Putin did not prepare Russian people for war, and process of mobilization highlights fundamental problems - ISW

The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes about it.

As noted, high-ranking Russian officials and Kremlin spokesmen scoffed at the idea that Russia would invade Ukraine even before the invasion began.  And after that, Putin persistently continued to call the invasion a "special military operation" and not a war, and did not create informational conditions in Russia to prepare the population for mobilization.

"Putin's information lapses in this regard are particularly important because there are no Ukrainian or NATO troops on Russian soil, and there is no threat of an invasion of the Russian hinterland. This is not 1812, 1914 or 1941, and the factors that contributed to the mobilization of the population in previous Russian wars  , are simply absent in this aggressive war, no matter how Putin presents it to his people," the Institute says.

Experts noted that Russia's armed forces have not created the conditions for effective large-scale mobilization since at least 2008 and have not created the reserve forces necessary for immediate mobilization.  There is no quick solution to these problems.

"The mobilization process will be ugly, the quality of the reservists will be low, and their motivation to fight will probably be even worse," the report says.

At the same time, it is noted that the system is well established so that military commissars and other Russian officials can find people and send them to training units, and then to war.

However, the problems undermining Putin's efforts to mobilize Russians to fight are ultimately so deep and fundamental that he will not be able to resolve them in the coming months, if not years.  This mobilization will not affect the course of the war in 2022 and is unlikely to have a dramatic impact on Russia's ability to maintain its current level of effort in 2023, analysts stress.