Russians scramble to buy flights as P___n's escalation in u___e fuels unease at home
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/puti ... -rcna48731
LONDON — The Kremlin has for months fought to maintain a sense of domestic normalcy while pursuing its faltering war in u___e. President Vladimir P___n’s declaration of a “partial mobilization” has, for some Russians at least, shattered that illusion.
By the time P___n’s prerecorded announcement was done playing on TV on Wednesday, Russians were scrambling to buy the last available flights out of the country and opposition groups were calling for protests as his order bred a sense of unease at home, just as his nuclear threats sought to do abroad.
For the first time, many draft-age Russian men and their families are contending with the prospect of fighting and dying in a conflict the Kremlin just intensified. It’s a line P___n has seemed loath to cross despite growing pressure, one that analysts warned could backfire on the Kremlin.
“I feel anger for those who made this decision,” Ksenia, a 28-year-old product manager in Moscow who declined to give her last name out of concern for her safety, told NBC News. “I feel fear for my relatives, friends, acquaintances and colleagues. I imagine myself in their shoes, forced to go off to a war that you didn’t choose, that you don’t support, that they grab you right off the streets to go and fight in.”
For many ordinary Russians, this late summer morning brought back memories of Feb. 24 — when they awoke to the news that their president had already launched what the Kremlin insists on calling its “special military operation.” P___n waited until business hours in Moscow to announce the call-up of reservists on Wednesday, but the shock was the same.
“The news was worse than I expected,” said Andrei, a 30-year-old financial analyst in Moscow who similarly declined to provide his last name out of fear for his safety. “I am stupefied by the degree of absurdity and madness to which we now bear witness.”
Throughout P___n’s tenure, the Kremlin has fostered a reputation for testing the limits of an arrangement in which Russian citizens largely agree to stay out of politics if the state stays out of their lives. But it has always demonstrated a sense of restraint, a hesitation to take things too far and risk sparking a broad-scale backlash.
With his military in retreat and u___e advancing, analysts said P___n appears to have made the largest political gamble of his career.
“The social contract has been violated,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “In the medium-term, this is a problem for the public’s trust in P___n and his regime. In the short-term, they are not going to get serious protests, but rather sabotage,” he said, referring to the potential for drafted individuals to undermine the war effort.
The declaration Wednesday is only the third time in Russian history that the government has called for military mobilization. The other two came in 1914 and 1941, during the First and Second World Wars.
Though the Kremlin insists that the mobilization is “limited” to 300,000 reservists, the actual wording of the order does not specify or enforce any meaningful limitation on draft orders.
That has left many rushing to figure out if they are about to be called up.
“The presidential decree is purposefully vague about the expected number of draftees, their qualifications and overall draft period, which means the scope can always be widened,” said Andrei, the financial analyst. He added that he did not expect to be called up in the first wave, but fully expected to be sent into battle if this war goes on long enough.
