It is a decision that was expected in Russia: Vladimir Putin established martial law, Wednesday, October 19, in the four annexed regions of Ukraine, during a Security Council broadcast on television. Martial law, or this exceptional state of law which provides for the transfer of all or part of the civil powers to the army.
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If the rumor even suggested for months that it was to happen for the whole country, this establishment is finally limited to these four regions which already lived, in fact, under a form of martial law, with a curfew, traffic restrictions, checkpoints.
In the immediate future, this should therefore not change much for the inhabitants of these regions on a daily basis. For Vladimir Putin and the Russian power, it is probably a way of adapting to a “tense” situation of the Russian army on the ground, jostled by the forces of kyiv in the Lugansk and Kherson regions. The law provides in particular for the establishment of a territorial defense: a text which can make it possible to mobilize all the inhabitants, and not only those who meet certain criteria, to participate in the defense of their territory.
This legal text is also drafted in vague terms, as is often the case in Russia. It even seems that certain articles are applicable to the whole of Russian territory. Some opponents see it as a way for the power to give itself the means to make an additional turn of the screw in terms of security policy.
Moreover, Vladimir Putin was not content to decree martial law: he also announced other measures. First, the Russian president raised the alert level in all regions of Russian territory bordering Ukraine and Crimea. The governors of these regions will therefore have expanded powers to take security measures. A decision to respond to the concern of the population in these regions. Bryansk, Belgorod or Kursk have been targeted in recent days and weeks by bombardments, probably Ukrainian missile fire.
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Another measure announced by Vladimir Putin: Yevegueni Prigojine, the boss of the paramilitary group Wagner, will train and supervise a popular militia in the Belgorod region to monitor the border, according to official terms. This group of mercenaries, which works for the Kremlin, but which Moscow denies knowing, therefore officially becomes an auxiliary of the security forces in Russia.
The Kremlin also quickly clarified that there was no question of closing Russia’s borders, a decision feared by part of the population. But this package of new security measures may not be the last.