PUTIN ORDERS PARTIAL MOBILIZATION OF RUSSIAN MILITARY, WARNS WEST OVER NUCLEAR BLACKMAIL

Wed 21 September 2022:

Wednesday saw the first Russian mobilization since World War Two, as President Vladimir Putin issued a warning to the West that if it continued its “nuclear blackmail,” Moscow would retaliate with the full force of its vast arsenal.

“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we use all available means to protect our people – this is not a bluff,” Putin said in a televised address to the nation.

Putin said he had signed a decree on a partial mobilisation, which significantly escalates the conflict.

Putin re-stated his aim was to “liberate” east Ukraine’s Donbas industrial heartland region and that most people in the region did not want to return to what he called the “yoke” of Ukraine.

Russia already considers Luhansk and Donetsk, which together make up the Donbas region Moscow partially occupied in 2014, to be independent states. Ukraine and the West consider all parts of Ukraine held by Russian forces to be illegally occupied.

Russia now holds about 60 per cent of Donetsk and had captured nearly all of Luhansk by July after slow advances during months of intense fighting.

Those gains are now under threat after Russian forces were driven from neighbouring Kharkiv province this month, losing control of their main supply lines for much of the Donetsk and Luhansk front lines.

Ahead of Russian President speech, in an apparently coordinated move on Tuesday, Moscow-installed leaders in occupied areas of four Ukrainian regions announced plans to hold referendums on joining Russia in coming days.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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