THREAD 1/12 Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has said that the partial mobilization announced by Putin last month will end early in the nation’s capital.
2/12 On the one hand, this is routine bureaucracy: the region has met its quota for drafting soldiers, and is simply reporting its progress. (Everyone knows that the regions and the state corporations were given quotas to meet.)
3/12 On the other hand, the haste and public nature of the announcement betray Sobyanin’s desire to distance himself from the unpleasant matter of the mobilization, and to reassure people that life will return (more or less) to normal: the war is far from the peaceful capital.
4/12 Sobyanin also said that draft papers that had been sent to people’s home or place of work would no longer be valid, effectively making the mobilization a semi-voluntary affair. It means that those who managed to lie low for just three weeks are no longer in any danger.
5/12 Of the theories that a) Sobyanin has gone against the Kremlin, b) he was following Kremlin orders, c) he managed to get it past the Kremlin first, and d) he agreed the statement with the Kremlin, but perhaps not every detail, c and d look the most realistic
6/12 Officially, Sobyanin hasn’t been disloyal. The fact that he is not burning with militant fervor and is reluctant to put the capital on a war footing can always be explained to the Kremlin as peace and calm in the capital being required to guarantee the regime’s stability.
7/12 It’s an attempt to leave the state of mobilization behind & return to the more hypocritical format of living as if there is no war. That’s unlikely to go down well with the frontmen of the party of war, who believe that the more painful the struggle, the closer victory.
8/12 They had hoped for a permanent state of mobilization that would serve as a permanent revolution and allow them to repurpose absolutely everything for the sake of the war. Perhaps they even wanted to take Moscow before they took Kyiv. They even need Moscow more than Kyiv
9/12 Those hawks will undoubtedly use the announcement of the early end to the mobilization campaign in Moscow to criticize the capital’s leadership for not being patriotic enough.
10/12 Many see Moscow mayor’s announcement as a trap. But some Muscovites, no longer fearing being handed call-up papers at work or in the metro, will likely return to work and the capital’s other offerings.
11/12 But it’s far from clear whether the attempt to refocus the country’s attention onto more peaceful matters will succeed. The imitation of a peaceful life is unlikely to be a way to peace.
11/12 After all, a life of peace and interest in more peaceful matters didn’t stop this war from being launched, or from being escalated to become even more bloody and brutal than it was originally conceived.
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