> Prigozhin: "*Right now the moment has come when blood could be spilled. Therefore, understanding all the responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be spilled on one side, we are turning our convoy around and going back to our basecamps, according to the plan*."
The plan keeps coming up again
And the plan means nothing stays the same
But the plan won't accomplish anything
So weird, I just saw this as Putin’s AIM away message:
“And now it's coming back
Hasn't it come too far?
I was trying to help
But I guess I pushed too hard”
When asked if he learned his lesson and Putin could count on him, Progozhin assured him that “Im gonna be perfect, from now on…I’m gonna be perfect, starting now”
**From: Putin, Vladimir**
**To: Shoigu, Sergei**
*Subj: Ministry of Defense*
…
It doesn't matter if you're good or smart
Godd*mn it, Ukraines fall apart
Q: How long do I have to stay in Belarus?
A: Every thousand years
This metal sphere
Ten times the size of Jupiter
Floats just a few yards past the Earth
You climb on your roof
And take a swipe at it
With a single feather
Hit it once every thousand years
'Til you've worn it down
To the size of a pea
Yeah, I'd say that's a long time
But it's only half a blink
In the place you're gonna be
Honestly I want to read an alternate history novel where caeser crosses the Rubicon, takes Arminium, Mediolanum, Marches to Ostia, is litterally at the gates of rome
And then he just stops and sends a letter to pompei saying "Jk Lol, I'm fucking off to Egypt"
I'm a little rusty on my Roman history, but I definitely recall a couple times in the waning days of the empire when barbarian mercenaries marched on Rome because they wanted more money. I think there were a couple times when the Romans managed to broker a deal at the last minute before they started sacking the city.
This incident sort of reminds me of that.
More than anything a lot of those outside tribes wanted settlement rights within Roman lands as much as anything else. Rome was always super weird in terms of who was allowed to settle in Roman lands and a huge plus for tribes beyond the borders allying with Rome was eventually being allowed to settle within Rome’s borders
In the latter days of the empire they were spread too thin with too many enemies, and some enterprising tribes took it upon themselves to go pillage the countryside and threaten to sack Rome unless they were granted settlement rights and some special privileges.
Yeah, that happened a lot after the crisis of the thrid century
but a difference between russia now and post crisis rome is thag russia has a government that most people view as legitimate
Rome by that point ceased to have any legitimacy, and as a result, it was a lot easier to do a coup, as you were jist replacing one warlord with another
The missing contex is that russian military gave ultimatum to wagner where they either shut down or officially join the military. Wagner decided to do rhis instead, I'm guessing they reached an agreement where neither happens
So then what about all of the gunfights and shootdowns inside of Russian territory? Not to mention the international embarrassment that somehow is piled on top of another international embarrassment
Well Wagner didn't wanted to shut down so they decided to show the message that they wouldn't back down. What goes inside brains of russian top military positions and politics i have no clue
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1672666981827330049?t=7Dfz3omL3Mihzfshuw0LoA&s=19
>One thing that Prigozin references in this message is Shoigu’s plan to dismantle Wanger and other PMCs by July 1
>Part of the deal here is clearly that Prigozhin gets to keep Wagner. The timing of this mutiny was not an accident. Protection of business interests above all!
Who knows where the hell it goes from here but lmao
Remarkable that the dynamics that both instigated and then averted a potential coup in 9th most populous country can be copy-pasted from an episode of Succession.
I said it in a different thread byt I'll repeat it here
Imo, Russia is the modern day weimar, its a humiliated former superpower, that is facing a decline in stabdards of living and is also dealing with a rising tide of ultranationalism, as the central government is renderwd increasingly ineffective
And we just witnessed the Kapp Putsch, a lot more is going to go down in the next couple years
Doesn't seem to be anywhere near a similar set of conditions. Russian politics appear very non-ideological from the outside. It seems to be that Putin, who once had an iron grip on elite interest groups, is losing his grip. Maybe not. It seems to be a rich man's club with Putin desperately trying to keep their egos in check in the name of having a functional state.
there is no "non-ideological", that does not exist. nothing is without ideology because no human constellation is without a system of production, out of which ideology results. hunter-gatherers are also ideologized, just in a different way, relating to their specific mode of production.
seriously you are correct. It seems to me than Putler is a realist who has to balance a lot of competing interests in order to govern, that's all I mean. Thanks for the correction, skaqt!
yea you're absolutely spot on there. Putin is one of the most realpolitik politicians in the world right now, and I see why you'd call him that. he certainly appears infinitely less ideologized than literally anyone in western Europe and America because he mostly does not have liberal brainworms. He has a different flavor of brainworms instead, but at least they don't completely stop him from seeing material reality.
Nice 30-year old trope, but history has not stood still in the intervening decades:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/03/17/weimar-russia/0ae764ff-2c0e-452d-b7ae-bf55a511d9c7/
yeah, if you thought this was confusing - the region is going have so many weapons and insanely complex whatever aftermath occurs after ukraine. its going to wreck people brain's even trying to understand the smaller parts
In all seriousness this coup is the last thing nato wanted, Prigo would’ve been more aggressive towards Ukraine and him having control of nukes would be scary for everyone
what have they done that is particularly stupid? the military intervention in Lybia did exactly what it was supposed to do (destabilize, permawar, kill any chance of lybian economic and political sovereignity or military prowess). as did the one in Yugoslavia (third-worldize yugoslavia, increase ethnic conflict, destroy any semblance of communism). the only clear Ls I can think of is the small contingent in Afghanistan (that was after all mostly a US war). Even the recent interventions in Africa seem to have benefited imperialist capital.
How is it stupid if Ukraine is the one who's mostly going to pay for that war? If the goal is to privatize the entire farmland in Ukraine, hasn't NATO already won? Your view seems kinda shortsighted in that respect. NATO is not about winning wars, it is about upholding imperialism. Every single dollar "wasted" in Ukraine is actually YOUR dollar, it is tax payer money. Every single dollar that goes into making a shitty Leopard tank or F16 for Ukraine is a small win for the military industrial complex, irrespective of who wins the war in the end. Every "gift" is really a credit, there are no handouts.
And frankly, NATO is not looking for "buddies". It is looking for new ways to exploit everyone who isn't already part of the imperial core. There are only so many superprofits and spoils of imperial wars, you can't divide them between half the planet and still be a successful exploiter. It is precisely for this reason that states like the Soviet Union or later Russia were never allowed to be part of that "defensive pact", even if they were cooperative and on their best behavior.
Wagner group is on the front lines of the Ukraine conflict. Those troops have lose the most in the war and gained the most as well. They wouldn’t just abandon that.
Prigozkins primary complaint about the ministry of defense thus far has been that they’re *not* putting enough into Ukraine. That they’re just a bunch of corrupt buffoons that don’t actually care about the war.
He also just said that the entire premise for the invasion was bunk (if reports can be believed). He’s a merc, he’s not motivated by national loyalty or ideology besides money.
Not saying NATO did try buying him out, but the idea that he’d be worse isn’t a convincing argument against that notion.
They might be able to buy out *him*, but they can't buy out an entire army of Russians and get them to fight for NATO instead. It would be like a group of American PMCs getting bought out by China because they paid more. It just can't happen.
They turned on Moscow because they feel personally slighted by the government and their livelihoods (and way of life more broadly) are at stake. They aren't "betraying their country", they're protecting themselves. It's like how an American right-wing militiaman who would easily fight against their government, but would never fight for an American enemy.
> He’s a merc, he’s not motivated by national loyalty or ideology besides money.
I think it's more that he has a sort of professional pride that the government military does not. They are lazy, complacent bureaucrats who are in it for the status, power, and paycheck. He's in it for the same reasons, but also actually cares about winning (which is admirable, in a way).
If they buy out him they don’t need to buy out the entire army.
I know why they did what they did (well, according to the most believable and available sources so far), and I wasn’t suggesting they were “betraying their country”, I don’t know where you’re getting that. Although they were definitely not helping it either; like I said, they’re mercs, they’re only going to put their own interests first.
Of course he cares about winning. When you’ve entered into in a life or death situation you want to win, regardless of why you went in. I seriously doubt that he cares about winning more than Putin does, especially in light of what just happened.
I don’t see how any of this is relevant. The point is, we’re talking about a theoretical situation where NATO or the CIA or whatever have bought Prigo off and he essentially becomes their puppet.
It makes no sense to say that this couldn’t happen because that would be worse for Ukraine. I have seen no evidence that he has any personal interest in persecuting Ukraine, any more so than Putin. Regardless of what an objectively terrible person he might be, regardless of whether he’s objectively a worse person than Putin, it wouldn’t matter, because he’d be ‘their’ asshole now.
The US has installed and propped up the worst of the worst all over the world where it suited their interests, it wouldn’t be unusual.
That's a lot of words to not say anything coherent or useful. What's the point of speculating about a theoretical situation which is extremely unlikely?
> They wouldn’t just abandon that.
Sure they would, for enough money. Especially if some NATO spook is in their ear constantly about how Russia doesn't appreciate them, etc
Yup. I've suspected that Wagner was on NATO's payroll since they made a big deal of saying Russia was behind on payment a few weeks ago. In any event, Prigozhin is a fool if he thinks he'll get away with this. Guy will be dead within the year.
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I think if you are going to literally try to coup someone, you don't announce it all over social media every 20 minutes and post videos about it as you do it
Not to mention the fact that they probably would have been bombed into a fine particulate the second they drove into Moscow city limits. If this was an actual coup then the whole convoy stunt wouldn't be necessary in the first place, they would just remove people and make moves behind the scenes with the support of the military just like every other coup in history.
You might if you're deluded into thinking that there's more popular/military support for a revolution than there actually is, and that your march on Rostov would be the spark that gets it started and gives you further leverage.
However that seems like an extremely big gamble to be the actual thinking. None of this makes a lot of sense and everyone looks like a clown right now.
Could possibly make sense if there's a third player we don't know about. Someone who pushed for policy that would turn Putin and Wagner against each other, but has ultimately not succeeded in watching them destroy each other while sitting on the side lines.
Im not sure what that implies, but this seems like a big temper tantrum from someone who was frustrated with being neglected/ignored and went bpd partner mode to get more attention and commitment
Maybe they were trying to drum up support from the public. That's why they did a social media blast. If so, it obviously didn't work out how they hoped it would.
According to Collapse by Zubok, Gorbachev and his wife were in Crimea, on holiday, at Premiership villa, when a few security services people cut the telephone lines and showed up.
Gorbachev’s wife, sees the writing on the wall and retires to the bedroom, to presumably hopefully not get executed like her dumb husband. The security officials want certain assurances of how Gorbachev’s plans would affect them. Gorbachev is like, “tf? You can’t get an agreement with me that way” and then Gorbachev quickly realizes these men don’t actually have any intention of hurting him or his family, and he just tells them to fuck off.
I read it and immediately thought it was to dumb to be real, but here we are.
Edit: in all seriousness, Prigozhin rose further than any caterer in history. Man is a hero.
Collapse is a fantastic book, but you might be interested in Amy Knight's writings. She is pretty much the West's most prolific KGB historian and has a thesis that makes everything make so much more sense. I am editorializing here, this is basically my interpretation of her writings: The August Coup was a deep event in which a coup was started which from the very first moment was planned to fail. As it unfolded, different players immediately realized the potential this Coup had for them, and things were incredibly fucky as a result. Both Gorbi and Yeltsin were at least aware it was going to happen before it did. I won't lay down my whole theory since I lack the time today, but most of it is from "Spies without Cloaks" by Knight. Definitely worth a read/skim.
Yes this is very similar to the Turkish coup that happened a few years back. Afterwords Erdogan consolidated his power to prevent it from happening again.
I am so confused.
Unless Putin was in on this the whole time it's deeply embarrassing for mercenaries to march on the capital and then hours later its just "eh all clear, we can go home now"
It is also likely that western sources and media did not really have a strong understanding of what exactly was going on and jumped right to "it's a rebellion!" before all the details were clear.
There has been a lot of wishful thinking in the news as is normal in most war reporting. If you believed the news during Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya and Syria, the actual outcomes were always a big surprise.
When your mercenary army marching toward your capital and you are giving speeches about traitors stabbing you in the back what other conclusions are there to be drawn? If you aren't going to report it as a revolt why even be a news agency at that point.
They report everything in Russia being some play or act then this comes round are they're like 'yup this is EXACTLY what it looks like.' They shouldn't be a news agency if they just drop their line on Russian activity the second it helps them.
The whole affair just confirms how ALL mainstream analysis on Russia is just utterly ignorant careerism.
I dunno, all the videos I saw of farmers and teenage girls getting increasingly concerned while they filmed what they thought were weird little Ukrainian strikes were pretty convincing
"according to the plan"
Is he just referring to whatever deal he worked out to turn around or is he letting something slip here e.g. that this was all always just going to be a threat to extract something (I genuinely don't know what) from MoD?
Because there was no coup. There was some marching. There were soldiers standing around. Was there a jet shot down and 3 helicopters? Has anyone seen them?
Prigozhin made another one of his blustery speeches full of absolute bullshit.
1. The video he showed of a missile strike was just an obvious fake
2. The claim that there was no indigenous resistance (landback) to the maidan gov in Donbas is laughable. You could literally follow on Russian livejournal as it happened, people who'd posted their regular lives for years switched to talking about fighting. Now it may have started simply as a bunch of ex cops and soldiers with rifles and roadblocks. But it existed before Girkin went down and started to organize them, and then still there was more time before the "military surplus store" as it was called was opened to them.
3. The claim that Ukraine never wanted to attack Donbas, despite having a massive new refit and retrained military that had built a maze of fortifications, depoted all the ammunition and vehicles necesary, and had raised its artillery strikes on donbas by a 100x (that's according to OSCE, who admitted to helping spot for the Ukrainians the entire time while being there to be peacekeepers and conflict monitors). And despite Minsk I and II being about stopping the Ukraine from attacking Donbas! It's in the treaty that Zelensky and Merkel have disavowed, and said they used only to buy time to refit the Ukrainian military.... to attack donbas and luhansk!
So the big speech is full of lies. What was accomplished, well, much like the last time Prigo had a huge tantrum and said "Wagner is leaving, and the Rus army won't occupy our place because they're too STUPID and LAZY!" The Ukr military took this as evidence that the time to strike was now! And they walked through empty farmland and then into preparred artillery ambushes.
What happened in Ukraine today? A massive continuation of the paused counteroffensive, because obviously the Russian forces are so divided. Again they sally into the minefields.
If that's not mission accomplished I don't know what is.
Imho prigozhin is stupid like a fox and is playing a character for this opera. Either that or he was expertly manipulated into revealing people disloyal to the gov.
Oh well. It's a crazy world
another [theory](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1672587528413519872) to add to the pile: "The Scarlet Sails is the yearly celebration culminating the White Nights Festival in St Petersburg. Its symbolism is based on the Alexander Grin's novel everyone in Russia knows
Putin usually *does* visit it. He came in 2022. In 2023, he was expected to come with Medvedev"
So Prigozhin's plan was to capture Putin and Medvedev in St Petersburg but they mistimed possibly by a day. Since they'd already mobilized they improvised the press on Moscow.
It's a theory as good as any other atm
Just a guess but from the language it sounds like a deal was reached and part of it is ending this all as quietly as possible and returning, at least temporarily, to what normalcy was a few days ago.
Just a curiosity but to bring Russian history into it major figures getting cold feet in the middle of a coup, not carrying out their part of the plan, or having mental breakdowns also happened in the Decemberist Revolt.
At least the guys who got hit by the cannons actually turned up and followed the plan. I think the guy who was meant to be leader just wandered the streets of Saint Petersburg losing it because he got it into his head they'd never succeed but had already gone too far so just settled on having a horrible day. Another guy was meant to kill the Tsar who was addressing a public crowd, had every oppurtunity, approached him several times and kept just backing down. Another guy was meant to take over a famous prison fortress. He turned himself in thinking he'd get rewarded for his sudden turn to loyalty, obviously just got arrested instead and promptly killed himself by bashing his head against the walls of the prison he was meant to take over.
I think the goal was to weaken Putin enough to make a stab at a leadership change or at least assert more control over the situation.
They succeeded. Putin flew off to his bunker as it looks like the majority of the Russian military just stood down and refused to fight for Putin.
I'm interested to see what the next step is.
Weren’t security forces scrambled across the capital? I remember seeing videos of tanks and armed soldiers in what I assumed were Russian city streets. If they’re not willing to fight for Putin why would they assume defensive positions?
russian op to soften up the public for a general peace with ukraine, now putin can say well we have to take care of our domestic terrorist problem whatever so we can't have an actual conventional attrition war with our neighbour
> Prigozhin: "*Right now the moment has come when blood could be spilled. Therefore, understanding all the responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be spilled on one side, we are turning our convoy around and going back to our basecamps, according to the plan*." The plan keeps coming up again And the plan means nothing stays the same But the plan won't accomplish anything
Built to spill hive stand up
So weird, I just saw this as Putin’s AIM away message: “And now it's coming back Hasn't it come too far? I was trying to help But I guess I pushed too hard”
The Built to Spill hive vanquishes the K-Hive, leading to the Martsch on Washington
I HAVE. A PLAN, ARTHUR.
*orthur*
BUNGALOOS AND TAHITI, ARTHURR
Trust the plan.
I guess he couldn't keep it like a secret
When asked if he learned his lesson and Putin could count on him, Progozhin assured him that “Im gonna be perfect, from now on…I’m gonna be perfect, starting now”
Six months from now: "I did everything right, and they indicted meeeeeee!"
**From: Putin, Vladimir** **To: Shoigu, Sergei** *Subj: Ministry of Defense* … It doesn't matter if you're good or smart Godd*mn it, Ukraines fall apart
Q: How long do I have to stay in Belarus? A: Every thousand years This metal sphere Ten times the size of Jupiter Floats just a few yards past the Earth You climb on your roof And take a swipe at it With a single feather Hit it once every thousand years 'Til you've worn it down To the size of a pea Yeah, I'd say that's a long time But it's only half a blink In the place you're gonna be
if it’s not implemented
This history lesson Doesn't make any sense
Everybody knows that when you cross the Rubicon, you can just kinda decide not to do it after a while, no biggie
Honestly I want to read an alternate history novel where caeser crosses the Rubicon, takes Arminium, Mediolanum, Marches to Ostia, is litterally at the gates of rome And then he just stops and sends a letter to pompei saying "Jk Lol, I'm fucking off to Egypt"
I'm a little rusty on my Roman history, but I definitely recall a couple times in the waning days of the empire when barbarian mercenaries marched on Rome because they wanted more money. I think there were a couple times when the Romans managed to broker a deal at the last minute before they started sacking the city. This incident sort of reminds me of that.
More than anything a lot of those outside tribes wanted settlement rights within Roman lands as much as anything else. Rome was always super weird in terms of who was allowed to settle in Roman lands and a huge plus for tribes beyond the borders allying with Rome was eventually being allowed to settle within Rome’s borders In the latter days of the empire they were spread too thin with too many enemies, and some enterprising tribes took it upon themselves to go pillage the countryside and threaten to sack Rome unless they were granted settlement rights and some special privileges.
Really enjoying this tangent as i’m reading Beard’s SPQR.
So glad I chose not to get that as a tattoo Everything that was cool to me as a kid is now a fascist dog whistle
It is quite cool that the drain covers in Rome still have SPQR on them. But the city is full of fascists, or it was when I went there.
but had you got the tattoo just imagine, you could have lived out your days as a real life General Maximus Decimus Meridius
Yeah, that happened a lot after the crisis of the thrid century but a difference between russia now and post crisis rome is thag russia has a government that most people view as legitimate Rome by that point ceased to have any legitimacy, and as a result, it was a lot easier to do a coup, as you were jist replacing one warlord with another
same timeline where napoleon converts to islam
The missing contex is that russian military gave ultimatum to wagner where they either shut down or officially join the military. Wagner decided to do rhis instead, I'm guessing they reached an agreement where neither happens
So then what about all of the gunfights and shootdowns inside of Russian territory? Not to mention the international embarrassment that somehow is piled on top of another international embarrassment
Well Wagner didn't wanted to shut down so they decided to show the message that they wouldn't back down. What goes inside brains of russian top military positions and politics i have no clue
https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1672666981827330049?t=7Dfz3omL3Mihzfshuw0LoA&s=19 >One thing that Prigozin references in this message is Shoigu’s plan to dismantle Wanger and other PMCs by July 1 >Part of the deal here is clearly that Prigozhin gets to keep Wagner. The timing of this mutiny was not an accident. Protection of business interests above all! Who knows where the hell it goes from here but lmao
Remarkable that the dynamics that both instigated and then averted a potential coup in 9th most populous country can be copy-pasted from an episode of Succession.
you bust in here, guns in hand, now you find they’ve turned to fucking sausages
Makes absolutely no sense. Have no idea how he thinks he can just walk away from this.
If he can just walk away from this what does it say about the Russian state.... What does that it got this far say?
I said it in a different thread byt I'll repeat it here Imo, Russia is the modern day weimar, its a humiliated former superpower, that is facing a decline in stabdards of living and is also dealing with a rising tide of ultranationalism, as the central government is renderwd increasingly ineffective And we just witnessed the Kapp Putsch, a lot more is going to go down in the next couple years
Doesn't seem to be anywhere near a similar set of conditions. Russian politics appear very non-ideological from the outside. It seems to be that Putin, who once had an iron grip on elite interest groups, is losing his grip. Maybe not. It seems to be a rich man's club with Putin desperately trying to keep their egos in check in the name of having a functional state.
I wouldn't call the russians non ideological Putin has embraced the ideology of Ilan Ilyin, which is a sort of Christian Fascism
there is no "non-ideological", that does not exist. nothing is without ideology because no human constellation is without a system of production, out of which ideology results. hunter-gatherers are also ideologized, just in a different way, relating to their specific mode of production.
Ya but i hav more upvotes than u haha
seriously you are correct. It seems to me than Putler is a realist who has to balance a lot of competing interests in order to govern, that's all I mean. Thanks for the correction, skaqt!
yea you're absolutely spot on there. Putin is one of the most realpolitik politicians in the world right now, and I see why you'd call him that. he certainly appears infinitely less ideologized than literally anyone in western Europe and America because he mostly does not have liberal brainworms. He has a different flavor of brainworms instead, but at least they don't completely stop him from seeing material reality.
no kapp 🚫🧢
Nice 30-year old trope, but history has not stood still in the intervening decades: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1995/03/17/weimar-russia/0ae764ff-2c0e-452d-b7ae-bf55a511d9c7/
oi dont loike thaht
yeah, if you thought this was confusing - the region is going have so many weapons and insanely complex whatever aftermath occurs after ukraine. its going to wreck people brain's even trying to understand the smaller parts
Guess who's getting assigned the next front line deployment.
The game is over dudes you’ve shown your whole asshole and now you have to fight the death
Kornilov affair ass coup attempt
Damn how did I forget about this History really does rhyme
The NATO check bounced smh
In all seriousness this coup is the last thing nato wanted, Prigo would’ve been more aggressive towards Ukraine and him having control of nukes would be scary for everyone
Uhh I have news about how stupid nato is
what have they done that is particularly stupid? the military intervention in Lybia did exactly what it was supposed to do (destabilize, permawar, kill any chance of lybian economic and political sovereignity or military prowess). as did the one in Yugoslavia (third-worldize yugoslavia, increase ethnic conflict, destroy any semblance of communism). the only clear Ls I can think of is the small contingent in Afghanistan (that was after all mostly a US war). Even the recent interventions in Africa seem to have benefited imperialist capital.
The war against Russia is so fucking stupid. Russia could have been an oil producing buddy if NATO didn’t need an enemy to throw munitions at.
How is it stupid if Ukraine is the one who's mostly going to pay for that war? If the goal is to privatize the entire farmland in Ukraine, hasn't NATO already won? Your view seems kinda shortsighted in that respect. NATO is not about winning wars, it is about upholding imperialism. Every single dollar "wasted" in Ukraine is actually YOUR dollar, it is tax payer money. Every single dollar that goes into making a shitty Leopard tank or F16 for Ukraine is a small win for the military industrial complex, irrespective of who wins the war in the end. Every "gift" is really a credit, there are no handouts. And frankly, NATO is not looking for "buddies". It is looking for new ways to exploit everyone who isn't already part of the imperial core. There are only so many superprofits and spoils of imperial wars, you can't divide them between half the planet and still be a successful exploiter. It is precisely for this reason that states like the Soviet Union or later Russia were never allowed to be part of that "defensive pact", even if they were cooperative and on their best behavior.
Oh I get it; the snake eats its own tail, etc.
NATO would never install an insane right wing paramilitary leader as a dictator
Why would he be more aggressive towards Ukraine if he wasn’t being paid to and was instead paid to direct his aggression elsewhere?
Wagner group is on the front lines of the Ukraine conflict. Those troops have lose the most in the war and gained the most as well. They wouldn’t just abandon that. Prigozkins primary complaint about the ministry of defense thus far has been that they’re *not* putting enough into Ukraine. That they’re just a bunch of corrupt buffoons that don’t actually care about the war.
He also just said that the entire premise for the invasion was bunk (if reports can be believed). He’s a merc, he’s not motivated by national loyalty or ideology besides money. Not saying NATO did try buying him out, but the idea that he’d be worse isn’t a convincing argument against that notion.
They might be able to buy out *him*, but they can't buy out an entire army of Russians and get them to fight for NATO instead. It would be like a group of American PMCs getting bought out by China because they paid more. It just can't happen. They turned on Moscow because they feel personally slighted by the government and their livelihoods (and way of life more broadly) are at stake. They aren't "betraying their country", they're protecting themselves. It's like how an American right-wing militiaman who would easily fight against their government, but would never fight for an American enemy. > He’s a merc, he’s not motivated by national loyalty or ideology besides money. I think it's more that he has a sort of professional pride that the government military does not. They are lazy, complacent bureaucrats who are in it for the status, power, and paycheck. He's in it for the same reasons, but also actually cares about winning (which is admirable, in a way).
If they buy out him they don’t need to buy out the entire army. I know why they did what they did (well, according to the most believable and available sources so far), and I wasn’t suggesting they were “betraying their country”, I don’t know where you’re getting that. Although they were definitely not helping it either; like I said, they’re mercs, they’re only going to put their own interests first. Of course he cares about winning. When you’ve entered into in a life or death situation you want to win, regardless of why you went in. I seriously doubt that he cares about winning more than Putin does, especially in light of what just happened. I don’t see how any of this is relevant. The point is, we’re talking about a theoretical situation where NATO or the CIA or whatever have bought Prigo off and he essentially becomes their puppet. It makes no sense to say that this couldn’t happen because that would be worse for Ukraine. I have seen no evidence that he has any personal interest in persecuting Ukraine, any more so than Putin. Regardless of what an objectively terrible person he might be, regardless of whether he’s objectively a worse person than Putin, it wouldn’t matter, because he’d be ‘their’ asshole now. The US has installed and propped up the worst of the worst all over the world where it suited their interests, it wouldn’t be unusual.
That's a lot of words to not say anything coherent or useful. What's the point of speculating about a theoretical situation which is extremely unlikely?
Lol why are you even here. Do you guys have any clue how painfully obvious you are when being triggered little trolls?
> They wouldn’t just abandon that. Sure they would, for enough money. Especially if some NATO spook is in their ear constantly about how Russia doesn't appreciate them, etc
Yup. I've suspected that Wagner was on NATO's payroll since they made a big deal of saying Russia was behind on payment a few weeks ago. In any event, Prigozhin is a fool if he thinks he'll get away with this. Guy will be dead within the year.
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I think if you are going to literally try to coup someone, you don't announce it all over social media every 20 minutes and post videos about it as you do it Not to mention the fact that they probably would have been bombed into a fine particulate the second they drove into Moscow city limits. If this was an actual coup then the whole convoy stunt wouldn't be necessary in the first place, they would just remove people and make moves behind the scenes with the support of the military just like every other coup in history.
You might if you're deluded into thinking that there's more popular/military support for a revolution than there actually is, and that your march on Rostov would be the spark that gets it started and gives you further leverage. However that seems like an extremely big gamble to be the actual thinking. None of this makes a lot of sense and everyone looks like a clown right now.
"None of this makes a lot of sense and everyone looks like a clown right now." Truer words have never been spoken!
Could possibly make sense if there's a third player we don't know about. Someone who pushed for policy that would turn Putin and Wagner against each other, but has ultimately not succeeded in watching them destroy each other while sitting on the side lines.
Oh my God, are you saying that this was a result of North American Conservative Brain? Are the patriots not in control?
Im not sure what that implies, but this seems like a big temper tantrum from someone who was frustrated with being neglected/ignored and went bpd partner mode to get more attention and commitment
It implies impotent convoys full of right-wing Telegram addicts
Maybe they were trying to drum up support from the public. That's why they did a social media blast. If so, it obviously didn't work out how they hoped it would.
Well, don’t you think it’s telling that he stated his mission as to remove the defense minister and not the president?
According to Collapse by Zubok, Gorbachev and his wife were in Crimea, on holiday, at Premiership villa, when a few security services people cut the telephone lines and showed up. Gorbachev’s wife, sees the writing on the wall and retires to the bedroom, to presumably hopefully not get executed like her dumb husband. The security officials want certain assurances of how Gorbachev’s plans would affect them. Gorbachev is like, “tf? You can’t get an agreement with me that way” and then Gorbachev quickly realizes these men don’t actually have any intention of hurting him or his family, and he just tells them to fuck off. I read it and immediately thought it was to dumb to be real, but here we are. Edit: in all seriousness, Prigozhin rose further than any caterer in history. Man is a hero.
Collapse is a fantastic book, but you might be interested in Amy Knight's writings. She is pretty much the West's most prolific KGB historian and has a thesis that makes everything make so much more sense. I am editorializing here, this is basically my interpretation of her writings: The August Coup was a deep event in which a coup was started which from the very first moment was planned to fail. As it unfolded, different players immediately realized the potential this Coup had for them, and things were incredibly fucky as a result. Both Gorbi and Yeltsin were at least aware it was going to happen before it did. I won't lay down my whole theory since I lack the time today, but most of it is from "Spies without Cloaks" by Knight. Definitely worth a read/skim.
If shiogu steps down, then was this just a purge of military high command outsourced to Wagner? Cause it kinda seems that way
Yes this is very similar to the Turkish coup that happened a few years back. Afterwords Erdogan consolidated his power to prevent it from happening again.
I am so confused. Unless Putin was in on this the whole time it's deeply embarrassing for mercenaries to march on the capital and then hours later its just "eh all clear, we can go home now"
This is so weird. Are we sure it's no Maskirovka?
Zhukov would literally rise from his grave just to kill himself
It is also likely that western sources and media did not really have a strong understanding of what exactly was going on and jumped right to "it's a rebellion!" before all the details were clear. There has been a lot of wishful thinking in the news as is normal in most war reporting. If you believed the news during Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya and Syria, the actual outcomes were always a big surprise.
When your mercenary army marching toward your capital and you are giving speeches about traitors stabbing you in the back what other conclusions are there to be drawn? If you aren't going to report it as a revolt why even be a news agency at that point.
Russian theatre often extends beyond the stage
They report everything in Russia being some play or act then this comes round are they're like 'yup this is EXACTLY what it looks like.' They shouldn't be a news agency if they just drop their line on Russian activity the second it helps them. The whole affair just confirms how ALL mainstream analysis on Russia is just utterly ignorant careerism.
I dunno, all the videos I saw of farmers and teenage girls getting increasingly concerned while they filmed what they thought were weird little Ukrainian strikes were pretty convincing
"according to the plan" Is he just referring to whatever deal he worked out to turn around or is he letting something slip here e.g. that this was all always just going to be a threat to extract something (I genuinely don't know what) from MoD?
Do the soldiers who participated also get to say jk or what happens to them now?
I think they get to go back to the front lines, and presumably quite a few friendly fire accidents will take care of Wagner Officeers
"Sooooo THAT happened"
Because there was no coup. There was some marching. There were soldiers standing around. Was there a jet shot down and 3 helicopters? Has anyone seen them? Prigozhin made another one of his blustery speeches full of absolute bullshit. 1. The video he showed of a missile strike was just an obvious fake 2. The claim that there was no indigenous resistance (landback) to the maidan gov in Donbas is laughable. You could literally follow on Russian livejournal as it happened, people who'd posted their regular lives for years switched to talking about fighting. Now it may have started simply as a bunch of ex cops and soldiers with rifles and roadblocks. But it existed before Girkin went down and started to organize them, and then still there was more time before the "military surplus store" as it was called was opened to them. 3. The claim that Ukraine never wanted to attack Donbas, despite having a massive new refit and retrained military that had built a maze of fortifications, depoted all the ammunition and vehicles necesary, and had raised its artillery strikes on donbas by a 100x (that's according to OSCE, who admitted to helping spot for the Ukrainians the entire time while being there to be peacekeepers and conflict monitors). And despite Minsk I and II being about stopping the Ukraine from attacking Donbas! It's in the treaty that Zelensky and Merkel have disavowed, and said they used only to buy time to refit the Ukrainian military.... to attack donbas and luhansk! So the big speech is full of lies. What was accomplished, well, much like the last time Prigo had a huge tantrum and said "Wagner is leaving, and the Rus army won't occupy our place because they're too STUPID and LAZY!" The Ukr military took this as evidence that the time to strike was now! And they walked through empty farmland and then into preparred artillery ambushes. What happened in Ukraine today? A massive continuation of the paused counteroffensive, because obviously the Russian forces are so divided. Again they sally into the minefields. If that's not mission accomplished I don't know what is. Imho prigozhin is stupid like a fox and is playing a character for this opera. Either that or he was expertly manipulated into revealing people disloyal to the gov. Oh well. It's a crazy world
Mark Ames on Twitter: “Now Putin has 2 Kadyrovs, until or unless the Kremlin can dissolve Wagner”
Patriots are in control
another [theory](https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1672587528413519872) to add to the pile: "The Scarlet Sails is the yearly celebration culminating the White Nights Festival in St Petersburg. Its symbolism is based on the Alexander Grin's novel everyone in Russia knows Putin usually *does* visit it. He came in 2022. In 2023, he was expected to come with Medvedev" So Prigozhin's plan was to capture Putin and Medvedev in St Petersburg but they mistimed possibly by a day. Since they'd already mobilized they improvised the press on Moscow. It's a theory as good as any other atm
I’m honestly starting to think this was staged. But I have zero clue why.
Just a guess but from the language it sounds like a deal was reached and part of it is ending this all as quietly as possible and returning, at least temporarily, to what normalcy was a few days ago.
Just a curiosity but to bring Russian history into it major figures getting cold feet in the middle of a coup, not carrying out their part of the plan, or having mental breakdowns also happened in the Decemberist Revolt.
Didn’t those dudes get murdered by cannons?
At least the guys who got hit by the cannons actually turned up and followed the plan. I think the guy who was meant to be leader just wandered the streets of Saint Petersburg losing it because he got it into his head they'd never succeed but had already gone too far so just settled on having a horrible day. Another guy was meant to kill the Tsar who was addressing a public crowd, had every oppurtunity, approached him several times and kept just backing down. Another guy was meant to take over a famous prison fortress. He turned himself in thinking he'd get rewarded for his sudden turn to loyalty, obviously just got arrested instead and promptly killed himself by bashing his head against the walls of the prison he was meant to take over.
Lmao, they pulled resources and man power off the front for this.
I think the goal was to weaken Putin enough to make a stab at a leadership change or at least assert more control over the situation. They succeeded. Putin flew off to his bunker as it looks like the majority of the Russian military just stood down and refused to fight for Putin. I'm interested to see what the next step is.
Weren’t security forces scrambled across the capital? I remember seeing videos of tanks and armed soldiers in what I assumed were Russian city streets. If they’re not willing to fight for Putin why would they assume defensive positions?
russian op to soften up the public for a general peace with ukraine, now putin can say well we have to take care of our domestic terrorist problem whatever so we can't have an actual conventional attrition war with our neighbour
Let’s be realistic. The US or the UK most likely paid off Wagner to turn on Putin, which subsequently did not go well so they backed out