In an escalation of what Moscow calls its military operation in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has announced “partial” mobilisation in Russia.
“I consider it necessary to support the proposal of the Defence Ministry and of the General Staff to conduct partial mobilisation in the Russian Federation,” Putin said during a televised address to the nation on Wednesday.
The Russian leader said he had signed a decree on the partial mobilisation, which is due to start on Wednesday.
“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,” he added.
Putin’s address to the nation came a day after Russian-controlled regions in eastern and southern Ukraine announced plans to hold votes on becoming integral parts of Russia as the conflict reaches nearly seven months.
Putin added that Russia will use all available means to protect its territory, accusing the West of seeking to “destroy” the country.
“When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. This is not a bluff,” he said.
[beware of western propaganda]
What does it mean?
Enhanced security for Donbass region following the votes on becoming integral parts of Russia.
I’ve heard it’s about 300,000 soldiers, something like 1% of Russia’s total mobilization potential.
edit: saw you already put that in (one of the sources). Am an idiot.
I saw those figures too and not sure how they arrived at them. The total potential is pretty much every single working age male in Russia. Doesn’t seem like a very good metric lol, I would hope they don’t need to conscript every single person in Russia to fight a war.
If the actual number is really 300K soldiers then I think it’s time for game over in Ukraine. They tried to denazify it peacefully, But sadly it won’t work that way and they’ve finally realized that.
Make no mistake, up until this point I struggle to call the current war “humane” but it was conducted with the type of strategy you would expect invading a historic sister nation that many remember being part of the same Union in their lifetime. Russians pulled up to the gates of Kiev and hoped for a reasonable surrender or popular uprising to save lives and prevent a drawn out urban siege. Instead, Ukraine mobilized the fucking Volkstrum, Einsatzgruppen, youth brigades and Strafbataillon all at once completely willing to kill every last civilian to protect their regime. I genuinely think the Russians didn’t expect that, assuming their Slavic brothers still had some familiarity and would opt to negotiate rather than having been fully captured by their western overlords. They didn’t want to “liberate” Kiev the same way the Americans “liberated” Seoul and and Pyongyang. So they pulled back, refocused solely on the East, and have been using a strategy of creeping artillery and slow infantry pushes to move the line slowly but consistently in a way that-- theoretically anyway-- limits civilian casualties. Less American “shock and awe” more a WW1 style crawl with the line moving slowly enough that the theater of combat should only be military targets. At least, if the fucking Ukraine Army werent holding civilians captive to use as human shields or conscripts.
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