WAR IN UKRAINE: September 23, 2022
Russian police arrest well over 1,000 at anti-war protests
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 212
The Ukrainian military has said it is "smoothly but confidently" gaining ground against Russian forces in "one of the most important logistical arteries" of Ukraine's partially occupied Luhansk region - RFE/RL
So much for Russian patriotism and domestic support for Vladimir Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin's new military draft is risking a Russian brain drain. Russian men are "lining up at the borders and paying rising prices to catch flights to countries that allow them to enter without visas, such as Armenia, Georgia, Montenegro and Turkey," the N.Y. Times reports. Many of these men aren't immediately eligible, but say they fear being called up in future waves.
Meanwhile, those who’ve dared to protest in dozens of cities across Russia have been beaten and locked up by the cops. Western media report that the number of arrests have surged beyond 1,000. As I told the BBC World Service Television, the mass call-up is a risky roll of the dice which could prompt further destabilization in the country. Especially when men, essentially being used as canon fodder, begin to come home in boxes in great numbers.
There were reports from Russia that some of those detained for protesting had been handed draft papers while in custody at police stations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked about the reports, said that doing so was not against the law - BBC
The independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper, which moved its operations to Europe amid a post-war crackdown on media, reported that Vladimir Putin's decree contains an additional paragraph which has been classified and kept secret. The newspaper alleges that the secret paragraph allows for a call-up of up to a million people, rather than the reported 300,000, citing an unnamed government source.
In a speech to the United Nations Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine and immediately stop his threats to use nuclear weapons in the conflict. He accuses the Russian leader of shredding the international order with his plans to annex Ukrainian territory through "sham referenda" and calls on the United Nations to stand with Ukraine and protect its sovereignty, saying, "If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.
At the UNGA in New York, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang YI’s met with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. There was nothing in the readout from the Lavrov meeting that would indicate a shift in the PRC position in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Wang will meet US Secretary of State Blinken Friday.
Required reading…
Russia's Obscene "Referendums"
A media exercise in humiliation, and an element of war crimes
With Ukraine now on the offensive, Russia announced just a few days ago that it would no longer try to hold “referendums” on the territory it occupies in Ukraine. Then, coinciding with Putin’s speech yesterday, this policy reversed, and now “referendums” are supposedly being held — more or less instantaneously, right now, under conditions of war. People are struggling for a way to speak of this nonsense without using the word “referendum,” which in this context is obviously misleading propaganda, to say the least.
It is best to regard what is happening as a media event. There is not only no legal basis for speaking of a “referendum,” but not even much factual basis for speaking of a “sham referendum.” A sham is shambolic but it does actually exist. What Russia is undertaking is nothing more than a media exercise designed to shape how people think about Russian-occupied Ukraine.
Read Timothy Snyder’s analysis here