Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered partial mobilization for the Ukraine war. 300,000 reservists are called to arms. The Western world reacted with shock to the announcement. We have collected the reactions for you.
You can read everything about the Russian partial mobilization here.
Kyiv has reacted with derision to the partial mobilization ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The external advisor to the Ukrainian presidential office, Mykhailo Podoliak, asked on Twitter on Wednesday: “Is everything still going according to plan or not?” The war planned for “three days” has already lasted 210 days. The Russians, who demanded Ukraine’s annihilation, have now received mobilization, closed borders, blocked accounts and prison sentences for deserters, among other things. “Life has a wonderful sense of humor,” Podoljak concluded.
His colleague Oleksiy Arestovych interpreted the Kremlin’s move as meaning that the high losses are forcing Russia to take this measure. “It’s more than 100,000 killed and wounded, closer to 150,000,” wrote Arestovych. The next 150,000 have already been mentally written off. “How good it is to be Russian under Putin,” he wrote wryly. On Wednesday, Moscow said 5,937 of its own military personnel had died since the beginning of the war. However, independent observers also consider the real losses to be many times higher than stated.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) describes the partial mobilization as a “bad and wrong step”. The government is now deliberating how to react to Vladimir Putin’s announcement. In any case, Ukraine continues to have Germany’s full support.
The SPD in the Bundestag rates the partial mobilization in Russia as a “sign of weakness”. “But it is also a new escalation,” said Parliamentary Secretary Katja Mast on Wednesday in Berlin. Mast said the partial mobilization shows that Putin is willing to take further steps. Therefore, support to Ukraine must continue without let-up. “Putin’s renewed escalation is not such that we see that there will soon be talks about peace.” Mast said: “We need staying power, which is also shown by Putin’s partial mobilization.”
The political scientist Thomas Jäger from the University of Cologne explains the calculation behind Putin’s decision on “n-tv”: Putin has been saying for months that everything is going according to plan in Ukraine. “Now the opposite is becoming obvious.” Now Putin is building a edifice of lies. With an alleged threat to Russia, Putin wanted to justify an escalation of the conflict “to his own people,” said Jäger. The West must now show unity in the reaction.
Russia expert Anders Aslund wrote on Twitter after the announcement: “Like the flawed strategist that is Putin, he is accelerating the collapse of his regime by calling for partial mobilization.”
FDP politician Alexander Graf Lambsdorff judges on Twitter: Putin’s announcement shows “weakness, not strength”.
The correspondent Denis Trubetskoy, who reports on the war in Ukraine, writes on Twitter: “Putin is driving his country further into the abyss.”
