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Russia Announces Partial Mobilization
Updated below (8:45 UTC)
The expected TV speech by the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, advertised for yesterday evening, did happen only this morning.
Putin announced a partial mobilization of military reserves:
Only citizens who are currently in the reserve and, above all, those who served in the ranks of the Armed Forces, have certain military specialties and relevant experience will be subject to conscription for military service.
Those called up for military service before being sent to the units will necessarily undergo additional military training taking into account the experience of a special military operation.
Additionally all military service contracts currently in force (usually 3 to 12 months) are extended indefinitely.
Putin said that the current conflict was instigated by the West, noting that the Western countries seek the destruction and disintegration of Russia. He said that the West had been supporting international terrorists, promoted the infrastructure of the NATO offensive close to Russia's borders and fostered Russophobia.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said (video, Sputnik report) that 300,000 reservist will be mobilized. Conscripts and people currently studying will not be send to Ukraine.
He also said that, so far, 5,937 Russian soldiers have died during the war in Ukraine. (This number does not include the militia of the DPR and LPR, or the Wagner group, who have done most of the frontline work and thus have had higher losses.) Shoigu puts Ukrainian losses at some 62,000 killed and some 50,000 wounded. (I regard this as a low estimate.)
Russia's total military reserve, people who have previously gone through military training, is 25 million. It also has the equipment to arm those forces.
There are rumors that the Ukraine is preparing for an all out offensive, mobilizing and preparing new units from Kiev and further west for one big push against the Russian and allied forces. It will take a few months to prepare for this. The Ukraine will need much more equipment and ammunition from the 'west', including 'western' tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, and has yet to train troops to be able to use it. It is likely intending to start the offensive only in spring.
The call up Russia announced now may have the intent to draw Kiev into a premature launch of its general offensive. The mobilized Russian troops will take about three months to be ready for war. Russia could thus launch its own offensive during the winter season. In the meantime constant defensive work will continue to severely degrade the Ukrainian units which are currently on or near the frontlines.
With a force of an additional 300,000 troops, far beyond the 100,000 to 150,000 engaged now in the war, the Russia forces could change their tactics from the slow grind that is happening now into a larger scale maneuver war with heavy strikes into the operational depth of the Ukrainian army.
Belarus, allied with the Russian Federation, is also in the process of getting ready for war. It could, as it had threatened before, cut of the supply lines from the 'west' into the Ukraine in the western part of that country.
Should current Ukrainian attacks on civilians and infrastructure in Russia and the Donbas regions continue, we can expect that the Russian forces will start to degrade Ukrainian infrastructure on a large scale. The electricity and railway networks would be the primary targets.
Update:
Some two weeks ago a successful Ukrainian offensive led to the retreat of Russian troops in the Kharkov region. That at least is the 'western' version of that story. A different narrative is that the Russian troops intentionally withdrew from the region to raise Russian calls for an escalation of the war. The Izium withdrawal was thus probably a mere catalyst for 'starting in earnest':
The Russian public, which at first did not fully understand why the war was necessary, has since grown in its awareness. It now understands the big game that is played against its country. It may soon demand to adjust the level of resources put into the war to the one needed for a decisive victory. Polls will clarify if or when that point is reached.
That is why Dima concludes that: "We can say that today was the best ever [..] day for the Russians in the territory of Ukraine."
It is now probably assured that they will be liberated. One way or another.
I also believe that the withdrawal from the Izium region, which left behind a significant number of pro-Russian civilians under deadly threats from fascist 'filtration' groups, will be the catalyst for a significant escalation on the Russian side.
Finally the gloves are coming off.
Update:
Yves Smith just published an English version of Putin's speech and the decree on mobilization:
Below is the Russian transcript of Putin’s morning speech announcing a partial mobilization of Russia starting September 21. There is apparently not an official English translation up yet, and in any event, the Kremlin site is blocked in the US (which it hasn’t been since early in the Special Military Operation) and even to friendly VPN users in some countries in Asia. So we are also posting a machine translation and will replace it with an official English translation when one becomes available.
We are also posting an English version of the mobilization order, which here and apparently in the original Russian has Item 7 missing. You can theoretically find the order here: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69391.
As you can see, Putin refines and extends his critique of the “collective West” and its campaign to preserve the unipolar order at the expense of the Global South, and its campaign against Russia. Towards the end, Putin states: …
@Rudi Ruessel #7:
Who is not afraid of escalation and atomic warfare soon?
How can this war ever end?
People like you must go into the streets and protest, explaining to your clueless fellow citizens that this war is not a result of “Putin’s thuggery”, but a result of the West carrying out a violent coup in 2014 and installing an extreme Russophobic regime in the Ukraine, whose territories have been part of Russia for hundreds of years (since 1503 for the north-eastern part, since 1654 for most of the rest—and that is if we ignore the times of Rus’), where 70% of population speaks Russian, where a third of population have relatives in Russia, all of whose eastern and southern cities were founded during the times of the Russian Empire and populated with people from all over Russia who spoke Russian and Russian only since the day these cities were founded, etc. As a result of Russophobes’ cultural genocide, there is now not a single school in the Ukraine that teaches in Russian, Russian language is either severely limited or outright banned on TV, radio, cinema, in government institutions, in service industry (cafes, restaurants), etc.
Not only that, but even though 6 million Ukrainians served in the Red Army and fought and won against the Nazis during WW2, while only up to 150 thousand (maximum claim) Ukrainians served in the UPA and helped the Nazis, the extreme Russophobes are now white-washing and even glorifying Ukrainian Nazis, destroying the monuments to Red Army soldiers, preventing May 9 celebrations of Soviet victory over Nazism, etc.
You must also explain to your clueless fellow citizens that in 2014, Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts have refused to recognize the new illegal authorities, refused to be forced to stop speaking Russian, refused to break economic relations with Russia, refused to engage in anti-Russian propaganda, refused to study Ukrainian Nationalists’ distorted “history”, refused to stop celebrating Soviet victory over Nazism, refused to white-wash and glorify Ukrainian Nazis, etc., and for that the new “democratic” Ukraine has sent tanks, artillery and warplanes against them.
If you don’t want to do this at times exhausting, but crucial work of explaining basic facts to your fellow citizens, then don’t complain if one day your window suddenly turns bright as the Sun, then the glass bursts out, and when you look outside, you see a gigantic mushroom of radioactive dust rising on the horizon, realizing that you will die of hunger in a few weeks.
Posted by: S | Sep 21 2022 10:03 utc | 51
Posted by: António Ferrão | Sep 21 2022 9:51 utc | 42
More on this African Perspective
Russia/Ukraine Crisis: Nuclear Threat Shadows War Again – “The consequences would be devastating”, Biden told Putin – South Africa shows Biden a red line
…
Change of tactics in sight
The strategy for this war is being questioned with increasing insistence within Russian military and political society, with the state media echoing doubts about the Kremlin’s options – which is to say they were allowed to do so with the intention to measure and test the pulse of civil society -, making heard the voices that want to see Moscow go up a level in this offensive, leaving aside the inherent limitations of the “special military operation” defined by Vladimir Putin, employing only professional troops, without resorting to reservists, with a clearly limited range of military targets, which could, for example, lead Russia to target railway and road infrastructure, rendering them useless, dams, power stations, or even move towards aerial bombardment with the use of supersonic heavy bombers such as the TU-160 (Tupolev) etc., which has not yet been seen, except for occasional cases, such as the last year to stop enemy troops from crossing the river.
But in Moscow there is no question of resorting to nuclear munitions, as some Western analysts have admitted can happen in the face of obvious losses at the front of Russian combat forces, such as, for example, the “small” range tactical nuclear warheads, whose felt only in a limited area, and which were designed to contain sudden enemy advances with threat of destruction of combat capability, being part of the arsenals of both the Russian Federation and the USA.
Also, weapons of widespread destruction such as chemical or biological ones are not in the range of possibilities, being, like nuclear, a clear element of the red lines drawn by US President Joe Biden, who returned, in a recent interview with CBS , warning of the risks of a devastating response to Moscow if it takes that step in this war, in which Washington and its European allies are directly interested in providing vital and unlimited arms and financial support to Kiev with the admitted objective, as they said without faltering Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin from bending Russia and weakening it until it becomes irrelevant in the world.
By the way, a sign that nobody knows for sure what will happen in the next few days, and when winter is already knocking on the door of the Northern Hemisphere, with its temperatures, in that part of Europe, easily reaching minus 30º, is that the US military leaders ordered the elevation of the state of readiness of their forces (NATO) in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland – the biggest supporter of a direct war of the Atlantic Alliance with the Russian Federation -, for fear of a large scale reaction by part of Moscow in the face of the crippling difficulties for a military superpower felt on the front.
From Moscow it did not take long to respond. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, responded to Joe Biden saying that Moscow does not even understand the US President’s words because its Russian nuclear doctrine is very clear and written, accessible to all interested, and limits the use of the arsenal nuclear – the largest in the world, by the way – when faced with an existential threat to the Russian Federation, which, he concluded, is not the case with what is currently happening in the conflict in Ukraine.
But it is equally true that Vladimir Putin also drew red lines to the Americans and their European allies, especially the United Kingdom, when he told them that everything would change perspective if they provide long-range missiles to the Ukrainians, and recalled, what Biden agreed, that on the day that NATO and Russian troops directly target each other, little or nothing will be able to prevent an escalation to nuclear and the more than certain end of Humanity as we know it.
In truth, although it is not a thing for now, this possibility grows with each passing day without seeing an end to this conflict, largely because of the massive Western/NATO support for Ukraine as a means of defeating the Russians, as, for For example, the President of the European Commission, the German Ursula Leyen, has also said this, having even guaranteed last week that the European Union will increase and not reduce financial and military support (individual countries) to Kiev, as well as increase sanctions , the most violent ever applied to one country, Russia, even if this will tragically increase the galloping economic crisis that is ravaging western Europe, the USA, with devastating effects on almost the entire world.
And with negative prospects for the coming months, because Moscow’s sanctions and reprisals are reducing the volume of natural gas and crude exported by Russia, leaving the European Union on the brink of an unprecedented energy crisis, which could have economic and financial losses impossible to anticipate right now.
TBC
Ricardo Bordalo in Novo Jornal, 19 de Setembro de 2022
Posted by: António Ferrão | Sep 21 2022 10:27 utc | 56
I posted this, about the futility of worry, on another thread just before the news came in of President Putin’s speech and partial mobilisation and other actions
In this connection- One point many emphasise is a decision to recalibrate & speed up the integration of 4 oblasts into the RF – this reaction, even if delayed, is understandable
Besides the mobilisation will take three months to put in place – and it may be assumed that PP prepared for such a winter, not that winter caught him off guard
PP is such a careful patient planner that the manner of this announcement has worried (!) one or two – however it can been seen that the mobilisation must have planned for some time
Now some are worrying that nuclear weapons will be used….the least one can say is that there will be nothing more for them to worry about after that
Whatever happens the feeble will worry, while the RF proceeds to execute their plans, come what may
SeanAU | Sep 21 2022 9:21 utc | 309
Your posts consist of endless speculations about that which the RF intended and in what timeframe and why, and how, now all of a sudden as it were, they have realised their mistakes and seek to correct them
« They got it badly wrong etc, my best guess, etc »
This might pass if you posted this set of opinions once – but you go on and with variations and variants, again all speculative, ditto your homegrown solutions
You are writing as if a would be military expert from, I take it, very far away, and with little direct knowledge of the events on the ground, I take it you do not read Russian and have no live sources etc etc
In other words your tactical and strategic advice to the RF is very ill informed amateur, but written in capital letters exclamation marks, strident
Many of those commentors whose opinions and reporting are followed/admired have not only sources, military experience, russian language etc – but a reasonable tone of voice which always emphasises two basic points
–No one knows the RF plans for war – President Putin has always expressed very limited goals for the SMO and emphasised it’s nature as not war but as a special operation :
and
–PP has also stressed that this is a major turning point in history and that the US and the now the EU have effectively declared war on Russia
I’ll not go to the trouble of providing you with links to the Kremlin website – but you can read all this there
If you think that anyone will take seriously your statements that The RF did not better anticipate how this operation would develop than you are able to point out to them, I would say that you are misguided
President Putin does not go to the lengths of providing a timescale, nor make comparisons by reference, say, to the Afghan debâcle, but he discusses events in such terms
This war is, very probably a 10 year war or at least a many year war – it is the opinion of those often cited experts I refer to above, the RF has long been preparing for this many year war, and is in much better shape than the USEU, on the evidence so far, to weather this :Putin has said as much himself
You, par contre et au contraire, are in a very great rush to get it done – this attitude applies to the Ukies to the Ynaks and to the EU, but not to the RF (not the CCP, not the Iranians etc)
Your attitude is thus the attitude of the enemies of the RF, but expressed with an apparent concern pity and the need to take care of the RF
So rethink where your interests and loyalties lie : if with the RF learn to express yourself accordingly, and I mean better : if with the fiveyes keep on worrying concerning and lamenting
PS the bucket of shit thing is worthy of Zelensky, bravo!
Posted by: Gerrard White | Sep 21 2022 11:10 utc | 73
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