‘Putin could officially declare war on Ukraine as soon as May 9’
Russian President Vladimir Putin could formally declare war on Ukraine as soon as May 9, a move that would enable the full mobilisation of Moscow’s reserve forces as invasion efforts continue to falter, US and Western officials believe. May 9, known as ‘Victory Day’ in Russia, commemorates the country’s defeat of the Nazis in 1945, reports ‘CNN’.
Western officials have long believed that Putin would leverage the symbolic significance and propaganda value of that day to announce either a military achievement in Ukraine, a major escalation of hostilities, or both. Officials have begun to hone in on one scenario, which is that Putin formally declares war on Ukraine on May 9. To date, Putin has insisted on referring to the brutal months-long conflict as a “special military operation”, effectively banning words such as invasion and war.
“I think he will try to move from his ‘special operation’,” UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told ‘LBC Radio’ last week. “He’s been rolling the pitch, laying the ground for being able to say ‘look, this is now a war against Nazis, and what I need is more people. I need more Russian cannon fodder.” Throughout the conflict, Putin has continuously framed his invasion of Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president, as a campaign of supposed ‘denazification’, a description dismissed by historians and political observers alike, ‘CNN’ reported.
Wallace added that he “would not be surprised, and I don’t have any information about this, that he is probably going to declare on this May Day that ‘we are now at war with the world’s Nazis and we need to mass mobilise the Russian people”.
Meanwhile, a senior US official warned that Russia plans to annex large portions of eastern Ukraine later this month, and the Mariupol steel mill that has become the city’s last stronghold of resistance came under renewed assault a day after the first evacuation of civilians from the plant.
Michael Carpenter, US ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said that the US believes the Kremlin also plans to recognise the southern city of Kherson as an independent republic. Neither move would be recognised by the United States or its allies, he said.
Carpenter cited information that Russia is planning to hold sham referendums in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics that would “try to add a veneer of democratic or electoral legitimacy” and attach the entities to Russia. He also said there were signs that Russia would engineer an independence vote in Kherson.
He noted that mayors and local legislators there have been abducted, that internet and cellphone service has been severed and that a Russian school curriculum is soon to be imposed. Ukraine’s government has said Russia also has introduced the ruble as currency there. In bombed-out Mariupol, more than 100 people — including elderly women and mothers with small children — left the rubble-strewn Azovstal steelworks on Sunday and set out in buses and ambulances for the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230 kilometers) to the northwest, according to authorities and video released by the two sides.
Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told the BBC that the evacuees were making slow progress. Authorities gave no explanation for the delay.
