Putin orders mobilisation for Ukraine, says nuclear threat is 'not a bluff'
President Vladimir
Putin ordered the mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of Russians to
fight in Ukraine on Wednesday while moving to annex Ukrainian
territory and making what Washington denounced as an overt threat to use nuclear weapons.
Western officials called the moves reckless acts of
desperation by a leader facing the prospect of defeat on the battlefield after
seven months of war against a smaller foe and predicted they would do little
to salvage Russia's war effort.
Flights out of Russia quickly sold out following
Putin's announcement, while jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny called for
mass demonstrations against the mobilisation.
A monitoring group
said more than 100 people were arrested in protests in the hours after Putin's
speech.
In a country that
counts millions of former conscripts as reservists, Putin's "partial
mobilisation" decree did not spell out who would be called up. Defence
Secretary Sergei Shoigu said 300,000 people would be mobilised from a pool of
25 million. Contracts of professional troops would be extended indefinitely.
Putin effectively
announced plans to annex four Ukrainian provinces, saying Moscow would assist
with referendums on joining Ukraine's Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions to Russia, and implement the results.
A day earlier,
Russian-installed officials in the four regions announced plans for such votes
from later this week, which Western countries denounced as sham plebiscites.
Putin said, offering
no evidence, that officials in NATO states had threatened to use nuclear weapons against Russia, but should know that
"the weathervane can turn towards them".
Russia "also
has various means of destruction", he said. "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. It's not a bluff."
Biden, in a speech
to world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly, responded: "Again, just
today, President Putin has made overt nuclear threats against Europe, in a
reckless disregard for the responsibilities of the non-proliferation
regime."
Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky said he thought Putin would be unlikely to use nuclear
weapons but that the threat showed why it was important to stand up to him.
"I don't
believe that he will use these weapons. I don't think the world will allow him
to use these weapons," Zelensky said in remarks reported by Germany's
Bild newspaper.
"Tomorrow Putin
can say: 'Apart from Ukraine, we also want a part of Poland, otherwise we will
use nuclear weapons.' We cannot make these compromises," Zelensky said.
DANGEROUS AND
RECKLESS
Calling a
mobilisation in Russia is a gamble for Putin, after months in which the Kremlin
had promised it would do no such thing.
The war has enjoyed
popular support in a country where independent media have all been shut down
and all public criticism of the "special military operation" is
banned.
For many ordinary
Russians, especially in the urban middle classes, the prospect of being called
up to fight would be the first hint of the war affecting them personally.
"It is clear
that the criminal war is getting worse, deepening, and Putin is trying to
involve as many people as possible in this," jailed opposition leader
Navalny said in a video message from jail recorded and published by his
lawyers.
"He wants to
smear hundreds of thousands of people in this blood."
By 1530 GMT, Russian
police had detained more than 100 across Russia for protesting against the
mobilisation, the independent protest monitoring group OVD-Info said.
In an interview with
Reuters, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg denounced Putin's threat to
use nuclear weapons as "dangerous and reckless rhetoric" and said the
mobilisation plan demonstrated "that the war is not going according to his
plans".
As for any potential
Russian use of nuclear arms, "We will make sure that there is no
misunderstanding in Moscow about exactly how we will react," Stoltenberg
said. "The most important thing is to prevent that from happening and that
is why we have been so clear in our communications with Russia about the
unprecedented consequences."
In his speech to the
U.N. General Assembly, Biden said Russia had violated the U.N. charter by
invading a neighbouring state.
"This war is
about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and
Ukraine’s right to exist as a people," the American president said.
"Wherever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe... That should
make your blood run cold."
Putin's announcement
came after weeks in which Russia's invasion force was routed in
northeastern Ukraine, with thousands of Russian troops fleeing frontline
positions in the biggest shift in momentum since the war's early weeks.
Ukrainian forces
have captured some of the main supply routes that had served Russia's front
line in the east, and say they are now poised to push deeper into territory
that Moscow had captured over months of heavy fighting.
"No amount of
threats and propaganda can hide the fact that Ukraine is winning this war, the
international community are united and Russia is becoming a global
pariah," said British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace.
Zelensky adviser
Mykhailo Podolyak said Putin's address "looks more like an attempt to
justify their own failure".
"The war is
clearly not going according to Russia's scenario and therefore required Putin
to make extremely unpopular decisions to mobilise and severely restrict the
rights of people," Podolyak told Reuters in a text message.
Several Western
military experts said drafting in hundreds of thousands of new troops would
take months, do little to slow Russia's losses, and could even make matters
worse by drawing resources away from the battlefield to train and equip
recruits.
"Jaw-dropping.
A new sign of RU weakness," tweeted Mark Hertling, a former commander of
U.S. ground forces in Europe. "Placing 'newbies' on a front line that has
been mauled, has low morale & who don't want to be (there) portends more RU
disaster."
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