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Putin orders partial mobilization
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RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial military mobilization and vowed yesterday to use “all available means” to protect Russian territory, after Moscow-held regions of Ukraine suddenly announced annexation referendums.
Russian’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told state television that some 300,000 reservists would be called up.
“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,” Putin said.
He added that through its support for Ukraine the West was trying to “weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country,” while Shoigu said Moscow was “fighting not so much Ukraine as the collective West” in Ukraine.
Putin said the partial mobilization of its 2 million-strong military reservists was to defend Russia and its territories. The West did not want peace in Ukraine, he insisted.
In an interview with Russian state television, Shoigu said that students and those who served as conscripts would not be called up and that the majority of Russia’s reserves would not be drafted.
Putin accused Washington, London, Brussels of pushing Kiev to “transfer military operations to our territory.” Ukraine has sporadically struck targets inside Russia throughout the conflict, using long-range weapons supplied by the West.
The sudden flurry of moves by Moscow this week came with Russian forces in Ukraine facing their biggest challenge since the start of the conflict.
A sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive in recent weeks has seen Kiev’s forces retake hundreds of towns and villages that had been controlled by Russia for months.
In a rare admission of military losses from Moscow, Shoigu said yesterday that 5,937 Russian soldiers had died in Ukraine since the launch of the military intervention in February.
Putin restated his aim was to “liberate” the Donbas, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, and said most people there did not want to return.
In an apparently coordinated move, pro-Russian regional leaders on Tuesday announced referendums for September 23-27 in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, representing around 15 percent of Ukraine’s territory.
Russia already considers Luhansk and Donetsk, which together make up the Donbas region that Moscow partially occupied in 2014, to be independent states. Ukraine and the West consider all parts of Ukraine held by Russian forces to be illegally occupied.
Russia now holds about 60 percent of Donetsk and had captured nearly all of Luhansk by July after slow advances during months of intense fighting.
Those gains are now under threat after Russian forces were driven from neighboring Kharkiv Province this month, losing control of their main supply lines for much of the Donetsk and Luhansk frontlines.
Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin yesterday said that all efforts to peacefully address the Ukraine crisis should be supported.
China’s position on Ukraine has been consistent and clear, Wang told reporters when asked about the recent situation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
China maintains that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected, and the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter should be adhered to, Wang said, adding the legitimate security concerns of all countries should be taken seriously.
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