President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian mobilisation to fight in Ukraine on Wednesday and made a thinly veiled threat to use nuclear weapons, in what Nato called a \u201creckless\u201d act of desperation in the face of Russia\u2019s looming defeat.
\nFlights out of Russia quickly sold out following the announcement of Russia\u2019s first military mobilisation since World War Two, a dramatic reversal after months in which Moscow had insisted its operation was \u201cgoing to plan\u201d.
\nThe mobilisation is, for now, officially described as a partial one that will steadily draw in 300,000 reservists over a period of months, rather than a full one that would rely on what Russia\u2019s defence minister says is a vast reserve force of 25 million people.
\nIn his televised address, Putin effectively announced plans to annex four Ukrainian regions, saying Moscow would facilitate referendums in Ukraine\u2019s Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions on joining Russia. A day earlier, Russian-installed officials in the four regions announced plans for such votes, which Western countries denounced as shams.
\nPutin said, with no evidence, that officials in Nato states had threatened to use nuclear weapons against Russia, and that Russia \u201calso has various means of destruction\u201d.
\n\u201cWhen the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It\u2019s not a bluff,\u201d he said.
\nUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he thought Putin would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons, but that the threat showed why it was important to stand up to him.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe that he will use these weapons. I don\u2019t think the world will allow him to use these weapons,\u201d Zelenskiy said in remarks reported by Germany\u2019s Bild newspaper.
\n\u201cTomorrow Putin can say: \u2018Apart from Ukraine, we also want a part of Poland, otherwise we will use nuclear weapons.\u2019 We cannot make these compromises,\u201d Zelenskiy said.
\nIn an interview with Reuters, Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg denounced Putin\u2019s threat to use nuclear weapons as \u201cdangerous and reckless rhetoric\u201d.
\nThe mobilisation plan demonstrated \u201cthat the war is not going according to his plans\u201d and it was clear that the Russian president had made \u201ca big miscalculation\u201d, Stoltenberg said.
\nAs for any potential Russian use of nuclear arms, \u201cWe will make sure that there is no misunderstanding in Moscow about exactly how we will react,\u201d Stoltenberg said.
\n\u201cThe most important thing is to prevent that from happening and that is why we have been so clear in our communications with Russia about the unprecedented consequences.\u201d
\nJustifying \u2018failure\u2019
\nPutin\u2019s announcement came after weeks in which Russia\u2019s invasion force was routed in northeastern Ukraine, with thousands of Russian troops fleeing frontline positions in the biggest shift in momentum since the war\u2019s early weeks.
\nUkrainian forces have captured the main supply routes serving Russia\u2019s front line in the east and say they are now poised to push deeper into territory that Moscow had captured over months of heavy fighting.
\nZelenskiy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak called Putin\u2019s address an \u201cabsolutely predictable appeal, which looks more like an attempt to justify their own failure\u201d.
\n\u201cThe war is clearly not going according to Russia\u2019s scenario and therefore required Putin to make extremely unpopular decisions to mobilise and severely restrict the rights of people,\u201d Podolyak told Reuters in a text message.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian mobilisation to fight in Ukraine on Wednesday and made a thinly veiled threat to use nuclear weapons, in what Nato…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":836,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}