Putin Digs Deeper Hole, Announces Partial Mobilization

 

 

The vertically challenged war criminal escalates:

Vladimir Putin has announced a partial mobilisation in Russia in a significant escalation that places the country’s people and economy on a wartime footing.

The president also threatened nuclear retaliation, saying that Russia had “lots of weapons to reply” to what he called western threats on Russian territory and added that he was not bluffing.

In a highly anticipated televised address, Putin said the “partial mobilisation” was a direct response to the dangers posed by the west, which “wants to destroy our country”, and claimed the west had tried to “turn Ukraine’s people into cannon fodder”.  [snip]

Shortly after Putin’s announcement, the country’s defence ministry, Sergei Shoigu, said 300,000 Russians would be called up as part of the mobilisation that will apply to “those with previous military experience”.

“These are not people who’ve never seen or heard anything about the army,” he said, adding that students can “keep going to class”.

According to the decree signed by Putin on Wednesday, the contracts of soldiers fighting in Ukraine will also be extended until the end of the partial mobilisation period.

Beyond demonstrating that war criminal Putin is now the biggest danger to peace in Europe and the World since that similarly psychotic Nazi nearly 100 years ago, the mobilization announcement tells us he's losing his war in Ukraine:

The partial mobilisation announced by Putin will widely be seen as a major admission of the Kremlin’s military failures in Ukraine. Shoigu in his speech admitted that conditions in Ukraine were “difficult”, saying Russia was at war with “the collective west”.

Shoigu on Wednesday also gave the first official estimate of Russia’s battlefield losses since late March, announcing that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in Ukraine since the start of the fighting. Western intelligence as well as independent media reports suggest the real figure is significantly higher, with up to 80,000 Russian soldiers been killed or wounded since the start of the war.

As President Zelenskyy said recently, Russia has to be stopped.  The West must respond in a unified, forceful matter, and let Putin know they, too, are not bluffing.

(Photo: via Reuters)