Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization of reserves and threatened Ukraine with nuclear weapons. This is an unprecedented move in the country since the end of World War II.
“The mobilization activities start today,” Putin said. He explained that the mobilized people would receive wages and social security like the professional soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
He has already signed a decree for the immediate start of mobilization activities.
“The call to military service will belong only to those citizens who are in the reserve, and especially to those who have served in the military, have certain military specialties and relevant experience,” Putin said.
In a separate speech Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that the mobilization was necessary to ensure control over the more than 1,000 km of contact line between the Ukrainian and Russian armies, as well as in the “liberated territories” themselves.
The West wanted to destroy Russia
In his speech, Putin explained that the West wanted to destroy Russia, did not want peace between Ukraine and Russia, and was conducting nuclear blackmail. Putin took only “urgent and necessary steps to protect Russia’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity”. Currently, there is no foreign army on the territory of Russia, and a large part of the Russian army is on the territory of Ukraine.
Putin told Western countries that all resources would be used to protect the Russian people and that Russia had many weapons to respond with, saying it was “not a bluff”.
According to Putin, the Ukrainian people have been turned into cannon fodder. He also expressed support for the referendums announced yesterday on joining Russia in the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia.
“We have no moral right to abandon these people,” Putin said of the territories of Ukraine currently controlled by the Russian military.
Putin spoke again of the “neo-Nazi regime”, which had taken power in Ukraine in 2014 following an armed coup.
He said Russia needed to protect “our brothers and sisters – residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and other areas liberated from the neo-Nazi regime” and for the “cleaning of towns and villages from neo-Nazis” in the Donbass.
According to him, the West “roughly imposes its will on other countries and peoples and instills its pseudo-values”
“The goal of this West is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country. They already say directly that in 1991 they managed to divide the Soviet Union, and now the time has come for Russia itself to divide into very deadly and districts at odds with each other, “Putin says
Joe Biden: Russia makes “reckless” nuclear threats.
Later the president of the United States Joe Biden he commented that the new nuclear threats made by his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin against Europe show “reckless contempt” to the responsibilities of his country. She remembered it Russia signed the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty. Biden also said the war in Ukraine belongs to one person: Vladimir Putin.
In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Biden said that no one threatened Russia and Moscow unilaterally initiated the conflict in violation of all international conventions.
“This war aims to destroy Ukraine’s right to exist as a state and the right of Ukrainians to exist as a people”Biden said.
The American president has assured that the United States continues to support and show solidarity with Kiev. He also said Washington is in favor of expanding the composition of the UN Security Council, both its permanent and temporary members.
Strongly condemning the invasion, Biden said reports of Russian atrocities against civilians in Ukraine “should be chilling” for everyone, no matter where they live.
Russia must be held responsible for any war crimes committed in Ukraine, he said.
“We are working together with the G7 and like-minded countries to demonstrate that democracies can both protect their citizens and help the rest of the world.”noted the American president.
Macron called for “maximum pressure” against Putin
French President Emmanuel Macron called on the international community to “exert maximum pressure” on his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who previously said he was ready to use “all means” in his arsenal against the West, reported “France Presse “, quoted by BTA.
Putin’s decisions “push Russia into even greater isolation,” Macron said on the sidelines of the annual session of the UN General Assembly in New York. He congratulated China and India on recent declarations calling for an end to the war in Ukraine.
“His decision is bad news for the Russian people, for young people, and will reinforce the country’s isolation,” Macron said.
Macron added that all nuclear powers must act responsibly. He made his own remarks after a meeting with the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi.
“Sign of weakness”
The partial mobilization ordered by President Vladimir Putin is a sign of “weakness”, said US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink.
“False referendums and mobilization are signs of weakness, of Russian failure,” Brink wrote on Twitter. “The United States will never recognize Russia’s claims on the supposedly annexed Ukrainian territories and we will continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary,” she said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech is a worrying escalation and the threats he has made should be taken seriously, British Foreign Minister Gillian Keegan told Sky News.
“Obviously it’s something we have to take very seriously because, you know, we have no control over it – I’m not sure he (Putin) controls anything either, really. It’s obviously escalating,” Keegan said.
“It’s chilling … It’s a serious threat, but it’s been done before,” Keegan told the BBC in a separate interview.
German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck also called the partial mobilization in Russia a “further escalation” and a “bad and wrong move”.
“We will analyze this and discuss how to respond,” he said.
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