Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization to react to the losses in Ukraine recently, which means that Russia will deploy more troops to Ukraine. The range of this partial mobilization includes the male residents of Russia from 18 to 50 years old, and also those voluntary military service contracts will be extended till the end of the invasion. Putin explained the reason for partial mobilization in the video, and he said one reason is Western countries provided a lot of ranged weapons for Ukraine, and those weapons are aggressive and may attack Russia’s territory. Another reason is Russia has the obligation to protect those liberated areas occupied by Russia in Ukraine now. This order will cause some problems for Putin’s regime internally and externally of Russia.
Internally, some information can prove that Russian residents have a different opinion of this conflict from their President. A few hours after Putin set the order, according to the travel website aviasales.ru record, the plane tickets to Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia from Moscow were sold out very soon. Those plane tickets are so popular for Russians because those destinations are visa-free. Otherwise, since yesterday, the percentage of popular keywords “how to leave Russia” on google in the Russia region has increased sharply. These show even Russians do not want to escalate the conflict, and those detractors may affect Putin’s legitimacy.
Externally, when Putin set the order, it meant he wanted to escalate the range of conflict, and Ukraine’s Western backers will increase their strength of support. Western countries may provide more supply of arms. Some weapons that Ukraine’s President requested have still not been approved by Western countries, and they may be approved after Putin’s partial mobilization, and used in the arena where Russia illegally annexed. Furthermore, NATO may decide to train more Ukrainian soldiers, now only Britain offers the basic training, the order from Putin may influence other members to give Ukraine more defence training. This order may lead Putin to fight with other Western countries, and militarily suffer losses.
In conclusion, this partial mobilization sounds like an unbelievable order, the only explanation is that Russia’s despot keeps trying to maintain his strength but he is gambling. There is no advantage to setting this order, and now he faces a crisis both internally and externally from his people and Western countries.
Written by Eddie C.
Edited by Ari B.