The war has been fairly disastrous for Russia so far. Pope Francis recently said that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, one of the most pro-Putin NATO leaders in Central Europe, told him in April that "the Russians have a plan, that everything will end on May 9." There's also been speculation that Putin could use May 9 to declare victory in some capacity or an end to the invasion. "We believe that Russia will try to annex the Donetsk 'people's republic' and Luhansk "people's republic,' in quotes, so-called, to Russia," Carpenter said. Michael Carpenter, the US ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), on Monday warned that Putin would annex more Ukrainian territory and hold "sham" votes to give the moves a "veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy." Putin recognized the separatist's claims to the entire territory shortly before announcing the start of the so-called "special operation." At the start of the broader war that Putin launched in late February, the rebels controlled roughly one-third of the region. A huge mobilization would change all that and is very risky," Alperovitch said.īeginning in 2014, the same year Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, the Kremlin began supporting rebels against Ukrainian forces in a war in the Donbas. Most families don't know anyone who is fighting and dying (many soldiers are from poor villages and ethnic minorities). " Russian public currently supports the fake version of the war they are seeing on their TV screens. Mobilizing more troops would signal to Russians that the war isn't going well, in contrast to Russian officials' repeated statements that the war is going according to plan.ĭmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the Washington-based think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator, in tweets on Wednesday said, "Declaring full mobilization is very fraught politically for Putin," adding that it "makes no sense from risk vs benefit trade off and is a de facto admission of defeat after feeding the domestic audience a steady stream of Russian supposed victories there and operation going 'according to plan.'" "To mass mobilize the Russian reserves is an admission of failure from a man who thought he would have got Ukraine in a couple of days."īut not everyone is convinced Putin will go this route, because it would contradict Russia's rhetoric and propaganda on the war up to this point that's being presented to Russians via state-run and -affiliated news organizations, whose employees (and the Russian population more generally) face 15 years in prison for unsanctioned depictions of the war. "He is probably going to declare on this May Day that 'we are now at war with the world's Nazis and we need to mass mobilize the Russian people,'" Wallace added. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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