Pressure on Putin mounts
PRESSURE has ratcheted up on Russian President Vladimir Putin as his decision to send reservists to Ukraine triggered spreading protests and hundreds of arrests at home, and Western leaders tore into him at the UN General Assembly this week.
Putin has calling up 300 000 military reservists, a step Western powers portrayed as desperation and that drew protesters into the streets across Russia.
In Russia, more than 1 300 people were arrested in 38 different cities, according to the OVD-Info monitoring group, the largest protests seen since Putin launched his offensive in February.
In central Moscow at least 50 people were detained by police in anti-riot gear, while in the former imperial capital Saint Petersburg police surrounded and detained a small group of protesters, loading them onto a bus.
Flights out of Russia were nearly fully booked this week, airline and travel agent data showed, in an apparent exodus of people unwilling to join the conflict.
Ukraine also announced the exchange of 215 imprisoned soldiers with Russia, including fighters who led the defence of Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks that became an icon of Ukrainian resistance.
Ten freed prisoners , including two from the US, five from Britain, and others from Sweden, Morocco and Croatia, were transferred to Saudi Arabia from Russia, Riyadh said, without specifying when they would be returned home.
But the diplomatic breakthroughs did little to lower the temperature as Western leaders voiced outrage at Putin’s latest moves, and Moscow’s plan to stage annexation referendums this week in Russian-held regions of Ukraine.
Donetsk and Lugansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south are holding votes over five days beginning today, a move that would allow Moscow to accuse Ukraine of attacking supposedly Russian territory.
Turkey is the latest Nato member to speak out on Wednesday against Russia’s referendum plans, slamming them as “illegitimate”.
The referendums follow a pattern established in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine after a similar vote. Putin has accused the West of trying to “destroy” Russia through its backing of Kyiv as he announced a partial military mobilisation.
Yesterday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged a probe into the “catalogue of cruelty” in Ukraine’s war as he opened a Security Council meeting with the top Russian and US diplomats. .