Today, Explained - Putin’s fake elections

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

The Russian president is calling on reservists and holding fake referenda to legitimize his war. Washington Post reporter Mary Ilyushina explains. This episode was produced by Jillian Weinberger and Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It looked a whole lot like Vladimir Putin was losing his war a few weeks ago. Ukrainian army kicking Russian arse, retaking a huge swath of territory, enforcing Putin's troops into an embarrassing retreat. Not just in Ukraine, but with the Russian public too. The politician says, those people who convinced Putin the special operation would be over quickly, they took us for a ride. Now he's escalating that war and holding some shady elections to tighten his grip on Ukrainian territory.

But the concept is quite ridiculous because they are not even hiding how sham this vote really is. They said that they're going to send a pretty heavy military presence to ensure peace and stability, but really it is a tactic of intimidation. Putin's escalation, coming up on Today Explained. Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Today Explained, Sean Ramos-Verm, and it was just like a dozen days ago when we had Mary Alushna from the Washington Post on the show in an episode titled, Is Ukraine Winning Now? Ukraine had just staged this wildly successful counteroffensive. Russians were talking smack about Putin's strategy. Maybe Putin heard the show. He probably did. And last week, he definitely took action and he threw in a lot of wrenches, not only to Russians domestically, but in terms of the entire conflict and for a lot of international leaders who are watching this closely. So a lot of Russians last Wednesday, they woke up to see their worst fears materialize,

and that is the mobilization in the country. I think it is necessary to support the proposal of the Ministry of Defense and the general staff to conduct a partial military mobilization in Russia. I repeat, we are only talking about a partial mobilization. Which basically means it's not the entire country that is set on the warpath, so not like the whole economy, all the industries working towards this. But that means that a lot of men are getting drafted, called up and sent to the trenches. So Russian officials have said they're looking to get up to 300,000 people, but there's concern that it might be more because there are reports of people being round up in the

far eastern regions of Russia and in some small settlements. So there is definitely fear that the number will be much higher than that. And another thing that he did, he threatened to use nuclear weapons if he decides that West has crossed another line in the war in Ukraine. In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapons systems available to us. This is not a bluff. It's not the first time we are hearing from him that he is, you know, inclined to do something

as radical as this. But obviously, it's not something we can we're hearing from him that he is, you know, inclined to do something as radical as this. But obviously, it's not something we can just not pay attention to. Whatever you believe, that should make your blood run cold. Let's start with the reserves. Who are these people that are getting called up? So, for now, we're seeing that it's mostly people who have some sort of previous military experience. They probably served in the army. They probably have maybe a junior military rank, but they do have a rank. They are usually under 35 years old, although there are reports of people who are older

than that being also handed these mobilization notices. And a lot of these people, despite the fact that they have some military experience, that doesn't necessarily mean they've ever been in combat. They might have served somewhere, they have some profession that is like very technical and very important for the Russian frontlines because they don't have enough people with that specific skill set. But, you know, they are routing up a lot of younger men who not necessarily want to go to war. And how does this differ from who's currently fighting this war in Ukraine? So, Russia went in with about 100,000-150,000 people. And those are people who are contract soldiers,

who signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry to be at military bases to serve and sort of be on standby. And now this effort is wider. So these are people who are not currently in the army. They might have a contract that is slightly different with the Defense Ministry that they are in reserve so that they can be technically called up in case of a conflict, but they're not actively on duty at all times like the other people. So it's just targeting more groups of Russians. Two weeks ago, we were talking about how Putin was finally starting to see opposition at home, political opposition from the political apparatus in Russia, opposition from critics. How are people reacting now that he's calling on rank and file reservists to fight

this war? There's quite a bit of anxiety and in some cases a lot of panic because what we've seen happen is people trying to get out of the country, people seeking legal help to sign up for maybe alternative service or to find legal ways to just avoid this call-up and just not take part in this? I feel that not really many, lots of Russian people want to fight and want to be mobilized and want to go to the army. There are worried mothers and wives who are sending their children or husbands away from the country while trying to pack as much stuff they can possibly have to move abroad. All the flights are sold out from people in big cities, Moscow and

St. Petersburg, especially in the entire last week. On each day, any direct flight to a visa-free destination country that still allows Russians to come in, they were sold out. I am monitoring a lot of group chats, these Telegram channels that are giving live updates from various borders where Russians are crossing, how long the lines are, what did they ask, did they let you out? So there is a huge effort for people to kind of mobilize in a different way to avoid this mobilization. And the very same day Vladimir Putin announced this general mobilization, we've seen people take to the streets and protest against this. As people took to the streets against the call-up, hundreds were detained in dozens of cities from St. Petersburg to Siberia. Which is quite remarkable, just given that any sort of dissent, any sort of public criticism of the war and of the authorities

has been essentially criminalized in Russia. And people who do protest or speak out somehow, they are facing fines, sometimes long jail terms. And it's essentially much, much harder to protest. So while these demonstrations on Wednesday, for example, were not as big as we've seen maybe 10 years ago when tens of thousands of people marched across Moscow against Putin's re-election. It is still the biggest outpouring of public discontent since the beginning of the war. Do we have any idea if Vladimir Putin will get his 300,000 reservists? I think he will. I think he might even get more than that because what Russia has is a really big administrative resource. If you look at the general numbers of per capita, how many people serve in law

enforcement, police, military commissariats, and so on and so forth, they have enough people to see this through. And also, one other thing we can't really forget is that Russia, just the day before they announced this mobilization, made it really difficult for people to avoid military service. So they passed a bunch of amendments to the law, which has basically two purposes. For people who are already on the front lines fighting in Ukraine, they get really big criminal punishments if they try to leave the service or try to give up and go captive to Ukraine or something like that. Because that has been happening and that was a big problem for Russia because people were trying to get out.

And second purpose of these amendments is also to ensure this mobilization is very difficult for people to avoid. So they don't really have much leeway. Once you have the summons, you have to go because otherwise you can be jailed. So what will this mobilization mean for the war effort? Do we have any idea how much 300,000 plus reservists tips the scales in Putin's favor or not? Even people who are independent military analysts and also pro-Kremlin, pro-war bloggers and correspondents, some of them have agreed on one thing, that it doesn't necessarily mean that if you bring 300,000 people to the front lines,

it's going to tip the scale a lot. Because first of all, morale is a big issue here, because these people don't feel like they have to do it. They don't feel that they are ideologically all out and are supposed to go and do and fight and kill people. And second of all is that military experience and whether they've actually served in the actual armed forces, whether they have some theoretical knowledge of combat, but not necessarily any real knowledge and capability. And another thing is equipment, because we know that Russia has already struggled to provide with enough equipment and enough personal gear to people who are already fighting in Ukraine. So to ensure that all these 300,000

people will have enough, even helmets and vests and enough ammunition and enough guns, enough heavier hardware is, again, a really, really big question. And another thing on top of all of that that we have to keep in mind is that military, actual military training they're going to get is a big question. Some of the people I spoke to say it's going to be only two weeks, which is really not enough for some people who even, okay, even if they have combat experience, some of them fought in the Chechen War. So that is over, way over a decade ago. These people are much older now, and they have not been in battle for a really long time. And warfare does change over the years. So whether they will be, you know, to fight on par, even with themselves 20 years ago is a big question. And if they're not, there's always the nukes? Or is that just a big bluff?

Well, everyone hopes it's a bluff. But Putin said in his speech that it's not a bluff. He directly said... This is not a bluff. Classic bluffing move. This is not a bluff. This is not a bluff. So he is very well known for ratcheting up the rhetoric,

and he's not known for backing down, right? So he obviously tries to tell Ukraine and tell the Western community that is supporting Ukraine that the stakes are really high and he's prepared to go all out. He's not backing down and try to scare them and see who blinks first. And another concerning thing here is obviously the timing, because winter is approaching, so it's going to be much harder for both sides to fight. And Putin is betting that winter will wear out Western support for Ukraine, but also the referendums that he has announced. So what they're trying to do is use this as a pretext to annex four regions in eastern Ukraine that they have partially occupied. And once that happens, what's probably going to be Putin's line and Kremlin's line

is that these are now the territories of the Russian Federation. So any attack on these areas will be met with even more force and even more, you know, a severe response. More with Mary in a minute on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves?

Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit ConnexOntario.ca. Russian-controlled regions in eastern and southern Ukraine

say they'll hold referendums on joining Russia this week. Kiev is calling the move a sham. It's also been heavily criticized by the United States. Today Explained here with Mary Alushina. Mary, tell us more about this referendum that's being held right now in Russian-held territories of Ukraine. What is going on? So last Friday, Moscow went ahead with their plans to hold referendums in four occupied territories, that is Donetsk and Luhansk. Parts of those are controlled by the separatists and have been controlled for about eight years since the

annexation of Crimea and everything that unfolded afterwards. But also Zaporizhia and Kherson, which before the February 24th invasion were completely under the control of the Ukrainian government. Russia is claiming its troops have taken control of one city called Kherson. It's a port city on the Black Sea. Ukrainian officials are warning that the situation at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power station is approaching critical. That's where Russia seized Europe's largest nuclear plant in early March. Ukraine says Russia has targeted the parts of the plant that send electricity to Ukraine and is now diverting the power to the Russian grid. So Russia's trying to, you know, grab these lands, even though it's holding, in some places,

just bits of land here and there. But the concept is quite ridiculous because they are not even hiding how sham this vote really is because there is no observers, there is immense pressure because those lands are occupied so there is military there they said that they're going to send a pretty heavy military presence to ensure peace and stability and sort of security in those areas but really it is a tactic of intimidation so there's obviously no hope that they will be fair elections, and even if you can call it elections.

And even before all these referendums started, most of Western countries have said that they will not recognize them as valid in any way. We know that these referenda will be manipulated. We know that Russia will use these sham referenda as a basis to purportedly annex these territories either now or in the future. Let me be clear. If this does transpire, the United States will never recognize Russia's claims to any purportedly annexed parts of Ukraine. So if Ukraine certainly won't be looking at these elections as legitimate, and the rest of the world won't either. Why hold them? Well, you know, for Putin, this is a, you know, bureaucratic pretense to claim them as their own and say that, you know, now he can use tougher, worse weapons that he's been using before. But also, it is a way to ratchet up some public support, because he needs to claim some wins

in this war, and there have not been many. And he has recently finally kind of formed this whole purpose of this operation. He said, like, we want to liberate those areas because we consider them Russian because they're Russian speaking people there. We cannot, we have no moral right to hand over our loved ones to the executioners. We cannot fail to respond to their sincere desire to determine their own fate. He wants to present it as to the Russian general public, like, look, we've brought these people home. And that's the whole concept that him and all the Kremlin and state TV propagandists have been saying, like, we are bringing Russian people

home and we want to unite them all under the Russian motherland. I want to point out, we know that the majority of the people living in the territories freed from neo-Nazis, these are in the first place historical Novorossiya land, do not want to be under the heel of the neo-Nazi regime. So there are kind of two streams here, but public support is also one that is really, really important. How do people in these regions where these referenda are being held see themselves? As Russians, as Ukrainians, both, are they actually going to buy into Putin's messaging here? Well, from what we know, there was a pretty big propaganda effort in those areas, in schools and sort of education facilities for really young children. They brought books that

say that Russia is, you know, their real homeland and that Ukraine is not a real country and all these things. But some of this propaganda is really, really blunt and not sophisticated in any way. So I'm not sure that a lot of people are buying into this. There are obviously Russian speaking people in those areas. It's, you know, eastern Ukraine. They're very close to the Russian border. And there's a lot of family ties and friendly ties and historic ties that, you know, tie this whole territory together. But that does not mean that they see themselves as part of Soviet Russia. They are supporters of Russia in Luhansk and Donetsk, probably more than in Zaporizhia and Kherson, although in those areas, there were also people who have collaborated with Russia and sort of joined their side. But a lot of these people were really disenchanted with Russian recent retreat from the area

because what Russians have promised them, that was even an official slogan, is that Russia is here forever. But that ended really quickly in September, when Russia was forced to retreat from a lot of areas in Zaporizhia and Kharkiv area, for example. So Russia is moving ahead with this really, really quickly because they're feeling that they're running out of time and they're losing some small bits of trust from people

who are still in those areas and are supportive of Russia and also because they're suffering strategic losses. So these elections don't close until Tuesday and I suppose we won't know that Russia won this referendum until Tuesday but if that is the outcome that we should presume what what happens next? What does it mean for the war? Probably right. The vote is going to be overwhelmingly supportive of joining Russia. But the fear is that once they do join the Russian Federation officially in the eyes of Russian law, we've heard that publicly from some of the officials saying that the Russian armed forces will be reinforcing those areas.

It means like all these reservists will probably go in to hold these territories, to try to control these territories more. Obviously, we'll publicly claim that they've achieved this remarkable goal of liberating all those areas, even though they don't really fully control all of these regions fully on the ground. But most importantly, for the war, and specifically for Ukraine, the Ukrainian goal and Zelensky's goal has for a long time been to bring the borders back to what they were before the invasion, before February 24th. And we have no choice but to defend ourselves. We do it. We push the aggressor beyond the internationally recognized border of the Ukrainian state. They have obviously been more inspired and more motivated after they had some really remarkable wins and gains in recent weeks and months. They are really hopeful that West will supply them with more weapons, with some heavier weapons that will allow them to continue their offensive operations in some of these occupied areas.

For us, this is a war for life. That is why we need defense support, weapons, military equipment, and shells. All in all, I've been noticing two main avenues of thought. Whether Putin is trying to step everything up to potentially go in negotiations at some point and have like a upper hand to try to, you know, get more than he would have initially gained if he didn't call for mobilization, if he didn't, you know, take all these annexed lands and so on and so forth. Or he completely lost the plot and just wants to nuke, take the land and, you know, try to gain as much Ukrainian land as possible. He doesn't care about losses, deaths or any strategic goals anymore because he just wants to get this done.

So option one, he wants to threaten a massive escalation and the possibility of killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Ukrainians as a bargaining chip. Option two, he actually wants to do it. This happened on Wednesday as the U.N. General Assembly was meeting in New York City, as President Biden was speaking at the U.N. We will stand in solidarity with Ukraine. We will stand in solidarity against Russia's aggression, period. How is the world responding? Is everyone just going to lie down and let this happen? We did an episode last week about the Security Council's abject failures here, but is anyone else going to get in his way? Well, the ball is very much in the Western court, I would say, because they have to come up with strategy and a really forceful response if they want to deter Vladimir

Putin. But what that actually going to look like is a big question, because at first they hoped that the sanctions would cripple Russia to a point of a halt, that the economy is going to become absolutely defunct and that it's not going to be able to hold this war effort. This is going to impose severe cost on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time. We have purposely designed these sanctions to maximize a long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our allies. But that actually did not happen because the war is going on and the Russian economy is not in shambles, as Biden has said in February. He said it's going to target and destroy Russian economy. It's not necessarily true. There are some issues that are going to be

really long lasting, something that is really hurting Russian economy, but that didn't stop the war. And Russia still sells its gas and oil internationally and gets massive revenue that helps it lead this effort. So what actually is up their sleeve, for example, I don't exactly know what they can use to threaten Putin. And he seems to know that. I guess he knows that. Because, you know, especially with the energy supplies, there's been, you know, just to paint you a picture of the mockery that's

been going on about the whole Europe buying gas from Russia, or if they choose not to do that, and sort of freeze this winter. There's a live feed that shows a turned on gas stove, and it says the price, I think it's like 144 euro a month that that person pays for this gas, which is like 100 times less than a European person will probably pay this winter. So they're definitely mocking people and they're betting that they will have the upper hand at the end. Mary Ushna, she writes about Russia for the Washington Post. Our show today was produced by Jillian Weinberger with help from Amanda Llewellyn.

It was edited by Matthew Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed and mastered by Paul Robert Mounsey. We'll be talking more about the looming energy crisis in Europe later this week on Today Explained. Thank you.