Known for his outspoken anti-Ukrainian views, Mr. Girkin has criticized the Kremlin on the Internet for being too lenient with Ukraine. After listing Moscow’s failures – from the sinking of its Black Sea Fleet flagship to the “sabotage” of infrastructure in Russia – he asked: “What else must happen before the Kremlin dwarfs realize they are in a total, hard war and start acting accordingly? “ Alexander Arutyunov, a retired Russian commando and usually one of the Kremlin’s most popular bloggers, has become another voice of discontent. “Vladimir Vladimirovich, can you please decide: are we fighting or playing?” he asked in a moving video. He wondered why Russia still had to turn Ukraine’s airports into “lunar craters.” Declaring a full-scale war with Ukraine would mean two things that the Kremlin has so far tried to avoid: martial law and mass mobilization. The mobilization would mean that Russia would need to call in reservists and hold conscripts beyond their one-year term, a politically difficult decision. Martial law would close the country’s borders and nationalize parts of the economy that are already hanging by a thread.
