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Ukraine Invasion Day 219: annexation farce continues as 'Unipolar hegemony is inexorably collapsing' [1]

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Date: 2022-09-29

Potential encirclement and kettling at Lyman... “Unipolar hegemony is inexorably collapsing,” Mr. Putin said. “This is an objective reality that the West categorically refuses to accept.”

So much doubling down by Putin with a firehose of farcical events. Annexing Novorossiya under duress only means more Russian deaths. Russia's war in Ukraine will cause $2.8 trillion in global economic losses.

Poland has drawn a red line on the need for a conventional military response to a Russian tactical nuclear strike on Ukraine. A report about such a non-nuclear retaliation, however massive, for a Russian nuclear strike violating NATO’s article 5 could mean that the real price for the first tactical nuclear weapon attack since WWII will transcend infamy.

In the 2001 Ukrainian census, 8,334,100 identified as ethnic Russians (17.3% of the population of Ukraine); this is the combined figure for persons originating from outside of Ukraine and the Ukrainian-born population declaring Russian ethnicity.

The State of the War

x Thank you, Mark. We are honored to have you as an ambassador. Never thought it would come to this, but it’s so reassuring to have your childhood heroes have your back when it’s due. Literally, feeling the force booster right now. — U24 (@U24_gov_ua) September 29, 2022

x ➡️The claims could not be immediately verified, but the reported Ukrainian gains appeared to match images and videos released on social media by Ukrainian soldiers — Telegraph World News (@TelegraphWorld) September 29, 2022 The would-be referendums in Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – precursors to a planned formal annexation this week – were hurried and ugly, held at gunpoint and with shells exploding in the distance. They lacked the Potemkin pageantry of similar so-called ballots in Crimea in 2014, which were at least accompanied by efforts to entice voters with promises of higher pensions and Russian investment. This time, in its urgency, the Kremlin appears to have dropped all but the barest attempts to make the referendums look convincing, opting instead for brutality. So why bother at all? There was a domestic and an international agenda to the mock vote. Putin’s main audience is at home. The day after news of the referendums, he ordered a military mobilisation – a deeply unpopular move that Russia has long avoided despite lacking manpower on the front. Russian disinformation has not always had to be sophisticated to find purchase, but people being asked to kill or die – or send their loved ones to do so – are more apt to ask why. 200,000 Russians have fled the country since Putin’s announcement, often spending their life savings on hard-to-get plane tickets out or waiting for hours in queues at the border. Annexation aims, in one pen stroke, to transform the conflict from a faraway, limited “special military operation” that Russians could be jailed for even calling a war, into a battle to defend Russia’s own territory, not Ukraine’s. Despite Russia’s harsh crackdown on dissent, protests have erupted across the country and at leasthave fled the country since Putin’s announcement, often spending their life savings on hard-to-get plane tickets out or waiting for hours in queues at the border. Annexation aims, in one pen stroke, to transform the conflict from a faraway, limited “special military operation” that Russians could be jailed for even calling a war, into a battle to defend Russia’s own territory, not Ukraine’s. Internationally, the other objective is to up the ante in the confrontation with Ukraine and its western backers. Putin’s announcement of the mobilisation was accompanied by the threat of nuclear strikes if Ukraine continued to retake its own lands. Putin – who attaches great importance to the Soviet-style patina of legality he apparently believes the referendums afford, however Kafkaesque – is aiming to make such threats credible and thus coerce capitulation. They also serve to stoke the false war narrative Russia is spreading via social media and digital diplomacy abroad, where it has had some traction. All of this amounts to a dangerous new phase of the war. www.theguardian.com/... x https://t.co/na48yML2Qh — ELINT News (@ELINTNews) September 29, 2022 But by annexing the parts of Ukraine his troops still occupy and then framing his efforts as an existential fight for the survival of the Russian state, Mr. Putin can try to shift the focus of the war from his army’s frontline losses to a plane where he seems to feel most confident: a battle of wills with the West. “He thinks he can win,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a phone interview from Moscow. “He is provoking an escalation of the war, transferring it to some new status.” Responding to rising popular discontent over the draft he ordered last week, Mr. Putin personally and publicly directed senior security officials to send home people who had been wrongly drafted — a rare implicit admission that his government had stumbled badly. [...] The Kremlin announced the annexation plans on Thursday, saying Mr. Putin would sign documents on the entry of new territories into the Russian Federation and give “a voluminous speech.” The ceremony will be accompanied by a festive celebration. Just outside the Kremlin walls, workers were putting up billboards and a giant video screen on Thursday for what state media described as an open-air rally and concert on Friday “in support” of the “referendums” on joining Russia — fraudulent votes that were held in Russian-occupied Ukraine in recent days. The planned pomp appeared to be aimed at winning public approval and support for the annexation. stage for annexation celebration Festivities aside, Mr. Putin’s declaration will signal a new and more dangerous phase of the war. Once he declares Ukrainian territory to be an inextricable part of Russia — a declaration that Russia’s rubber-stamp Parliament and constitutional court are expected to approve by next week — he will rule out any negotiations over that area’s future status, analysts said. And after going through with the annexation, Mr. Putin may also declare that any future Ukrainian military action there threatens Russian territorial integrity — a threat, he said last week, to which Russia’s nuclear-armed military may respond with “all the means at our disposal.” “This is not a bluff,” he added. [...] But this time, the context is far more volatile and grave. While Russia captured Crimea without large-scale fighting, Mr. Putin’s annexation will signal an escalation of a war that has already killed tens of thousands. While most Russians cheered the annexation of Crimea, seeing it as a genuine part of Russia, there is little evidence that the broader public is convinced that the four Ukrainian regions now being annexed hold similar significance. And while Russia had already taken over Crimea when the Kremlin decreed the annexation, Ukraine still holds much of two of the regions being annexed on Friday, Donetsk and Zaporizka. That raises a key question ahead of Mr. Putin’s Friday speech: Will he threaten to use devastating force to compel Ukraine to withdraw from what the Kremlin will characterize as Russian territory? Ukraine gave no sign that threats by Mr. Putin would cause it to back down. In a speech late on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine reiterated his denunciation of the referendums and said he was working with foreign leaders to coordinate a strong international response. “Our key task now is to coordinate actions with partners in response to sham referendums organized by Russia and all related threats,” Mr. Zelensky said. In Russia, Friday’s fanfare will take place against the backdrop of Mr. Putin’s chaotic “partial mobilization” — the large-scale military draft that he announced on Sept. 21 and that has led to demonstrations, attacks on enlistment offices and tens of thousands of men trying to flee the country. Western experts are skeptical that the mobilization of conscripts will quickly be able to reverse Russia’s battlefield losses. poll published by the independent Levada Center on Thursday showed rising anxiety over the war among Russians — a conflict that much of the public had largely tuned out until Mr. Putin’s draft order last week. The poll found 56 percent of Russians saying they were “very alarmed” by events in Ukraine, up from 37 percent in August. Asked what they felt upon hearing of Mr. Putin’s draft order, 47 percent described “anxiety, fear, horror,” while only 27 percent said they felt pride. published by the independent Levada Center on Thursday showed rising anxiety over the war among Russians — a conflict that much of the public had largely tuned out until Mr. Putin’s draft order last week. The poll found 56 percent of Russians saying they were “very alarmed” by events in Ukraine, up from 37 percent in August. Asked what they felt upon hearing of Mr. Putin’s draft order, 47 percent described “anxiety, fear, horror,” while only 27 percent said they felt pride. www.nytimes.com/… x Putin’s recruits are heading for slaughter https://t.co/tiKM5BFSD0



I was better trained in high school than Russia trains their soldiers. No wonder Ukraine is kicking their asses. Russia's losses will be multiplying & Kremlin will have major social unrest as payback. Insane. — Will of the People (@RIGHTtoCONSENT) September 29, 2022 Which brings us back to how Putin’s 300,000 “reservists” will fare against Ukraine’s NATO-trained army. It is likely those recruits will join units that have recently been traumatized after seven months of combat and already suffer from poor morale. It won’t help that those units have recently been reinforced with prison parolees, ragtag militias from false “peoples’ republics,” and recruited guns from private armies. The results will be predictable. Putin might continue to send unwilling Russian men to an ill-conceived and illegal invasion for which they are not trained or prepared. But it’s not warfare. It’s just more murder — this time of his own citizens. www.washingtonpost.com/...

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/29/2126006/-Ukraine-Invasion-Day-219-annexation-farce-continues-as-Unipolar-hegemony-is-inexorably-collapsing

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