With his announcement of a partial mobilisation of 300,000 reservists and a new threat to use his nuclear arsenal, Vladimir Putin has in effect admitted that he is losing his war in Ukraine and that he sees the fallout from the botched invasion as a potential threat to the survival of his regime.
The Russian president has gone to great lengths to ensure that his “special military operation” – a term intended to evoke something more limited, distant and rapid than war – remains at a remove from ordinary Russians’ lives. Fear of a public backlash likely explains why he resisted mobilisation until now, despite heavy casualties and low morale taking their toll on Russian forces in Ukraine. That Putin is now willing to call up reservists, even if that mobilisation is limited for now to ex-soldiers, shows that he is running out of options. His depleted and exhausted conventional forces, supplemented by rag-tag militias, mercenaries and convicts, are incapable of holding back Ukrainian forces on multiple fronts.
Putin’s latest move is a defensive gambit designed to ensure Russia can hold onto the one fifth of Ukrainian territory it currently occupies. Stage-managed sham referendums are to be held in Donetsk and Luhansk in the coming days, he confirmed, with their pre-ordained results allowing Russia to claim their territory as its own. Moscow will then declare that any Western-backed military action in those provinces amounts to an attack on Russia itself – a signal intended to coerce Ukraine to accept Russia’s gains and deter the West from sending more arms. Russia’s nuclear doctrine sets a high bar for the use of nuclear weapons against conventional threats: “when the very existence of the state is under threat”. But on Wednesday Putin went much further, saying “if its territorial integrity is threatened Russia will use all the means at its disposal”. Whether Putin is willing to take such a world-changing decision is an open question, but the threat must of course be taken seriously.
Still, the Kremlin’s move is unlikely in itself to alter the dynamic of the war. It will take at least a few months for the mobilisation to yield any operational benefit. And getting soldiers to the front is largely pointless unless they have the leadership and equipment they need to fight. At best Putin can hope his reservists will ensure Russia can hold its current defensive pattern for longer.
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When Putin issued a nuclear threat as his tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24th, he did so from a position of strength; Russia was widely expected to take control in Kyiv within days. His latest threat comes from a position of weakness. Seeing Putin in effect concede that the war is going against him will encourage Ukraine and its western partners. But a Russian president fighting for the survival of his regime means the war is entering a new, more dangerous phase.