As his troops find themselves in dire straits on the Ukrainian front, Vladimir Putin launches a full-scale counteroffensive. But in the media field, at least for now. Because in a speech addressed to the Russian people and broadcast this Wednesday morning, the Russian president wanted to remobilize his people, and show off his chest on the international stage.
According to the specialists interviewed on BFMTV, the autocrat’s speech is explained by both geopolitical considerations and internal political reasons. And in the long run, the commitments made by Vladimir Putin could well backfire.
A speech in axes
Basically, Vladimir Putin’s 14-minute statement can be boiled down to four axes and a few quotes. First of all, the Russian president confirmed the imminent holding of referendums aimed at the annexation of the breakaway republics and the conquered territories in eastern Ukraine.
The governments of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Lugansk and Donetsk “have made the sovereign decision to join us in organizing referendums. (…) We are going to support their approach,” he announced.
He also attacked a West that he portrayed as anti-Russian and even hell-bent on the total loss of his country: “The goal of the West is to destroy Russia.”
He offered two responses to this phantasmagorical threat. On the one hand, he further intensified his country’s war effort, proclaiming that starting this Wednesday he would end military enlistment among the Russian population. “To defend our country it is necessary to mount a partial mobilization,” he said, thus opening the call for 300,000 reservists. On the other hand, even more chillingly, he warned: “If the integrity of Russia is threatened, we will use the necessary weapons.”
Invent a catastrophe announced in victory
For Emmanuel Dupuy, president of the Institut Prospective et Sécurité en Europe, this rhetoric prepares people’s minds for a war that will definitely last, seven months after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and with the approach of autumn: ” We have the impression that the front will stabilize, it will become entrenched, with what the Ukrainians call the ‘season of bad roads'”.
But it is the prospect of new annexations through the organization of referendums related to the accession of the separatist republics of Lugansk and Donetsk, but also of the regions of Kherson (in the south of Ukraine) and Zaporizhia (in the east) to the Russian Federation. which first caught the attention of observers. And under the voluntarist and resolute accents of Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Dupuy rather invited to write an observation of weakness:
“He talks about defending territories that want to join Russia, but these territories are less and less Russian because the Ukrainians are making up ground. So there is this headlong rush that is also an admission of failure that we are trying to compensate for.”
Jean-Maurice Ripert, a diplomat who was French ambassador to Moscow between 2013 and 2017, had more to say about what this makeup is intended to hide: “The only victory he can claim is having annexed four territories, so we are in a form of imperialism.” . and new forms of colonization”.
Reassure local elites
However, the results of these queries do not make a fold. Sylvie Bermann, BFMTV’s diplomacy consultant who succeeded Jean-Maurice Ripert in Russia, noted: “People don’t even need to vote, the result is given in advance.”
If the effective participation of local populations in these referendums questions more than the percentage of “Yes” to annexation, it may very well be that Vladimir Putin’s announcement concerns less the average citizen than the pro-Russian elites of these territories.
“It is also a message against those in the self-proclaimed republics who feel a bit abandoned and say that Russia has not done everything for them,” said the president of the Institute for Foresight and Security in Europe.
Putin is sinking into the nuclear trap
But experts believe that, even taking the Kremlin’s point of view, these territorial gains are all a bogus good idea. And risk disgracing his master when the tide of war resounds with his promise, urbi and orbito use “all necessary means” to “protect” Russia and its “integrity”.
“The recovery of territories by the Ukrainians will certainly continue and now they will be territories then considered as annexed and Russian. And therefore considered as vital interests of Russia. There, he is doing nuclear blackmail. What will Vladimir do? Putin at that time? Probably, he will not use nuclear weapons but it will be perceived as a failure for him”, highlighted Sylvie Bermann.
“The use of nuclear weapons is still highly unlikely, knowing the global consequences for him and his regime,” said Ulrich Bounat, a geopolitical analyst specializing in Central and Eastern Europe.
Victimization, a condition of mobilization
But this position of Vladimir Putin, his insistence on making Russia – despite the invader of his neighbor – the victim of the West, is of course not gratuitous. He intends to close ranks, unite an opinion whose initial enthusiasm has been clouded by a badly started conflict. It is at this price that the dictator can justify sending 300,000 reservists to the front by Emmanuel Dupuy:
“He is rewriting history, recent history, because he is saying that he is not the aggressor but that Russia feels attacked and that is why it defends itself, thus giving the impression that the population must be mobilized.”
Managing conflicting sensitivities
This call for the contingent to join the forces clearly marks a turning point in the war, a worsening of the situation and an increase in military pressure on the population. However, the Russians still escape a general mobilization. The chosen intermediate solution resembles a desire to accommodate different political sensitivities, as well as a public that would not be willing to accept such an end.
“’In the Moscow intelligentsia, there is opposition from those who want less war and more war. The head of the Communist Party says, for example, that we must speed up, calling for a stronger mobilization”, summarized Emmanuel Dupuy.
Sylvie Bermann also insisted on underlining the domestic background of this partial mobilization. “It is the answer to those who want total war, to Kadyrov (the Chechen dictator who is increasingly distancing himself from his Russian sovereign, Editor’s Note), to those who intervene on television saying that we must fight, put all the means to win in Ukraine. This is also why he is forced to do this.”
Hollow nuclear threat, wariness of public opinion, effort to stay on a fragile political summit line to reconcile “ultras” and moderates…Vladimir Putin has never seemed so far, after this speech, from his former position of power.
Source: BFM TV
