Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) considers the partial mobilization announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin “a sign of weakness and an acknowledgment that Russia’s strategy on the battlefield is clearly not working”: “Putin’s nerves are on edge.”
At the same time, it was “a further escalation that makes a diplomatic solution even further afield,” Schallenberg said on Wednesday on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York.
“Untruths and unacceptable threats”
“The Russian president’s speech this morning is riddled with absurd falsehoods and unacceptable threats,” the foreign minister said in a statement. “The Kremlin wants to implement a liberation and is desperately trying to show its capacity to act.”
The partial mobilization is “a recognition that Putin’s previous strategy has failed miserably and that he cannot hold the front without additional troops”.
Schallenberg sees ‘playing with fire’
With the support of the announced “referendums” in the occupied territories, Putin continues to reverse the spiral of escalation. The nuclear threats that Putin expressed with unprecedented clarity on Wednesday are an unacceptable game of fire, Schallenberg said.
The West sees the partial mobilization announced by the Russian president primarily as a sign of weakness. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz points to failures in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine as the reason for the partial mobilization. The invasion had failed, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said in London on Wednesday.
Source: Krone
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