Vladimir Putin's snap announcement that he will conduct referenda in four Ukraine regions changes everything. The results themselves will be unbelievable and meaningless: what they do reveal, however, is critical. The vaulting desire and mad calculation of the Russian dictator are now on full display. Despite failure on the battlefield and although his forces in the north have recoiled back to their start line, Putin will not accept that his forces have been defeated. He is, rather, doubling down on his ambition and insisting reality will not intrude inside the Kremlin's encircling walls.
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The stakes in this conflict have suddenly become existential. The Russian dictator is counting on his nuclear arsenal to achieve what his ground forces have so obviously failed to do - deliver victory. He is counting on his missiles to achieve what his soldiers could not and in doing so has now set the scene for an end-game wreathed in tragedy and destruction.
What makes these "votes" so important is that they completely transform the fundamental nature of the conflict. Words matter to Putin. They describe the way he understands the world. So when he insists that the people in these Ukrainian regions overwhelmingly desire to join Russia (as he will in a few days) we need to understand what exactly has changed, because this is critical in understanding the nature of possible ways this conflict can be resolved.
Putin's announcement purports to convert a war of aggression into a defensive war. No matter how spurious and fabricated the results, this vote will transform his "special military operation" into patriotic war that's about protecting the motherland. This dramatically changes the equation on the ground and explains why Russia has begun calling up reservists. Putin is clearly signalling that, for him, victory is vital.
All laws are fictions that reveal more about the way we think than about reality, and these will be no different. The simple fact that the ballot results are meaningless will not change three critical issues. The first is essentially irrelevant, however it officially allows Moscow to send its reservists into Ukraine to fight. Any barracks room lawyers who try to argue that conscripts cannot be called up or sent to fight in what is, self-evidently, a war of aggression will become irrelevant. This will allow the untapping of a massive reserve of manpower.
Few inside the country believe this call-out will be limited to the 300,000 currently announced. Although the days when the Russian military filled its ranks with conscripts are long gone; and although this conflict is demonstrating again that motivation is a critical factor in achieving victory, Putin seemingly believes pulling people off the streets, forcing them to war uniforms, and shoving them into the ranks is enough to make a soldier.
Even if the reservists did respond to their call-up (instead of fleeing overseas) there is no evidence that they could be incorporated into the current forces fighting in Ukraine in a meaningful way. Simply training these individuals to fight effectively as cohesive units would take months; ensuring they possessed the motivation to actively engage in combat operations would be far more difficult, if not impossible.
Putin must know this, which suggests his motivation is more complex. This leads to the second reason for his declaration. The Russian dictator is signalling to the West exactly what he wants.
These four regions are now the minimum he will demand in order to cease operations. They also serve, however, as a bait. If the US and Europe withdraw their support for continued Ukrainian offensives into these areas Russia will stop attacking and turn on the flow of gas in time for winter. Think about it, Putin promises, the war could be over!
All you need to do is work on this demand as a basis for peace negotiations, just come and sit at the table and begin negotiations. It's a cunning move. It offers the prospect of peace, some negotiations around the exact borders, and reveals the fundamental tension between Kyiv's objectives (the unity of Ukraine) and those of the other Western capitals who want peace and don't care about a couple of oblasts (which are, after all, nothing more than administrative regions) in a far-off country. Accepting this would allow the world economy to return to equilibrium.
Whether this is a genuine offer is doubtful. Nevertheless this doesn't mean it should be immediately dismissed, particularly when it's considered alongside the third implication of the vote. By extending Russia's border Putin unilaterally shifts the space in which he can legitimately use nuclear weapons, something particularly relevant as his forces loose the capacity to hold their own on the ground.
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Whenever we think of nuclear weapons our mind turns to images of whole cities being destroyed, but it's worth remembering that in the 1980s both the Soviets and NATO developed a large range of devices for tactical use as well. Such weapons were not designed to inaugurate a full-on conflict but rather as a method to indicate that battle would no longer decide the result: the conflict now needed to be solved by politicians.
Because NATO feared massive Soviet tank spearheads would punch through their thin defensive lines, the West saw such weapons as a means of signalling that the fighting needed to end. After the fall of the Soviet Union the Kremlin announced that it would only use nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory, and it's possible that Putin is attempting to use this threat in a similar way today.
By declaring these regions part of mother Russia, Putin brings forward the possibility of the use of such weapons. The detonation of a so-called "tactical" nuclear device to "defend" against another successful Ukrainian offensive would rapidly change the reality on the ground and make everyone think very hard about continuing the fighting. The need for negotiations is becoming more critical every day, because nobody can ever win such a war. The best hope is to achieve a peace we can live with, not a victory in which too many die.
- Nicholas Stuart is editor of ability.news and a regular columnist.