The Big Change That Comes With Referenda And Mobilization

What the western analysis is missing is that legally it’s not possible for Russian military units to be active in foreign countries. There have obviously been workarounds in Ukraine, but it’s part of why so few regular army units are involved and the parsimonious use of manpower. That’s the big change that comes with the referenda and mobilization.

At this point the AFU is significantly but not catastrophically degraded. The minimal force applied by Russia has had its share of failures but has done that degradation and mostly held the line. It likely would have been sufficient for the whole task except the west has gone all in and is now a direct participant in the conflict. That’s problematic but has apparently done terrible things to western military stocks (especially Eastern European stocks), which does reduce the larger threat to Russia in the short term.

Partial mobilization means the ability to backfill rear duties in the conflict as well as border duties in the western military zone and along the Russian-Ukrainian border. With the referenda, regular army can be applied at large scale against a degraded AFU and with loosened rules of engagement concerning infrastructure. It’s openly telegraphed to give Washington DC another chance to act rationally. If not, you go NATO on the degraded AFU, infrastructure and aim to give the west a crushing defeat on the battlefield of its choosing. It will be costly but could achieve encirclement of the AFU in Donbas/Kharkov as well as the capture of Odessa. And I maintain that when Odessa falls, the US taps out.

In this scenario we all have to hope the US doesn’t further escalate because that escalation ladder will see nukes. NATO leadership thinks it can manage and win a “limited nuclear war” and it doesn’t handle losing very well.

Something obscured by the Western MSM’s focus on playing up the general threat of Putin escalating to nuclear weapons is what Putin actually said:

“Those who are using nuclear blackmail against us should know that the wind rose (NATO symbol) can turn around.”

There’s a very specific threat implied in that phrasing, which gives Putin and Russia the scope of climbing another rung up the escalation ladder before actual use of nuclear weapons. The threat is as follows: –

[1] The Kiev regime’s shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, its lies about that, and the subsequent refusal of the IAEA and the UN to acknowledge those Ukrainian lies - will have further hardened Russian attitudes towards the EU and the West .

[2] There are fifteen nuclear reactors located across four power plants in Ukraine, nine of which remain in the Kiev regime’s territory.

[3] When the coming referenda are done, the territories of Donetz and Lugansk will become officially Russian. The US-NATO will then continue its proxy war and push the Kiev regime to attack those regions, though they will then be Russia by Russian lights. At that point, the Russians will take that as an act of war, conclude the special military operation, and commence the war proper on Ukraine.

[4] They can then do what they’ve been technically capable of doing from the beginning and what the USA canonically does when it invades a country: target and take out with missile and air strikes both the enemy’s C&C centers — currently occupied to some greater or lesser extent by the US-NATO personnel actually directing this war — and the country’s civil infrastructure of water, railroads, communications, specific bridges and roads, and its power plants and transmission lines.

[5] In general, as Docotorow suggests, then. But among those power plants are the nine nuclear reactors. And the targeting of those could be done on days when the wind is specifically blowing east to west, towards Europe.

[6] Not only that. Here’s a map of those reactors’ locations.

Presumably, those reactors are built to Soviet specs and, like Zaporizhzhia, are built to standards whereby conventional attack by shelling or an aircraft crashing into them won’t crack their containment vessels (Although spent fuel pools are far more vulnerable.) A Kinzhal hypersonic missile OTOH — or a barrage of them — will break open their containment vessels   .

An exclusion zone created at South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant, a.k.a the Pivdennoukrainsk Nuclear Power Plant, in Mykolaiv oblast, about 350 kms south of Kiev, would have the effect of focusing a few minds in the US, NATO, and the EU.

Indeed, the Russians sent a warning three days ago.