MOSCOW, March 02, /ITAR-TASS/. Emergency draft for the army declared by the new authorities in Kiev is little more than an attempt to scare the population of Ukraine’s eastern regions and it is practically impossible to translate it into reality because of an massive popular counteraction to it, Dr. Leonid Reshetnikov, the director of the Russian Institute for Strategic Research and a leading Russian political analyst, told Itar-Tass.
“That’s a rather demonstrative action and an attempt to scare Russia and, in the first place, the sections of Ukrainian population that continue speaking against the fascizoids who have seized power in Kiev,” he said.
The prospects for drafting the needed number of men are very dim “because it’s extremely difficult to do a sizable mobilization today,” Dr. Reshetnikov said. “Scarcely anyone will rush to the drafting stations in the eastern and southern regions of the country and those willing to report for the call-up in the central and western regions won’t be many either.”
“I think the process of shirking mobilization will be a massive and active one at the same time,” he said.
“Except one or two units, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are rather weak now” and heavily disoriented in the political sense. It is running the risks of demoralization if it fails to assimilate the newcomers quickly,” Dr. Reshetnikov aid.
“That’s why I expect this mobilization will be a purely formal action, provided it takes place at all,” he said.
On the whole, Dr. Reshetnikov believes that the actions undertaken by the Russian government put off the threat of a civil war in Ukraine.
“A tough, clear-cut and well-substantiated line taken by President Putin and Russia’s consistent policy restricts in many ways the extremists’ ability to unleash a civil war,” he said. “Coupled with the rising waves of protests in the Eastern and Southern regions of the country and the popular actions against the rule of Kiev rebels, the situation in the country is getting increasingly restive.”
“It looks like the radical extremist forces are losing momentum,” Dr. Reshetnikov said.
“In these conditions, the expansion of popular protests across the East and South of Ukraine, or in other words, across the historical area of Novorossia stimulates self-organization of the regions located there and thus builds up their capability to stand up to aggression,” he said. The protests also strip the mutineers of an opportunity to rely on anyone except the gangsters who overthrew the government in Kiev.
“That’s why I dare say there’ll be no civil was right now,” Dr. Reshetnikov said. “There’s little doubt we’ll see provocations, including the armed ones, and attempts will be made to eliminate the leaders and activists in Eastern and Southern Ukraine but as long as Russia maintains a firm position and the population in the East and South reacts in the way it is reacting today, the threat of a civil war is moved away.