It was inevitable, after Russia’s sudden military reverse near Kharkiv, that Vladimir Putin would respond, announcing a partial mobilisation of extra troops and a fresh bout of sabre-rattling on nuclear weapons a day after announcing plans to hold high-speed annexation referendums in occupied areas of Ukraine.
The timing, on the morning of Joe Biden’s speech to the UN general assembly aimed at rallying support for Ukraine, demonstrates that, to some extent, Putin’s announcements are about news management – to seize the agenda with tenuous claims that Russia is threatened by Nato “nuclear blackmail”.
That helps cover up the fact that the mobilisation – of about 300,000 Russians with military experience, according to Sergei Shoigu, the country’s defence minister – is a measure that will take months to have any meaningful military impact.
If, that is, Moscow can obtain anything like that number at all, given Russia’s ongoing difficulties in recruitment and retention.
Resignation letters written by Russian troops exhausted by months of fighting following the recapture of Izium illustrate the point, although the decree announced by Putin also makes clear soldiers on short contracts are now barred from leaving the frontline until the war is over.
“Operationally, this won’t make any difference this year and probably not into next year,” said Ed Arnold, who works for RUSI, a thinktank. “The infrastructure isn’t there in terms of equipping that level of force at the moment. Russia has a 1000km frontline to hold, and it is worried about its rear areas. It wants to hold the area it has.”
In military terms, the Kremlin should have taken the mobilisation decision months ago. Exact figures are hard to come by, but Ukraine may well have more troops available than Russia now. And as the Kharkiv region offensive showed, Kyiv can marshal fresher troops against areas of the front it has been able to identify as thinly held.
Kyiv continues to have a window of opportunity before the late autumn muddy season, starting in November, which limits manoeuvre for armoured vehicles. That is long before any reservists are likely to arrive. Recognising that, last Friday the US announced a further $600m of military aid to Ukraine, including more Himars rockets that have so damaged Moscow’s logistics and its ability to resist.
It is a flow of aid that Russia is desperate to halt, but has no military ability to do so. Targeting Nato distribution hubs in Poland is not a viable option, given Nato’s security guarantee. Moscow clearly lacks the intelligence to destroy supplies in meaningful quantities as they head to the frontline, or it would have done so in the way that Ukraine has been able to.
But Putin, by reinforcing warnings that nuclear weapons will be used “if the territorial integrity of our country is threatened”, will hope to sow uncertainty in the eyes of policymakers’ meetings in New York – perhaps to limit supplies from countries reluctant to allow Ukraine to have certain weapons, such as ATACMS long-range missiles, fighter jets or western tanks because of their offensive capability.
The Kremlin also needs to retain what support it has left from its flagging allies – even Putin acknowledged China’s president, Xi Jinping, had “questions and concerns” following a bilateral last week – and argues that Nato is effectively engaged in a war against it. Shoigu emphasised, in an interview on Wednesday, the west’s supply of satellite intelligence and weapons against Moscow’s forces.
It is no secret that Nato members (but not Nato itself) are providing military support to Ukraine but there is no existential threat to Russia; the goal, Biden said on Wednesday, was for the war to end “on terms we all signed up for, that you cannot seize a nation’s territory by choice”. There is the question of whether Russia will try to argue territories it annexes are covered by its nuclear umbrella – but attacks on Crimea, seized unilaterally in 2014, have not prompted any escalation from Moscow.
The precursor of Putin’s interventions remains Russia’s unexpected defeat on the battlefield earlier this month. The nuclear sabre-rattling is designed principally to produce uncertainty and fear in the west, while the belated mobilisation can only help improve Moscow’s prospects from next spring, when the war is most likely to enter a decisive phase. But it also gives time for Ukraine to prepare too.
