Kyiv: Residents of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv dismissed on Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin’s callup of military reservists as a mark of desperation and expressed confidence in their own armed forces to drive Russian troops from their country.
In the first such mobilisation in Russia since World War Two, Putin called up 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine and said Moscow would respond with the might of all its vast arsenal if the West pushed what he called its “nuclear blackmail” over the conflict there.
“The threat would be bigger if there was a general (Russian) mobilisation, but I think at this point Putin is afraid to undertake such a step because Russians prefer to fight with words,” said Viktor Chekhnii, 46, a geographer who works at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He added that few Russians wanted to go to the battlefield.
“I still believe Putin isn’t insane, there is some rationality in him. So if nuclear weapons are used, this could endanger the existence of Russia as well as the whole world.”
Another Kiev resident, Oleksandr Sharkin, 31, clutching a bunch of flowers as he walked near the neo-classical opera house, echoed that sentiment.
“If they (the Russians) are forced to fight a war, the motivation of their soldiers will be even lower than that of the contractors,” he said.
Kyiv and its Western allies have cited Russian soldiers’ low morale as one of the reasons for the slow progress of what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
