Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, on Tuesday approved a bill that toughens punishment for Russian military personnel during times of “mobilization,” signaling Moscow could be preparing to escalate in Ukraine.
So far, the Russian government of President Vladimir Putin has rejected calls to mobilize for war, which would involve a nationwide military draft. Putin has framed his war in Ukraine as a “special military operation,” but has been under pressure to escalate since Ukraine recaptured territory in its Kharkiv offensive.
The bill passed by the State Duma increases punishments for Russian soldiers “during the period of mobilization or martial law, in wartime or in the context of an armed conflict or combat operations.”
The bill introduces the terms “mobilization, martial law, and wartime” to the Russian Criminal Code. The increased punishments cover several scenarios, including desertion. If a Russian soldier abandons their unit for more than one month, they could face up to ten years in prison, up from five years under the current law.
Under US law, desertion is a military crime, and troops could face up to five years in prison for the offense. During times of war, US soldiers could potentially face the death penalty for desertion, but that hasn’t been enforced since World War II.
The harshest punishment under the Russian State Duma’s bill would be for looting in wartime, which could result in up to 15 years in prison.
In another sign that Russia is preparing to escalate in Ukraine, Russian-backed authorities in the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhia announced Tuesday that they will hold referendums on joining Russia from September 23 to September 27.
Referendums for joining Russia – that takes things up another notch. If all those people vote to become a part of Russia, then this SMO becomes defense of the homeland. I wonder what that will look like?
More escalation from the War Party in Washington, they want every Ukrainian killed
I don’t know about wanting, but they certainly don’t care. And they are more than willing to let it happen.
This is escalation out of desperatio0n. As a veteran anti-war activist for 60 years it is frustrating to see intelligent leaders of powerful countries once again escalating a war because they cannot accept inevitable defeat by a national resistance movement. Yes, US/NATO planned and provoked this conflict. But Putin stupidly took the bait and started a war of aggression that Russia can’t win and that may end his regime. The only thing in doubt at this point is how long it will take Russia to get a leadership that has the courage to withdraw from the Ukraine and hopefully pay reparations to the victims of Putin’s aggression. The mobilization will energize the Russian antiwar movement .
This is ridiculous.
This war is btw US and Russia only employing (i.e., paying) a Ukro-Nazi army (with Polish, US, Brit, … nazi contingents) with Ukrainian conscripts, all trained, equipped, and commanded by NATO and with intel and targeting by USM under a policy aimed at balkanizing Russia. God knows how it will end, but so far the fools all seem to be on one side, yours.
“Yes, US/NATO planned and provoked this conflict. But Putin stupidly took the bait and started a war of aggression that Russia can’t win and that may end his regime.”
And his alternative was more of the same provocations.
“And his alternative was more of the same provocations.”
Exactly. Enduring provocations would have been better than the consequences of war. The entire world, including Russia and Ukraine, are much worse off because of Putin’s invasion.
This site was founded based on the recognition that war is the worst thing that humans do and that the consequences of wars are almost always worse than the casus belli.
I always thought Putin’s de-Nazification trope was bullshit. Now his war has devolved to a blatant land grab that will ultimately fail. US/NATO are capitalizing on Putin’s folly. But Putin’s enemy is the Ukrainian people who will fight with or without foreign support as long as it takes to get their country back. This is a classic war of national resistance that Russia can’t win anymore than the British could defeat the Irish or the US could defeat the Vietnamese or the Taliban. Even if Zelensky sold out and surrendered the national resistance would continue. Unfortunately Putin and many of the powerful people in Russia are imperialist chauvinists who don’t recognize the historical reality of Ukrainian nationalism.
Yes, and people here also recognized that Russia wasn’t going to endure those provocations forever. More war games were already planned before Russia invaded. How wasn’t some response inevitable? At what point was Russia allowed to act? And this doesn’t change Russia’s original concerns/grievances and until they are addressed, it’s off to WW3.
Provocative NATO war games are nothing new. Fortunately the Soviet Union had rational leaders who refrained from reacting the way Putin has. The man is losing it like Nixon did toward the end. Today he threatened first strike nuclear war. No US or Russia/Soviet leader ever did that publicly since Kennedy in 1962. Fortunately Khruschev had the sense to back down and not sail into the US naval blockade. Even Nixon never publicly threatened to use nukes, although he considered a first strike in Vietnam.
I sincerely ask you. Is there anything to be won or lost in Ukraine that could possibly justify a first strike use of nuclear weapons that Putin has now threatened? Nothing in the Ukraine, no matter who wins or loses, is worth a nuclear war.
“Provocative NATO war games are nothing new. Fortunately the Soviet Union had rational leaders who refrained from reacting the way Putin has.”
Hard to compare. If we could go back to the Soviet days there’d be a few less NATO members on Russia’s borders and 30 less years of provocations.
“Today he threatened first strike nuclear war.”
Putin:
“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people — this is not a bluff,” Putin said in a televised address.
“The citizens of Russia can rest assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence, and freedom will be defended — I repeat — by all the systems available to us. Those who are using nuclear blackmail against us should know that the weathervane can turn around,” he said.
Is that like “all options on the table”?
This isn’t about mere “provocations”, this is about whether Russia will continue to exist as a nation. As an individual, you can turn the other cheek and endure any amount of provocations, if you are so inclined. That’s not what you can do as a national leader. As a national leader your job is to safeguard the continued existence of your country and protect it from the most powerful and vile Empire on the planet. I certainly don’t idealize Putin, but I cannot help but admire the way he has used the aggressive force of a far more powerful opponent to defeat that opponent both militarily and economically. Lucky for him, the West is governed by a bunch of good-for-nothing autistic degenerates who have never done a day’s worth of useful work in their life. All they have going for them is a sense of entitlement and limitless ignorance of the real world. Russia would not exist today if it weren’t for Putin.
Yeah. I remember Nixon justifying escalation in Vietnam by saying the world would see the US as a “pitiful, helpless giant” if he let the communists win. Putin’s escalation will be no more successful than Nixon’s. Like Tet in 1968, the Ukrainian offensive proved that Russia can’t win on a cost/benefit basis even if they destroy Ukraine. That was Nixon’s undoing. He escalated the war beyond the point where there was any rational basis to justify the death and destruction. Threatening to go nuclear is a loser’s gambit. Putin has shown his unfitness to lead a nuclear superpower.
You mean the Vietnamese or Russians were fighting just a couple of miles from the US border to install a client regime in Canada?
The US had to accept a Soviet ally 90 miles from Florida and nuclear armed Russian subs are probably in striking distance of New York, Washington, Los Angeles or Seattle right now.
Like Germany in the 1930’s Russia is a declining imperialist power that lost out in its inter-imperialist rivalry with the West. I support national liberation and self determination and I oppose imperialism. I support Russia when they support national liberation or self determination. But Darth Vlad’s war against Ukraine is just an imperial war of aggression against a country that has struggled against Russian imperialism for centuries. Darth Vlad has gone over to the dark side with the other double alpha male strong men who couldn’t accept the reality of defeat like Nixon and Trump.
I’m a Westerner who supports liberal democracy and the social market economy; but I’m dead against imperialism, and there is no denying that the Russians are doing the right thing. When it comes to imperialism, there is only the US. All other powers are just defending their national interests against US imperialism, which is a threat to world peace. Putin and Xi don’t threaten democracy, on the contrary, imperialist Western leaders threaten democracy by undermining trust in its institutions by propaganda lies.
I’m not into hero worship, but Putin is the greatest thing that every happened to Russia. Without Putin, there would be no Russia today; but that is of course exactly what Western imperialists want in order to achieve total global hegemony.
The US is the dominant imperialist power by far. But the US is not the only imperialist power.
UK did a good thing when it opposed the slave trade and allied with some Native American tribes against the settlers. But at the same time the UK was committing genocide agaisnt the Zulus and other Africans, exploiting workers on Caribbean plantations, conquering India and intriguing against China. Russia is a declining imperialist power. Bu t it is still an imperialist power with a history of oppressing Ukraine that goes back to Peter the Great and whichis remembered by the Ukrainian people.
Russia is not the Soviet Union and there is simply no indication whatsoever to indicate that Russia has any imperial ambitions. To defend itself or its allies against US imperialism is not a sign of imperialism.
Putin is far more rational than Western leaders. He fully understands that Russia does not have the economic means to build a global empire. In fact, from Soviet times, the Russians understand full well that to expand into Poland or the Baltics would be like swallowing a porcupine: only pain and no gain. In fact he is quite clear in what he said: “who doesn’t miss the Soviet Union has no heart, who wants it back has no brains.”
The Western propaganda is so full of contradictions that it’s hard to believe anybody with a grain of honesty can believe it. On the one hand, they say that Russia can’t even defeat the Ukrainian army a few miles from its own border, while on the other hand, they say that Russia will march on to Riga, Warsaw, Berlin and Paris, if it isn’t stopped in Ukraine. Both can’t be true. In fact, neither is. It’s just propaganda.
“there is simply no indication whatsoever to indicate that Russia has any imperial ambitions.”
. . . Umm how about the invasion of a small neighbor that was ruled by the Czars who attempted to forcibly assimilate Ukraine for several centuries while outlawing Ukrainian language, schools and culture and encouraging pogroms and depredations against Catholics and Jews ?
Or Putin’s racist comments about 20 years ago about Western civilization or his disparaging remarks about less powerful nations? Or his ruthless use of power throughout his career?
Putin’s Russia is most certainly not the Soviet Union. It is a throwback to the imperial aspirations of the Czars.
“there is simply no indication whatsoever to indicate that Russia has any imperial ambitions.”
. . . Umm how about the invasion of a small neighbor that was ruled by the Czars who attempted to forcibly assimilate Ukraine for several centuries while outlawing Ukrainian language, schools and culture and encouraging pogroms and depredations against Catholics and Jews ?
Or Putin’s racist comments about 20 years ago about Western civilization or his disparaging remarks about less powerful nations? Or his ruthless use of power throughout his career?
Putin’s Russia is most certainly not the Soviet Union. It is a throwback to the imperial aspirations of the Czars.
The Nato propaganda you convey requires the revision of history as it happens. Historical fact is that Russia refused to recognize the independence of the Luhansk and Donetzk republics for 8 years because Russia did respect the integrity of Ukraine. Russia only recognized the republics after Ukraine refused to implement the Minsk II peace accord in violation of UN Resolution 2202 and because Nato was arming Ukraine to the hilt for fighting Russia.
Russia did not want this war. Russia did not want reunification with the Russians of Ukraine. It’s Ukraine and the US that pushed for it. Now they have to bear the consequences. History cannot be turned back.
Ukrainian nationalists wanted an ethnically pure Ukraine. To achieve that they wanted to get rid of the Russian speakers, which they started to do 8 years ago by outlawing the Russian language, by introducing race laws effectively making Russians second rate citizens, by massacres, by systematically bombing of civilians, by killing torturing and general repression, by eliminating the Russian culture from Ukraine and by burning 100,000 million Russian books including Tolstoy and Dostoevsky .
Finally, the Ukrainian nationalist get what they want. The Russian speaker are leaving Ukraine together with their ancestral land. Ukrainian nationalists will be left to stew in their national hatred.
Ukraine was wrong to renege on the Minsk peace agreements. But the Russian invasion only made the situation worse. Ukraine had a Nazi problem. The Russian invasion has increased support for the Nazis. Azovstal has become Ukraine’s Alamo legend and the Azov Batallion are seen as national heros. Invading Ukraine by a country that has oppressed Ukrainians for centuries is not the way to combat Nazism, as we are seeing now.
The invasion was acolosal mistake by Putin. And now it appears that the Russian people are not prepared to give their lives for Darth Vlad’s mistake.
But Russia has a Nazi problem as well — as bad or potentially worse than Ukraine’s.
The Wagner Group is a prime example, as is the Russian Imperial Movement.
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos (the Russia space agency) until earlier this year, has been recorded giving the Siegheil and giving speeches in front of signs like “Jewish Fascism is the most dangerous thing.”
And the recently deceased ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky — who received the Order of Alexander Nevsky from Putin in 2015 and whose funeral was attended by Putin and Volodin (and officiated by Patriarch Kirill) — called “for the preservation of the white race” on multiple occasions and also opined that the US should be segregated by state. (He also denied for most of his life that he was Jewish, but finally admitted it in 2001.)
Kyiv did not “renege” on the Minsk II peace process. The West/Ukraine never had any intention of adhering to the peace agreement and to UN Resolution 2202. The West/Ukraine intended to push for war come what may. This is a proxy war against Russia that’s been planned for many years. See Rand Corp. 2019 study, see Oleksiy Arestovych’s 2019 accurate prediction of the war, see innumerable other material evidence. The facts are undeniable. Minsk II was to buy time for arming Ukraine to make war on Russia.
Putin is faced by the most powerful military alliance of all times, which is 20 times more powerful than Russia, both in militarily and economic terms. If you are up against a 500 pound gorilla that keeps on pushing you into a corner, your only chance of survival is to use the aggressive force of the enemy to throw your opponent flat on the floor. Hesitation would have meant certain death. As I said, I’m not in the business of idealizing Putin, but the SMO shows that the man is the greatest strategic genius of all times. The West will lose because it believes in its own lies. What a tragedy! The West went into the trap it has set for Russia. It needn’t have ended like that.
There are no circumstances under which there will not be a “Russia” for a long time to come.
The question is whether “Russia” will settle down into its status as just another country, or whether people like Putin will keep pissing its resources away trying to revive a dying empire.
That’s the same question the US faces.
The problem the Ukraine war has revealed is that Western imperialists have fallen victim to their own propaganda. The way the economic war against Russia has backfired against the West is a good example. The Russian economy is a lot more robust than Western propagandists believed. The Anglo-Saxon dream of destroying Russia belongs into the same category. At this point of time, Russia is a lot more stable than the US. The collective West is simply not capable of imagining a world in which it doesn’t call the shots. But that is exactly the multipolar world we are going to get.
Russia and China want peace to develop their economies. It’s the US that wants never-ending war. It doesn’t matter whether or not we approve of the regimes in Moscow or Beijing (that is none of our business), we need the multipolar world promoted by Russia and China to help the people of the world protect themselves against the bloody rule of US imperialism.
Americans erroneously believe that they exhausted the Soviet Union by the arms race. Thus, they are trying to do the same to Russia. However, since they are blinded by their own propaganda, they accelerate the collapse of the West Instead of destroying Russia.
If I were younger, I would emigrate to Russia because its one of the places that will benefit most from the shift in the global economy away from the West.
Every action and reaction in this conflict escalates the crisis. Mobilization is the latest. The reaction to that will bring humanity slipping deeper into the abyss of nuclear war.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/