron. “The very idea of organising referenda in territories that have experiences war… is the sign of cynicism.”
“It is very, very clear that these sham referenda cannot be accepted and are not covered by international law,” said German chancellor Olaf Scholz.
A porous front
Ukrainian forces are openly targeting Russian occupation authorities in urban centres, while partisans have stepped up their resistance behind the front lines.
Donetsk city’s occupation authorities said Ukrainian forces shelled their administration building in the city centre on September 17.
Tass reported an explosion in the prosecutor’s office in the Russian-occupied city of Luhansk on September 16.
Loud explosions on the same day in occupied Melitopol, in Zaporizhia province, were attributed to the city’s air defences swinging into action.
The Russian deputy administrator of Kherson, Ekaterina Gubareva, blamed Ukraine for a missile attack on the administration building in Kherson city.
Russian news agency Tass reported that Russian forces “neutralised” a group of armed men in Kherson city on September 17 – likely Ukrainian partisans. Sergey Eliseev, Russia’s head Kherson administrator, said he was stepping up patrols in the province.
Ongoing counteroffensive
Ukraine clearly remains on the counteroffensive. This emerges even from Russian announcements of tactical victories.
Russia said it had fought off a 120-strong detachment of Ukrainian special forces who tried to form a bridgehead in occupied Kherson on September 15. The forces apparently tried to land on the Kinburn Spit, a sandbar that extends into the Black Sea.
“The goal is very simple,” said Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the occupation administration of Kherson. “If you get on the Kinburn Spit, look at the map, you can almost walk to… Kherson [city].”
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in northwestern Kherson on August 29, which has already recaptured 500 square kilometres of territory. Had they formed a bridgehead on the Kinburn Spit, Ukrainian forces could have opened up a second front to advance on Kherson city from the south.
Russian forces also said they had thwarted attempts by “dozens of assault groups” to penetrate the occupied parts of neighbouring Zaporizhia region, said Volodymyr Rogov, chairman of the “We Are Together With Russia” group. “This is a permanent process; it happens throughout the day,” Rogov said.
The Crimea is no longer a reliable launch pad for Russian offensives. British intelligence said Russia has now “almost certainly” relocated its Kilo-class nuclear-powered submarines from Sevastopol naval base to Krasnodar Krai in mainland Russia. On July 31 Ukraine attacked the Sevastopol naval base, wounding personnel.
Last month, Russia reportedly relocated ten fighter planes from Belbek air field in Crimea, after Ukraine successfully targeted the Saki airfield, destroying as many as nine fighter jets.
Maj.-Gen. Mick Ryan visited Ukraine during the Kharkiv offensive and said the Ukrainians are now confident of victory.
“It is not a pride that features flag waving and empty patriotic gestures. It is a quiet, humble pride that one finds in the alert posture of every soldier, and confident step of the officials and military officers with whom I met,” he wrote on social media.
“Nuclear terrorism”
In addition to mobilisation and plebiscites, Russia’s third reaction to its recent battlefield losses has been to threaten Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including nuclear facilities. Putin said this was in retaliation for Ukraine’s targeting of Russian infrastructure.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian cruise missiles fired from a Russian Tupolev-95 on flood barriers upstream of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk region on September 14 were intended to flood the city and leave it without power, creating a civil emergency. Russia also fired missiles at power plants in northern Ukraine.
“Just recently, the Russian armed forces delivered a couple of sensitive blows. Let’s consider those as warning strikes,” Putin said on September 16 in reference to the strikes. “If the situation develops in this way, our response will be more serious.”
Just to drive the point home, Russia’s response did become more serious. Ukraine’s nuclear energy administrator, Energoatom, said a Russian missile struck 300 metres from the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power station in southern Ukraine on September 19, in what Energoatom called an act of “nuclear terrorism”.
On September 20, Ukraine’s prosecutor reported the arrest of an informer in Mykolaiv, whose job it was to photograph critical infrastructure facilities, including the local thermal power station.
“Beaten by Ukrainian army on the battlefield, Russian cowards are now at war with our critical infrastructure and civilians,” wrote Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba.
The International Atomic Energy Agency on September 15 called on Russia to “immediately cease all actions against, and at, the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and any other nuclear facility in Ukraine, in order for the competent Ukrainian authorities to regain full control over all nuclear facilities within Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.”
Putin isolated
At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Uzbekistan on September 16, Putin found himself isolated over his war in Ukraine, with world leaders that generally express sympathy towards Russia showing skepticism and concern.
“I know that today’s era is not of war,” said Indian prime minister Narendra Modi. “We discussed this with you on the phone several times, that democracy and dialogue touch the entire world.” Speaking of the serious food shortages facing the developing world partly due to the war in Ukraine, Modi told Putin, “We must find some way out, and you, too, must contribute to that.”
Chinese leader Xi Jinping said he had “questions and concerns” about the war, and spoke of the need to “inject stability” into world affairs.
“It is very clear that China is not happy with this war, and it is particularly unhappy with the global economic impact,” said Plamen Tonchev, head of the Asia unit at the Institute for International Economic Relations in Athens, who attended the Samarkand summit.
“It’s not too much of a stretch to say that Putin found himself for the first time ever so isolated. Even Russia’s underbelly, Central Asia, is keeping Russia at arm’s length,” he told Al Jazeera.