 Hello, you're watching Mapping Faultlines and today we're going back to the Ukraine war where a lot of developments have been taking place in the past few weeks, even in the past few days. For one, we have a referendum which is taking place in certain territories. Russia has called for a certain kind of mobilization. We'll be talking about all this as well as some updates from the battlefield and responses from western countries in this episode. We have with us Pravir Purkayastha. Pravir, so like I said, a lot of developments. But first of all, let's go to the referendum. A referendum is taking place in various regions in Ukraine. So, first of all, we do know that it's happening from September 23rd to 27th in four regions, the Donbas provinces as well as Zaporizhya and Khurson. So, could you maybe quickly take us through what Russia maybe seeks to achieve with this referendum and what's really at stake? Well, very simply put, Russia is now arguing that if the people want to join the Russian Union, they will allow that to happen provided more than 50% of people participating in the referendum or 50% of the population voting say yes. So, essentially the number of votes are going to count and it seems in the first three days of the referendum or referendums taking place in the four oblast provinces that we already have more than 50%. In fact, in Lugansk and Donetsk, already more than 70% votes seem to have been cast and the other two also more than 50% votes seem to have been cast. So, if you take that into account, the majority of the people are electing to be a part of Russia. That seems to be the way at least the votes are tending to go. Now, we can talk about the legitimacy of these referendums or referenda later but this is the voting situation on the ground. Crimea had already held a referendum much earlier and they had opted to join Russia. So, that has been the situation on the ground. Of course, there are a lot of other players of course, Ukraine being the key who said we don't recognize this is illegal and so on. But the question is really what do the people want? What does the Russian as a country, what is the step they are going to do? It's also interesting to note that though this was probably the sentiment in Donbass, Donetsk and as well as in Lugansk from 2014 onwards, at that time Russia did not accept that these two provinces should become a part of Russia. They had in fact had suggested the Minsk Accords which were reached that this should actually have autonomy within Ukraine. The problem of that has been that of course Ukraine never accepted that. Poroshenko later on said that this was only a tactic for us to prepare militarily with NATO support to enter and take over these two provinces. And that's Poroshenko's position, that's public as we know. The other part of it is that if you take the Russian perspective, they didn't want Ukraine which would be so pro-NATO. So for them the Russian minority in Ukraine who does not want to war with Russia, does not want to join NATO, is therefore something which is a counterbalance to western Ukraine which is far more pro-NATO. So for them this is not a political victory. In this sense, this allows Ukraine, if these four provinces join Russia, this allows Ukraine to go far more towards NATO and European Union at a time when the war will end and at some point the war has to end. So in that sense it is minimizing Russia's losses if you will, that they don't see an alternative particularly because Russian has now been virtually banned as a language within Ukraine. It can't be used in shops, offices and so on, it can't be taught in schools. Russian language television stations have been stopped, Russian language newspapers have been stopped. So given all of that, the identity of Russian language and Russian ethnicity itself is under attack in Ukraine. And given that, I think that Russia feels that it has really no alternative but to take this position. So this is basically what you're saying is in some senses an end to the idea of a multi-ethnic Ukraine which could have, you know, various perspectives could have, you know, viewpoints could have been balanced. So in some senses, but does it also mean for instance that this is pretty much closing the door on any kind of negotiated settlement also because this something for instance the Ukrainians have taken a huge amount of umbrage to a naturally. You know, no country is going to accept that part of it will go and join another country. But the point is this process has happened for instance Czechoslovakia where the two parts decided mutually to separate. It has also taken, there are multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic communities, countries in Europe which actually gives them a certain degree of identity. They can keep their linguistic and ethnic identities for instance even in Italy, there are parts of it. Switzerland is another multi-ethnic country where multiple languages. Belgium for that matter. Belgium for that matter. Belgium has again a large population which speaks different languages, identify themselves as different ethnicities as well. So all of these compromises do exist. And nation states have come about to have been able to overcome it. But this is the 2014 is really the watershed moment in which the Maidan, so called Maidan revolution takes place. And United States call the shots even against European Union. So given that it was that is the watershed moment where Poroshenko comes into power Yanukovych is forced to flee. And this is a coup. This is really the Maidan coup. There is no legal institution which sanctifies this change. And then of course the crackdown on those who are supposed to be identifying more with the Russians. And that leads in non-mass to the revolt that we saw. And finally the military engagement being ended. In fact with Russian intervention politically as well as German and France being the intermediaries who say yes the Minsk accord. There are two of them. Minsk one, Minsk two. Both of them promised autonomy for the Donbas region which never was forthcoming. So given that it is also very strange that Europe, European Union which says that we accept all of these things. Ethnic identities, linguistic identities to be protected haven't actually supported any of that in Ukraine. And of course there is a degree of hypocrisy in this because even when it comes to the Roma for instance. And there is a huge numbers of Roma in Europe. Their identities have never been really protected either. So this has been more politically how can you win the identities recognition. And ultimately if the other side doesn't want then it ends up by being a war which unfortunately is where we have been headed in Ukraine. Except of course you have Russia as the protector of the Russian ethnicity and linguistic ethnicity. If you look at the map of Ukraine for instance and if you take the elections which Yanukovych won. You will see of course he won in the West Ukraine also but if you take a previous election you will see that Russian ethnic or Russian linguistic speakers have voted differently in Eastern and Southern Ukraine than from Western Ukraine. So this revision really runs very deep politically as well. So in that sense is it better to part or stay. If you take the Russian view they really wanted the Russian speakers and linguistic identities to be in Ukraine to be a counterbalance. It's the failure of that which has led finally to what is this referendum. Absolutely. But also speaking of the war we also see that Russia has recently announced a mobilization. This comes after reports of according to the West at least major setbacks faced by Russian forces in Ukraine by the way. They were talking about it. It seemed like it was a matter of weeks before the Russian scramble that hasn't happened. But at the same time this mobilization does mark a fresh stage in some senses. So do we see this as Russia moving into a stage where it is terming this a full fledged war, willing to commit more troops. Does that look like it's going to happen? Well again the crystal ball isn't working so I'm not going to be able to predict particularly as whenever we do such predictions we tend to misread the situation. So if we look at it another way let's look first at what is the amount of loss that Russia has suffered. And if you look at the map again you will see it's barely 1% of the territory they had taken over since February. So in that sense it is militarily if you want to talk about it it's a very insignificant amount of land. The argument is Russia has been going forward at a very slow pace. Kilometers, 2 kilometers, 3 kilometers a day. And here if you see suddenly they have been drawn really 500 kilometers and therefore this amount of land falling to Ukraine in a very few days. The trip side of that of course is that also the reports again even by the western media organizations is that intelligence reports from satellites and other sources indicated that Russia who is holding this area with very thin presence of troops therefore it is ripe for a counter attack and that's why when they attack the Russian troops withdrew. The other side of other picture is that there are also a lot of losses Ukrainian troops took because they're advancing in relatively open territory which the Russians had could attack. I'm not getting into that because those are again military discussions we have not been having here because we are not military experts. If you look at the larger picture what you will see is that the Karkov area the Karkov Oblast has been not a very active sphere of activities for Russian military forces. They have concentrated on the Donbas and in southern Ukraine. That's been the more the focus that they have had and it does seem after initially attacking Karkov they really decided it wasn't worth taking. It's a very largely Russian speakers but it is also very it's a really urban area which means the losses in order to take it will be very high and this is the second largest city in Ukraine. So they don't seem to have that much of stake in Karkov as others might think they have and therefore they are willing to let that go. If this four oblasts or these four provinces plus Crimea joins Russia. What is going to happen in the war is very uncertain at the moment because if you look at the larger picture again of the NATO supports to Ukraine. That seems to now be in some kind of a shall we say in some kind of a I will say emerging crisis because can the West continue. Can the NATO continue to pump in that amount of arms and financial support to Ukraine. The reports and we have been talking about these reports from say month or two. Now these reports indicate that the amount of stocks that the Western countries have the NATO forces have is dwindling and their ability to replace it. In fact even restock for themselves is not that great. So given that how much can they continue to bleed their military stocks for helping Ukraine is an open question. If you remember there was Russia which is actually the services institutes of the Royal services of the United Kingdom. They had they somebody had written a long article giving the statistics which are also what economists had roughly also said that the stock of military supplies with the NATO countries itself is not sufficient. Not their ability to produce that many number of weapons as Ukraine the land war in Ukraine seems to demand. And that's partly because the NATO has been fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and they are not geared up for industrial scale war. Russia in turn from 2014 seems to have been preparing for such a possible showdown and they industrially terms they seem to be able to restock and resupply their troops. So given this how long can NATO continue is an issue because they seem to have banked their that they will be able to force Russia to its knees because of the financial sanctions. That not having worked that can they continue now to indefinitely support a war like this is the question. So it's not clear to be what is the end game going to be as you have said there is a 300,000 soldiers mobilization that is the that Russia is doing. And if they do this 300,000 soldiers what will they do with it is of course the question will they put it in Donbas and the two other oblasts and provinces and keep them there will they use it for further advances into Ukraine. Is it a war which is then going to be for the whole of Ukraine or at least up to the Nipah river. These are all open questions. We don't know. All we know is that Russia has decided that it needs to mobilize further that this special military operation they were doing which actually used only about 10 to 15 percent of their armed strength. They need to significantly enlarge that because from 150,000 to 300 another 300,000 is a huge increase. So it is going to be three times what they have already put in place. So if that happens then we don't really know because their objective was not land while if you take Ukraine Zelensky's objective was appearing to hold territory. Russian objective was more to destroy the Ukrainian army and that is if we take that as the objective then Russia at the moment is not worried about how much land they have occupied or not occupied. The question is what is NATO going to do because I don't think the Ukrainian government is any longer an independent player. They need even the NATO countries European Union and the United States to fund their daily budget. So given that it really depends on what NATO is wanting to do and at the moment we do not see a change of opinion in NATO. Germany the key player in European Union or France these are two major European Union players in NATO. They don't seem to be thinking about what is the likely outcome for themselves or their people. As we have seen the United Kingdom the other big player has been beating the wardrobe with about 80,000 troops which is really much much smaller than what Ukraine has put in the field. So given all of that it's very difficult to say what is the objective that the European Union or NATO countries have in this. Is it only to bleed Russia as long as they can and then they don't really care about what happens to Ukraine either. Or is it that they have an end game in plan in play which we have no nothing about and we will all be surprised suddenly by something or the other. The problem that we have the larger problem for the world apart from the economic crisis which this has caused is also both sides of nuclear weapons and that is something that we need to take into account. What happens to European Union and what happens if it suddenly becomes more of a nuclear confrontation. These are the two open questions we have. Thank you so much Rabir. So there we have it another sobering conclusion as we talk about what's happening in Ukraine, in Europe and the entire world. Europe also a major election taking place this week. It has taken place this week in Italy with the far right all said to come to power. We will be covering many of these issues in future episodes of Mapping Fault Lines until then keep watching us click.