Winter’s approach sets the clock ticking for Ukraine

The Washington-based think tank said the onset of autumn weather, combined with rain that made fields muddy, and tanks began to overshadow Ukraine’s efforts to retake more Russian-held territory before winter froze the battlefield.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to call hundreds of thousands of people into a seven-month war in an attempt to reverse its recent losses.

Ukrainian authorities said it also deployed suicide drones over the Ukrainian port city of Odessa on Sunday. No casualties were reported.

Russia’s mobilization, the first such call since World War II, is sparking protests in Russian cities, with fresh demonstrations taking place on Sunday.

It has also sparked divisions in Europe over whether fighting-age Russian men fleeing in droves should be welcomed or rejected.

For Ukrainian and Russian military planners, time is ticking, and the approach of winter is expected to complicate the battle.

Rainy weather has brought muddy conditions that are starting to limit the mobility of tanks and other heavy weapons, according to the Institute of War.

But the think tank said Ukrainian forces were still making progress in a counteroffensive launched in late August that dramatically reversed Russia’s hold on a swathe of the northeast and prompted President Vladimir Putin A new reinforcement operation was launched.

Part of the mobilization sparked an exodus of men seeking to avoid conscription – and a deep divide in Europe over how to deal with them.

EU member Lithuania, which borders Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, said it would not grant them asylum.

“The Russians should stay and fight. Against Putin,” Foreign Minister Gabriel Landsbergis wrote on Twitter.

His counterpart in Latvia, also a member of the European Union, which shares a border with Russia, said the exodus posed a “considerable security risk” to the bloc of 27 countries, and those who fled could not be seen as conscientious against the invasion.

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Linkevich tweeted that many “have no problem with the killing of the Ukrainians, they did not protest”.

“There are a lot of countries outside the EU to go to”, he added.

Other EU officials, however, say Europe has a responsibility to help and fear that rejecting the Russians could fall into Putin’s hands, fueling his claim that the West has always hated the Russians and that the war was to defend their country And launched. against Western hostility.

“It is neither our values ​​nor our interests to close our borders,” a 40-member group of French senators said in a statement.

They urged the EU to grant refugee status to Russians fleeing mobilizations, saying it would be “Europe’s mistake in the ongoing war of communication and influence” to deny them.

The mobilization also coincided with Kremlin votes in four occupied regions of Ukraine that could pave the way for their imminent annexation by Russia.

Ukraine and its Western allies say the referendums in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye and the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk have no legal force.

Voting was due to close on Tuesday but was seen as a hoax in Ukraine and the West, with video showing Russian armed forces going door-to-door to pressure Ukrainians to vote.

Ukraine’s reintegration ministry said Russia had invited people from Belarus, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, Syria, Togo, Uruguay and Venezuela to act as so-called external observers.

The ministry warned that they “will be punished” but did not specify how.

In cities across Russia, police arrested hundreds of protesters who opposed mobilization orders.

Women opposed to the draft protested in the Siberian city of Yakutsk on Sunday.

Video shared by local media showed hundreds of people, mostly women, marching in a circle around a group of police officers, hand in hand.

Police later dragged some people away or forced them into police cars. News site SakhaDay said the women chanted peace slogans and songs.

At least 2,000 people have been arrested in recent days for similar demonstrations across the country. Many of those who were taken were immediately summoned.

Other Russians are reporting. Mr Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the order applies to reservists who have recently served or have special skills, but almost everyone is considered a reservist before the age of 65, while Mr Putin’s decree is for the broader The call-up opened the door.

The Kremlin said its initial goal was to add about 300,000 troops to Ukraine’s forces in response to loss of equipment, increased casualties and low morale.

The mobilization marks a dramatic shift from Putin’s previous efforts to describe the war as a limited military operation that would not interfere with the lives of most Russians.

The call-up came with harsher penalties for Russian soldiers who violated officer orders, deserted or surrendered.

Putin signed the measures into law on Saturday.

Ukraine’s government stopped allowing most men between the ages of 18 and 60 to leave the country immediately after Russia’s February 24 invasion, a mobilization order aimed at building a million troops.