Ukrainian Russian-backed rebels call to mobilize as Putin oversees nuclear drill

Pro-Russian separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine ordered a full military mobilization Saturday, amid a spike in violence that has heightened fears that Moscow is planning to use an escalation in the conflict as a pretext to invade.

The announcements came ahead of planned large-scale drills involving Russian nuclear forces, overseen by President Vladimir Putin, offering a timely reminder of the country’s nuclear might as Europe faces its gravest security crisis since the Cold War. Ballistic and cruise missiles were launched from land, air and sea, the Kremlin said in a statement Saturday. 

In eastern Ukraine, where the Moscow-supported separatists have been fighting government forces since 2014, Denis Pushilin, the head of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic,” urged reservists to show up at military enlistment offices in a video released on the chat app Telegram on Saturday.

In neighboring Luhansk, Leonid Pasechnik, leader of the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic,” also signed a decree calling for “full combat readiness.”

The separatists control an enclave about the size of New Jersey, where it’s population of around 2 million speak Russian, use the Russian ruble and hundreds of thousands have Russian passports.

Their statements came as the evacuation of civilians from the rebel-held territories in those regions to neighboring Russia continued.

At one evacuation point at a market in Donetsk, 38-year-old Oksana Feoktisova boarded a bus with her 9-year-old son and her mother. They were accompanied by Feoktisova’s brother Yuri who stayed behind in Donetsk.

“They don’t let men on, and I wouldn’t go anyway frankly,” Yuri told Reuters. “I’m a reservist in any case. I’m an artillery man by birth… I’m loyal to my state, to my people.”

The evacuations come amid a spike in shelling in the area that has stoked fresh global alarm.

“Illegal armed groups, supported by the aggressor country Russian Federation, continue to massively shell the positions of the Ukrainian military. As a result, two of our soldiers were killed and five were wounded today,” said Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said they recorded 648 cease-fire violations in the Luhansk region Friday and 222 in Donetsk. As a policy the OSCE does not tend to attribute blame.

In a separate statement, Ukraine’s military said that mercenaries had arrived in separatist-held eastern Ukraine to stage provocations in collaboration with Russia’s special services. “The purpose of these provocations will, of course, be to accuse Ukraine of further escalation,” it said.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had ordered an investigation to be opened following Russian media reports that a Ukrainian shell had exploded in Russia‘s region of Rostov less than a mile away from the border. Ukraine’s military chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi called the reports as “Russian propaganda.”

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