Putin’s hope is presumably that annexation, coupled with heavy-handed threats of nuclear retaliation against attacks on “Russian soil,” will either deter Kyiv or scare the West into pressurizing the Ukrainians to hold back. Neither seems at all credible, though. Given that actual nuclear strikes are, while not wholly impossible, still highly unlikely, Putin once again looks as if in effect he is calling his own bluff.

As for the partial mobilization that, according to defense minister Sergei Shoigu, will see 300,000 reservists called to arms, there is little evidence that the military could genuinely absorb and field so many.

Russia has 25 million reservists notionally on the books, but in practice only 100,000 or at most 150,000 could really be called to arms. After all, they will need to be given refresher training, but the professional soldiers of the training cadres have largely been sent to the front in the desperate search for troops. If these troops are housed in tents over the winter, their health and morale will suffer dramatically, but there are no large, empty bases near the war zone, not least as the Russian army is no longer geared for mass mobilization. They will also need to be armed, which will likely mean 1970s and 1980s kit pulled out of stockpiles, which will need to be reconditioned before issue.

All told, it will take perhaps three months to raise new forces, of likely undertrained and undermotivated reservists. While they will genuinely make a difference on the battlefield, facing Ukraine’s increasingly confident and well-armed army, they would take heavy casualties, with all the knock-on political problems this will cause at home.