Separatists hide true intent of Donetsk mobilisation
Expert observers in Ukraine said separatists’ announcement of a massive military mobilisation effort is a ploy to allow the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics to add more armed personnel from Russia.
Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), announced a voluntary mobilisation in the territory controlled by the rebels and cited numbers that analysts said are not realistic.
“We intend to mobilise to increase the number of our army to 100,000 people,” Zakharchenko told reporters on February 2nd. “We have time until spring. New units will have time to learn combat training. We are waiting for the mobilisation of at least five additional brigades: three motorised infantry, one artillery and one armoured.”
Analysts called the statement “absurd,” and said that it is impossible to mobilise 100,000 people from the small area controlled by terrorists. DPR’s current army is estimated to have between 7,000 and 15,000 soldiers.
“It is fairy tales and mythical figures,” Petro Olischuk, a political scientist and associate professor at Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, told SETimes. “At the initial stage of the conflict, a lot of guys wanted to join the rebels, but due to the fighting their number is constantly decreasing. Most of the battle-worthy separatists from the local population have been eliminated, and the others will never take up arms.”
In response to Zakharchenko’s statement, Russian TV channels reported that military enlistment offices in Donetsk are overcrowded by people who want to join the DPR army. However, eyewitnesses and experts said the reports are not accurate.
“It is ordinary propaganda,” Olischuk said. “Militant leaders have to maintain the fighting spirit of the people who are fighting. They say, ‘Reinforcements will come soon, the movement for the Novorossiya is developing, and we will attack Kyiv soon.'”
It is not the first time that terrorist leaders have attempted to mobilise. The first attempt was last summer, followed by another last fall. But experts said the previous efforts were not successful because the mobilisation capabilities of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions are weak and are not comparable with those in the rest of the country.
“There are very few military specialists from the local population on the territory of Donbas,” said Volodymyr Tsybulko, an expert with the Kyiv-based Politics Centre think tank. “In the past few years, the ministry of defence has brought out all military units. Even military enlistment offices tried not to take people from eastern Ukraine. They don’t have the abilities for military service.”
Olischuk said one of the reasons that previous mobilisations have not worked is that the sense of civic initiative has never been strong in Donbas.
“It is possible to tell foreigners that ordinary local guys organised the territorial army. Without [Igor] Girkin and other people from Russia, it would not be real. They organised it,” Olischuk said.
Girkin is a former Russian intelligence agent who was a leader in last year’s uprisings in Donbas and Crimea, and previously helped lead pro-Kremlin separatist fighting in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region.
Experts said full mobilisation efforts can succeed in areas that have administrative structure, government agencies and a system of accounting and control for reservists, but the DPR does not have all of those elements.
Volodymyr Fesenko, director of the Kyiv-based Penta Centre of Applied Political Studies, said the rebels have suffered huge losses near the Donetsk airport and Debaltseve. With terrorist leaders in need of manpower, Fesenko said it is possible that any mobilisation will be a forced process rather than voluntary.
“A lot of refugees from Donbas are in Russia now. I don’t exclude that the Russian authorities could send them back, force them to fight,” he said. “The people who are in Russia depend on the Russian authorities. They depend on Russia’s migration policy.”
Fesenko added that militant leaders could force children and adolescents go to war.
“I know that militants are trying to mobilise children and adolescents now,” he said. “It looks like an African practice, or even Hitler’s method — he also did this in the last months of the war.”
Experts agree that the terrorists will not be able to recruit the necessary number of people for the DPR or LPR militant groups, no matter what method of mobilisation they use. Most new fighters will be Russian mercenaries and troops from the Russian Army.
Tsybulko said the main reason Zakharchenko openly called for a mobilisation effort was to use it as a tactic to hide Russia’s armed intervention on Ukrainian territory. “Militants’ statements about the mobilisation are a tool for covering the supply of manpower from Russia,” Tsybulko said. “This is something like a smokescreen under which mercenaries and Russian officers will be arriving to our territory. Unfortunately, this is the fact.”
Olischuk said Russia used a similar scheme to cover its shipments of arms to the terrorists.
“It’s like the humanitarian convoys from Russia, which cover the supply of arms to Donbas,” he said. “There is the same story with the mobilisation. It’s just a cover for the supply of militants.”
How should Ukraine respond to separatist leaders’ attempts to use mobilisation as a tactic for bringing in reinforcements from Russia? Share your thoughts in the comments section.