Russian president Vladimir Putin last week made two major announcements which is likely to change the course of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Firstly, he announced troop mobilization and called up reservists to keep control of Ukrainian territories that Russia occupied in the initial phases of the war and secondly, the holding of local referendums to absorb them into Russia, in which the Kremlin claimed to have achieved sweeping victory.
While the referendums and the annexation of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia remains as a tool to legitimize the Russian gains amid Ukrainian counteroffensive, it also acts as a tool to bolster Putin’s mobilization call.
The recent mobilization drive and the annexation of the Ukrainian territories are related because the Kremlin is facing difficulties convincing the Russian people of a victory in the so-called ‘military operation’ in Ukraine.
Reports of Russian men fleeing the country through its land borders to Mongolia, Latvia and Finland to escape Putin’s troop call-up were reported earlier this week.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian officials expressed concerns that the troop call-up drive will likely now concentrate on mobilizing Ukrainian citizens as they will be considered Russian citizens after the annexation of the four occupied regions of Ukraine will be formalized during a ceremony at the Kremlin on Friday with Putin expected to address Russians.
Citing Vadym Skibitsky of Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR), the Kremlin will likely announce the mobilization in occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia Oblasts following Friday’s event.
The separatist armies in Donetsk and Luhansk were already routed earlier in the months of June and July. A report by the BBC, the Donetsk militia alone has lost 55% of its original force.
The Donetsk People’s Militia and Luhansk People’s Militia are fighting alongside Russian forces and have conscripted almost all of the male population in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, signaling that the Kremlin is failing to muster enough support from Russian youth in urban centers like Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Petro Andryushenko, Mariupol administration official, said male migrants from temporarily occupied Donetsk, Makiivka and Horlivka were being conscripted.
Luhansk’s Ukrainian governor Serhiy Haidai pointed out that Russian border officials are not letting approximately 1,000 Ukrainian refugees from occupied territories in Pskov Oblast flee to Latvia
Russia is being accused of conscripting men only from the nation’s poorer regions for its so-called military operation in Ukraine. A report by Foreign Policy says the Kremlin ramped up mobilization in sparsely populated regions of the country. Men from Dagestan, Buryatia and Yakutia were among those who led the assault on Kyiv in the initial phase of the war.
Though Russia is secretive about the casualties it suffers, reports indicate that forces composed of Russian ethnic minorities were among those who suffered a large number of deaths, compared to only 15 people from the Moscow region who were killed in the frontlines.
(with inputs from AFP, ISW and Foreign Policy)
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