Putin’s weapons of terror and the vote to launch mobilisation

Vladimir Putin voted yesterday in the elections for the Duma, the Russian Parliament: he chose to vote online, posting a video in which he appears very focused (and even a little confused), as if the vote actually counted and the result were not already a foregone conclusion, given that all candidates disliked by the Kremlin had been barred even before this three-day election period began. The opposition in exile has been divided between those calling for a boycott of an illegitimate vote and those who want to use it to support candidates not affiliated with United Russia, Putin’s party, in order to give some voice to the discontent with Putin and the war and to chip away, however slightly, at his support.

For even in an election that is hardly worthy of the name, the president is seeking to legitimise his authority to establish a ‘war parliament’ (there are many veterans of the ‘special military operation’ standing as candidates for United Russia), born out of the first elections since the invasion of Ukraine, and intended to bring about the complete militarisation of the country. This is based largely on conscription, and indeed the vote is seen as the green light for a massive mobilisation that has already been planned and, so to speak, streamlined: if your name appears on the list, you must go; otherwise, you are a deserter (previously, there was a call-up). Naturally, Putin denies that there are any problems in finding his cannon fodder: “They all enlist voluntarily and sign contracts,” he said. But, according to Ukrainian assessments, a thousand Russian soldiers are dying every week (310,000 this year alone); according to some sources, there are one and a half million men on the police’s wanted lists who have evaded conscription; there are adverts saying: sign the contracts to avoid forced conscription, but the pay is still much lower than it was at the start: conscription is compulsory, and the elections are being used to send them off en masse. If there is any discontent, we will probably never know about it.         

The latest versions of the Russian Geran drones, the Geran-4 and Geran-5, are an improved version of the Iranian Shaheds; more akin to cruise missiles, they fly at much higher speeds and are becoming increasingly difficult for Kyiv to intercept. Moscow is deploying them alongside the low-cost, nuclear-powered Banderol drones: this year, Iran has requested a supply of Geran drones from Russia for use in its conflict with Israel and the United States.