Tranquillus in Exile
New member
The Russian attempt to take Kyiv has failed, their forces are being driven back from Kharkiv, the much-heralded Donbas offensive is going nowhere, and even Mariupol has not been completely pacified. What are Putin’s options?
Mikhail Khodarenok is a retired lieutenant colonel who worked on the Russian general staff. Before the invasion he cautioned against it in an article that correctly predicted the setbacks the Russian army has suffered. The answer, he says, does not lie in mass mobilisation. Sending millions of men armed with outdated Soviet kit that has sat for years in warehouses against a Nato-equipped army is neither militarily nor morally justifiable.
Kirill Mikhailov of Conflict Intelligence Team, a Russian open-source group, says material is not the issue. Manpower is, and only mass mobilisation can fix it. “The other option is catastrophic defeat in a few months. I doubt they can even hold Kherson without mobilisation. And at some point the Donbas People’s Republics, and even Crimea, could be in play.”
Losing Crimea and the parts of Donbas seized in 2014 would be a catastrophe for Putin.
Igor Girkin, a former FSB colonel and far-rightist who led the Russian gunmen who started the Donbas uprising in 2014, wrote on April 20 that continuing the war without at least a partial mobilisation would be “both impossible and extremely dangerous”. A week later, Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful chairman of the Russian national security council, gave an interview arguing in favour of full scale, WWII-style mobilisation.
Other advisers, especially those responsible for the economy and domestic policy, will be lobbying Putin to ignore such talk. Apart from wrecking the economy, there is a significant political risk. So far most of the fighting and dying has been done by soldiers from poor, remote regions. Mobilisation would mean telling the vast majority of Russians that they too must make major sacrifices for the war effort. And it is not clear how they would respond.
So there it is, the Devil's choice. If Putin wants to avoid defeat, his only chance is to order mass mobilisation. But otoh, he would be ill-advised to risk it.
Mikhail Khodarenok is a retired lieutenant colonel who worked on the Russian general staff. Before the invasion he cautioned against it in an article that correctly predicted the setbacks the Russian army has suffered. The answer, he says, does not lie in mass mobilisation. Sending millions of men armed with outdated Soviet kit that has sat for years in warehouses against a Nato-equipped army is neither militarily nor morally justifiable.
Kirill Mikhailov of Conflict Intelligence Team, a Russian open-source group, says material is not the issue. Manpower is, and only mass mobilisation can fix it. “The other option is catastrophic defeat in a few months. I doubt they can even hold Kherson without mobilisation. And at some point the Donbas People’s Republics, and even Crimea, could be in play.”
Losing Crimea and the parts of Donbas seized in 2014 would be a catastrophe for Putin.
Igor Girkin, a former FSB colonel and far-rightist who led the Russian gunmen who started the Donbas uprising in 2014, wrote on April 20 that continuing the war without at least a partial mobilisation would be “both impossible and extremely dangerous”. A week later, Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful chairman of the Russian national security council, gave an interview arguing in favour of full scale, WWII-style mobilisation.
Other advisers, especially those responsible for the economy and domestic policy, will be lobbying Putin to ignore such talk. Apart from wrecking the economy, there is a significant political risk. So far most of the fighting and dying has been done by soldiers from poor, remote regions. Mobilisation would mean telling the vast majority of Russians that they too must make major sacrifices for the war effort. And it is not clear how they would respond.
So there it is, the Devil's choice. If Putin wants to avoid defeat, his only chance is to order mass mobilisation. But otoh, he would be ill-advised to risk it.