THE PUTIN EFFECT:  The UN General Assembly is meeting this week in the barely functioning city of New York, but there was little gossip about King Charles or even about the number of favorite delegate steak joints that have closed.  It's all Putin all the time.  The guy knows how to create a headline, but he'd better watch his back.  From the New York Post: 

Russians took to the streets — and to the sky — Wednesday in opposition to Vladimir Putin’s mobilization order sending reservists to fight in Ukraine as his threats of nuclear warfare intensified.

The order — which would throw 300,000 more troops into the increasingly desperate fight — sparked a wave of protests across Russia and a run on one-way tickets out of the country.

The mobilization came alongside chilling threats to defend Russian territory with nuclear weapons, as the Kremlin planned to call a quarter of Ukraine part of Russia.

“I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction,” Putin said in a Wednesday morning televised address. “When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal.”

With an icy stare at the camera, the Russian strongman added, “It’s not a bluff.”

Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity” comes as his puppet regimes in Ukraine prepare to declare the occupied parts of that country Russian territory.

Four referenda are planned this week for the occupied provinces of Ukraine — Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — to declare those provinces part of Russia.

Such a vote would make the territories an “irreversible” addition to the country, allowing Moscow to use “any means” to defend them, Dmitry Medvedev, head of the Kremlin’s Security Council, said this week....

...Over 1,300 people were arrested in Russia Wednesday for protesting Putin’s order to send 300,000 more troops into Ukraine.

Russia’s use of so-called filtration camps to relocate Ukrainians within the occupied territories — and it’s alleged use of torture, captivity and extrajudicial executions against those it suspects of supporting or aiding Kyiv — undercut the notion that any referendum held in occupied territory could reflect the will of the residents...

...Protests started out in the rural regions that have staffed Putin’s army, and made their way to the centers of political power.

Putin’s announcements sparked panic in Russia, with a wave of protests breaking out across the country.

More than 1,300 Russians had been arrested for protesting the mobilization order as of Wednesday night, Russian police watchdog OVD-Info said. Protests against the war are illegal under Russia’s draconian anti-demonstration laws which prohibit the spreading of so-called false information about the military.

The first protests took place in Siberia in the Russian far-east, according to The Moscow Times. Most of the Russian forces sent to Ukraine so far have been pulled from Russia’s far-flung rural regions and satellite states, in an apparent effort to shield the Russian middle class from the costs of the conflict.

A mass mobilization of troops has been considered such a political minefield that Russian Oligarch and Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin has been trying to recruit prisoners to fight in Ukraine — with little success...

...Tickets from Moscow to Belgrade, Serbia, sold out, as did flights to locations in Turkey, Georgia and Armenia, according to Belgrade-based anti-war group “Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians and Serbs Together Against War.”

“All the Russians who wanted to go to war already went,” the group tweeted. “No one else wants to go there!”

COMMENT:  This is serious stuff, with profound dangers.   A dictator challenged from within, equipped with nuclear weapons, could easily launch an irrational attack, all the while claiming that his country has been invaded.  It's a classic way of forcing national unity.  He could also institute internal purges to eliminate enemies, possibly leading to a civil war or a revolt by his own military, with the security of nuclear weapons in doubt.

And we have in the White House a president who can't articulate our policies, and a vice president who can't find her way to the office.  Ronald Reagan, where are you when we need you?

September 21, 2022