Putin's Dreadful Mobilization and 'Referendums'
Putin's Dreadful Mobilization and 'Referendums'
There's nothing 'partial' about it. The voting is a fiction.
Following Ukraine's successful counteroffensive, Vladimir Putin gave his biggest address since he announced the start of the war in February. While he repeated some old lies -- mentioning the "neo-Nazi" regime in Kyiv that took power in an "armed state coup" and committed "genocide" in the Donbas -- two lies were new: first, the characterization of the mobilization as "partial," and his announcement of "referendums" being held from September 23-27 in the East and South of Ukraine.
"As I have said, we are talking about partial mobilization," Putin said in his speech. But there is nothing "partial" about it. The cap of 300,000 men that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu mentioned on September 21 can be revised upward, as the decree is broad in scope. According to Russian-language news site Meduza, authorities plan to conscript 1.2 million men. One of Meduza's sources said the government was avoiding regional capitals in favor of conscripting men "in rural areas, where there’s no media, no opposition, and more support [for the war]." In a recording obtained by TV Rain, an official stated that the draft would take place in three stages. "No one will hide, no one will get away, no one will be forgotten — everyone will be found," says the official, whose voice could not be verified.
The mobilization started swiftly. One Moscow Telegram channel devoted to showing where police were handing out notices, showed police in the Metro selectively stopping young men and detaining others who tried to flee. (It was not clear if these men were being detained for the draft.) According to OVD-Info, police handed out draft notices to people detained at anti-war protests in at least six Moscow police stations. The law allows men up to 50 to be drafted. One image of men leaving in Yakutsk, in the Far East, showed men who were not exactly spring chickens:
"I would like to emphasize that we will do everything necessary to create safe conditions for these referendums so that people can express their will," Putin said. But these aren't referendums at all. They are staged exercises to give a sheen of legitimacy on an illegitimate process. Or, as Russian government sources told Meduza, the objective is to "hold some kind of vote and report on the result." Already, Russian television showed what it claimed were polls showing between 80 and 91 percent of people wanting to join Russia. Russian occupation forces were seen going door-to-door, collecting ballots with guns.
Russia has played this card before. After the Russian Army entered Crimea in 2014, it held a referendum as well that was internationally denounced as not free and fair; the results of the referendum were used as justification for Russia to annex Crimea.
There are two reasons that Russia wants to absorb these regions -- which its army doesn't fully control -- into its territory. First, the Russian Federation will claim the right of using nuclear weapons to defend the new territory it claims is now its own. Putin said that he will "make use of all weapon systems available to us" to defend its territory and that it wasn't a "bluff." The second reason is to press gang Ukrainian men into fighting for the Russian Army. The occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have had conscription since 2014, and the mobilization order will presumably apply to the territories now being annexed. The monstrosity of this strategy is that the Russians will be forcing Ukrainians to pick up arms against themselves.
In 1954, Hannah Arendt wrote that totalitarian rule requires "a preparation to fit each of [its subjects] equally well for the role of executioner and the role of victim." With Russian leader Vladimir Putin's mobilization order, that preparation isn't just about the Nazi and Soviet regimes -- it's here right now. It should fail, and it must fail.