Putin, cornered inside and outside Ukraine, emulates Stalin’s levies and Hitler’s referendums

Vladimir Putin continues with his flight forward. Neither the serious losses on the battlefield, nor the criticism within his government, nor the estrangement from his international partners – China, India and Turkey – has made the Russian president give up his goal of controlling , at least, the northeastern part of Ukraine.

Far from openly acknowledging that the “special operation” that began on February 24 in the neighboring country is not going as expected, Putin has attacked with all his might. He has once again shown the letter of the nuclear blackmail to the West and has announced an escalation of war.

His strategy to counter the Ukrainian forces on the ground (and the weapons that the West keeps sending) is based on execute two movements coordinated that the European Union and the United States see as clear signs of weakness.

[La UE ve “desesperación” en el anuncio de Putin y apoyará a Ucrania pese a su amenaza nuclear]

“Opinion Polls”

The first of these is to hold referendums on annexation to Russia in the Donbas regions (Luhansk and Donetsk) and of Zaporizhia and Kherson in the coming days. Some consultations that the international community has already announced that “it will not recognize” and that, probably, will not even be representative.

And it is that the propaganda media at the service of the Kremlin are already publishing the “results” of some “opinion polls” in the occupied areas of Ukraine. Some data that, of course, are very favorable to the wishes of Moscow and that, predictably, will resemble the final results if the consultations take place.

These referendums, which leaders such as Emmanuel Macron have described as a “farce”, serve as a tool for Putin to legitimize his power in the invaded territories. A tactic that the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has not hesitated to compare on his Twitter account with the Nazi referendum on Anschluss of Austria.

That is, the query that the German dictator Adolf Hitler made on April 10, 1938 to justify his invasion of Austria and turn the country into a province of the Third Reich. According to the records, the results gave 99.7% support in favor of annexation to Germany.

It was not, however, the only referendum that made hitler. During his regimen, he held a total of four consultations. Exactly the same ones that Putin now wants to carry out in Ukraine after the one carried out in the occupied peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

Two years earlier, in 1936the dictator had already asked the Germans if they approved the military occupation of the Rhineland, which resulted in a clear “Yes” victory. Previously, in 1933I know held a first plebiscite on the country’s withdrawal from the League of Nations. Another followed in August 1934 on the merger of the positions of chancellor and president which later allowed Hitler and the Nazi Party to gain control of all state powers.

“partial mobilization”

Once the territories of the eastern part of Ukraine have been annexed to Russia, the Kremlin’s second move is evident: defend those territories. But for this he needs troops to make up for the casualties of a morally and physically sunk army after the defeat against the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

And that has been the next step that Putin has taken. In a televised speech, the Russian president announced on Wednesday that he would send to the front 300,000 reservists Russians. Of the two million in the country, those with the greatest military experience will go.

[Más de 1.000 detenidos en Rusia en las protestas contra la movilización anunciada por Putin]

This partial mobilization, which has provoked demonstrations throughout the country and has caused the flight of hundreds of citizens, is the first that Russia has called since the Second World War.

On that occasion, in May 1941, Josef Stalin called up 800,000 reservists to complete the various units of the Red Army. He did it preventively, since he feared an aggression by Germany, which had spent weeks accumulating soldiers on the borders of the Soviet Union and would end up launching what is known What Operation Barbarossathe great (and unsuccessful) offensive with which Hitler tried to invade the USSR.