Previous Subchapter → 2.3 Interlude
Eventually this period of quiet from Ukraine all changed in September 2022, as the Ukrainians, who since the Russian retreat near Kyiv had mostly been trying to stall Russian progress rather than retake territory, finally made moves to push forward and stop being on the back foot.
The result was a counteroffensive that retook huge numbers of towns and villages and advanced over 1000 square miles, causing the Ukrainian military to retake almost all of the Kharkiv region, demolishing Russia’s occupation in that area, sending remaining Russian troops fleeing towards Donetsk and taking Ukrainian soldiers all the way to the Russian border, 1 of Russia’s 5 buffers against Ukraine vanished in only a week.
This huge sweep sent Russia’s government into panic mode, only days later Russia’s planned referendums were under way in the 4 remaining buffer regions and Russian politicians announced a military “partial mobilisation”, a call up to send hundreds of thousands of Russian conscripts to the war, this was Russia’s first mobilisation since World War Two, representing a dramatic escalation.
After 5 days of voting, Pro-Russian officials announced on the 28th of September 2022 that all 4 of the Russian held regions of Eastern Ukraine had voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, the official results showed that over 80% of voters supported joining Russia, with a turnout of over 70% in all 4 regions.
2 days later on September 30th Pro-Russian figures in the regions signed treaties in Moscow, uniting their territories with Russia and causing outrage in Ukraine, where Zelensky reversed his abandonment of a NATO bid and formally applied to join the alliance.
So once again the question is, why? What would Russia gain from these actions?
The reasons for mobilisation are obvious, if you aren’t doing well in a war, bringing up more troops to replace your losses always helps, but what about the annexations?
Well, Russia’s military system is a hybrid between a volunteer and a conscript army, every able bodied male citizen aged between 18 to 27 has to serve in the military for 12 months as part of conscription, but there’s a catch, Russian conscripts only have to serve inside Russia itself, they can only be sent to fight in foreign countries if they volunteer by signing a contract agreeing to do so.
Annexing the eastern parts of Ukraine made them part of Russia itself rather than foreign territory under Russian law, so in the eyes of Russia’s legal system a region like Luhansk or Donetsk was no less Russian than Moscow or Saint Petersburg. This meant that the Russian military was no longer limited in how many of its conscripts it could send to the conflict with Ukraine by the contracts, theoretically any soldier that was conscripted into Russia’s armed forces was now eligible to be sent rather than only the volunteers, allowing Russia to boost its troop numbers in the 4 buffer regions dramatically if the conscripts were given enough training.
The call up caused a split reaction from military age Russians, many boarded buses to be sent to military training centres and formed long queues at recruitment offices, being greeted by rallies of supporters thanking them for joining the fight, but others fled the country to avoid being part of the draft, leaving either through land borders with countries like Finland, and Georgia, or through air routes to neighbouring countries like Armenia or Turkey, where flights reportedly quickly sold out.
Mobilized man killed a drafting office commander in Ust-Ilimsk, Irkutsk region, Russia.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) September 26, 2022
Alexandr Yeliseev, the commander, was shot four times almost point blank.
The murderer is Ruslan Zinin, born in 1997, "partially mobilized". He decided jail is better than death in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/s0IvHJZJBO
Others who didn’t want to leave the country but didn’t want to be drafted resorted to more extreme measures, with violent attacks on recruitment centres across Russia.
On paper the draft had a select, strict criteria, as the name “partial mobilisation” would suggest, with only military age reservists or veterans being drafted, in practice there were cases of civilians outside that criteria, even the old and disabled, being included in the callup, contributing to the violent backlash and exodus of refugees, forcing Russia’s government to throw its own officials under the bus.
The head of Dagestan, Sergei Melikov, has absolutely lost it with Derbent's draft officers after they drove around with megaphones telling *every man* in the city to turn up at the conscription centre https://t.co/Y1IJ2T5FBn pic.twitter.com/jIzLT75cw0
— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) September 29, 2022
Given that just one country bordering Russia, Kazakhstan, had reported that over 200,000 Russians had fled the country through its borders only 2 weeks after the draft began, this figure may actually be plausible, this number was roughly equal to the total number of Russians who had been successfully drafted into the war in the same period,
The reaction to these refugees was split, some figures encouraged openness and support while others promoted fearmongering and collective guilt, blaming the Russians for the war simply for being Russian and demanding they be sent home.
You might ask, why would Anti Russia activists want these refugees to be deported back, where they could be forced into the war effort? Well, the thinking was that those who opposed the war should’ve stayed in Russia and worked towards overthrowing Putin, a mentality similar to the use of sanctions in other countries, make life worse and the people will do the regime change for you, but sending refugees back to a country where jail sentences of over a decade await them if they resist isn’t exactly the most humane way of looking at things, nor is it practical, trying to turn people who don’t want to be activists into political cannon fodder isn’t going to inspire willing change in Russia.
Imagine what would happen if you demanded refugees from Afghanistan be forced to go back and fight the Taliban. A lot of people would be outraged, to say the least, but it’s popular to hate Russia right now, so people overlook this double standard just as they have towards other wartime enemies in the past.
Unfortunately for Russia’s government these mobilisation plans were slow burning, the reality is that you can’t just grab people off the street and send them to fight if you want to see results, training is needed to turn civilians into soldiers. And while Russia’s conscripts were busy training the Ukrainians kept taking more and more ground away, causing the embarrassing imagery of Russian troops running away from the territory their country had just annexed and their leaders trying to cover up their losses, prompting criticism even from passionate pro war supporters.
By the time the Ukrainian offensive was over and the conflict had again relapsed into a frozen stalemate, the one regional capital Russian forces controlled, Kherson city, had been lost, and the Ukrainians had successfully rolled back Russian troops in approximately half of the occupied territory.
