Putin Declares Mobilization and Referenda

 First some good news. 215 Ukrainian prisoners were exchanged for Putin's man in Ukraine, Victor Medvedchuk, and 54 other Russian prisoners. Among the Ukrainians released are 108 survivors of Azovstal in the battle for Matiupol. Some of them are also survivors of the murder of 53 Azovstal prisoners and the wounding of over 100 others in the Olenivka Prison Camp when the Russian mercenry Wagner Group either planted or fired an incendiary bomb into the dormatory. The swap was arranged by Saudi Arabia and facilitated by Turkey.

Paramedic Kateryna “Ptashka” Polishchuk

Marine Mykhailo Dianov 

Five commanders from Avolstal will spend the rest of the war in Turkey

Two days ago, Putin made a speech on national TV announcing a "Partial Mobilization" and agreeing that refernda would be held in the occupied Oblasts about becoming part of the Russian Federation. A referendum would be held in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia from Septembere 23rd to September 27th. How they will be held is irrelevent, though "on-line" has been sugggested, as the results are already tabulated and will be in the North Korean area of 97% one suspects. The Oblasts will immediately be declared part of Russian Federation. And concluded by threatening nuclear response for the Nine hundred and thirty eleventh time and said he is not bluffing. 

NOTE: Update 27/09/2022: Voting was conducted door to door with armed soldiers ensuring people voted yes. Some had to vote more than once for absent family members. 

Of course he is bluffing as he is holding a busted flush, ten high. No one will take seriously the results of the referenda. He may be insane enough to use nucs but his immediate coterie of underlings is not. And if I understood it right, Joe Biden said if they do use nucs, USA will establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine and send the entire Russian Black Sea fleet to join the Moskva, all in 24 hours. Now, Joe is not bluffing.

Putin's main purpose was declaring a "partial mobilization" of 300,000 former reservists. He lied of course. It is a full mobilization, as anyone between 18 and 65 can and will be "drafted". All contract soldiers are now permanent. Plane tickets out of the country went to $11,000 and cars are lined up at every border out of the country that will allow them in.  Belarus and Kazakhstsn are not cooperating, Germany thinks they should be allowed into the EU.

People are very angry and have taken to the streets although not in numbers large enough to make a difference. Protesters are hauled away and immediately drafted. No one comes to their rescue. Of course the main hardship will fall on the ethnic groups who have already suffered the highest percapita losses. In Buriatia, students are grabbed froim the schools, people are pulled from their beds, villages are emptied of all males of fighting age, given half an hour to pack and report.

They are supposed to get two weeks training before being sent to the front but there are no training centres large enough to handle the numbers. They will have no uniforms unless they bring their own. They will have no or very old equipment  and certainly no heavy arms. They are being sent to the front to die. If they refuse to fight, they will be shot. If they retreat or try to surrender they will be shot. Their only hope is to shoot their officers and surrender. 

This is Putin's version of a Stalanist ethnic purge. He will throw masses of soldiers at the Ukrainian lines. The more that get killed the better. He can't deport them as Stalin did, nor can send them to the Gulag. There are too many. So if they die, so much the better. And get rid of the trouble makers too. He could draft as many as a million. As is the Russian pattern, he is taking out his losses on his own people.

Putin likes to think he is Peter the Great or Stalin. He is far more like Nicholas II in 1914 and his army suffers from the same shortcomings. Both looked good only on paper. 

The Army of Nicholas II was clumsy and inefficient precisely because the tsarist regime itself was clumsy and inefficient. Its façade may have been magnificent, glittering—but a glance behind the curtain disclosed indolence, incompetence, indifference, corruption and decay. Given tsarist Russia’s natural advantages, it ought to have been a great power to rival the United States. But thanks to its structural deficiencies it was the weakest, most fragile of the great powers. The poor performance of the Russian Army in 1914-17 faithfully reflected the defects of the regime it served.

V. Putin may aspire to emulate Peter the Great and Stalin, but his regime most resembles that presided over by the last tsar. In such a state the despot’s formal monopoly on power is absolute but his actual power is much less, its exercise being dependent on the loyalty and competence of underlings. But since despotism puts a premium on loyalty, competence is relegated to second place.

This is a comparison of the armies of Putin in Ukraine and the armies of Ncholas II at Tanneberg in 1914. Well worth a read. https://unwokeindianaag.substack.com/p/tannenberg-revisited 

In 1917 the Russian soldiers shot their officers, threw down their arms and went home. This led to the takeover or Russia by the Bolsheviks and a five year civil war that killed millions.