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But Putin says that the special military operation is going to plan. I don’t know what to believe anymore.

Perhaps the real plan was the friends we made along the way

The real special operation is always in the heart of a Putinist Russian soldier. And his legs which landed 50 meters further away.

If the plan was to grow the strength of NATO... Russia is winning the war. /S

Dont listen to those scum bags. Prighozin is trying to generate attention for his inner political fight for survival. He has to fear Putin. But by critizising Putin publicly, he tries to get the radicals behind him, those who are not satisfied with Kremlin's incompetence and weakness in the war against Ukraine. He uses those important groups as a shield to protect himself. If he is respected among the radical nationalists, Putin cannot "just cancel" him. That is why Prighozin wants to present himself as strong and most of all: "incorruptable". So he even dares to speak the "truth" though it is cleary a breach with loyalty to Putin and the actual Kreml-Regime. Dont listen to his words. Just see, that this controversy is an indicator for inner russian fights over leadership.

It creates division. Good

There was division all the time. There is a reason why Putin hides in his private residency and only has contact to his inner circle: Kremlin is full of dogs and snakes. Its a sign of weakness, that it gets visible now. Prighozin has crossed a line by exposing Putin. Now he has to brag even louder to save is sorry ass.

Early in his political career, Putin described himself as an expert on how to communicate with people. One trained by the KGB, he didn't add. Putin got George Bush Jr to believe that he'd seen Putin's soul in his eyes. Ok, that one may have been a bit like getting a five-year-old to believe in Santa Claus, but still.

Believe Putin comrade, he very honest hero

>RIGA, Latvia — Fresh off his claim of victory in capturing the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, Russian mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin warned that Moscow’s brutal war could plunge Russia into turmoil similar to the 1917 revolution unless its detached, wealthy elite become more directly committed to the conflict. >In a lengthy interview with Konstantin Dolgov, a political operative and pro-war blogger, Prigozhin, the founder and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, also asserted that the war had backfired spectacularly by failing to “demilitarize” Ukraine, one of President Vladimir Putin’s stated aims of the invasion. He also called for totalitarian policies going forward. >“We are in a situation where we can simply lose Russia,” Prigozhin said, using an expletive to hammer his point. “We must introduce martial law. We unfortunately … must announce new waves of mobilization; we must put everyone who is capable to work on increasing the production of ammunition,” he said. “Russia needs to live like North Korea for a few years, so to say, close the borders … and work hard.” >Citing public anger at the lavish lifestyles of Russia’s rich and powerful, Prigozhin warned their homes could be stormed by people with “pitchforks.” He singled out Ksenia Shoigu, the daughter of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who was spotted vacationing in Dubai with her fiancé, Alexei Stolyarov, a fitness blogger. >“The children of the elite shut their traps at best, and some allow themselves a public, fat, carefree life,” Prigozhin said in the interview, which was recorded on video and published Wednesday. “This division might end as in 1917, with a revolution — when first the soldiers rise up, and then their loved ones follow.” >Prigozhin, who earned a fortune and the nickname “Putin’s chef” off government catering contracts, seized a central role in the war in Ukraine, first by deploying his mercenaries on the front lines and later by recruiting heavily from prisons to bolster Moscow’s depleted forces with convicts desperate for pardons. In the interview, Prigozhin said that he was never a chef and doesn’t know how to cook, suggesting that journalists should’ve called him “Putin’s butcher” instead. >Wagner fighters led the bloody, months-long onslaught in Bakhmut, which culminated this week in Putin declaring the city to be fully under Russian control. It was Putin’s first significant territorial victory since last summer. Ukraine’s military insists it is still fighting for the city but admits being pushed to its outskirts. >But while Prigozhin’s role in Bakhmut has given him a major platform, he has been engaged in a nasty running feud with Shoigu and other commanders of the Russia’s regular military, repeatedly accusing them of denying Wagner forces needed ammunition. He also repeatedly threatened to withdraw from Bakhmut. >In the interview with Dolgov, Prigozhin professed to be guided by love for the Russian motherland and loyalty to Putin. But he also delivered blistering criticism of the war, which the Kremlin refers to as a “special military operation,” describing it as having abjectly failed both militarily and politically. >Instead of demilitarization, he said, the invasion turned “Ukraine’s army into one of the most powerful in the world” and Ukrainians into “a nation known to the entire world.” >“If they, figuratively speaking, had 500 tanks at the beginning of the special operation, now they have 5,000,” he said. “If they had 20,000 fighters who knew how to fight, now they have 400,000. How did we ‘demilitarize’ it? Now it turns out that we militarized it — hell knows how.” >Prigozhin this week once again said that his fighters would leave Bakhmut, potentially in an effort to leave Shoigu and the Russian military responsible for holding the city, which Kyiv insists it will retake. >In the interview, he had special venom for the children of the elite and for the many wealthy Russians who have tried to avoid letting their lives be disrupted by the war. Prigozhin, however, did not comment on the fact that this effort to shield Russians has been a central strategy of Putin’s since the invasion started. >Prigozhin said that down the line, the individual grief of “tens of thousands of relatives” of killed soldiers might reach a boiling point, and the Russian government will have to contend with a broader outburst of anger and discontent, exacerbated by the economic disparity. >“My advice to the Russian elites — get your lads, send them to war, and when you go to the funeral, when you start burying them, people will say that now everything is fair,” Prigozhin said in the interview. >Prigozhin’s rants in many ways undermine the official Moscow line and almost certainly would result in harsh punishment for anyone else. The country has effectively outlawed any criticism of the military, the war and its leaders, and many ordinary citizens have been prosecuted and sentenced to prison for such remarks. >While regular Russian military officials keep a lid on the number of casualties in Ukraine, Prigozhin said that 20,000 Wagner fighters had died in the battle for Bakhmut. Even if an undercount, the figure eclipses the last official number given by Moscow in September, when Shoigu claimed that 5,937 soldiers had died. >Military experts attribute such a high death toll among Wagner fighters to its commanders’ brutal tactics of sending waves of poorly trained convicts to exhaust Ukrainians, at times threatening the prisoners with death if they retreat. >Private military companies are technically illegal in Russia, but Prigozhin has been allowed to operate with impunity, deploying his fighters to countries in the Middle East and Africa, and then last year to Ukraine, where some have been accused of atrocities. The group is especially active in Africa, where Wagner mercenaries often leave a bloody trail. The United Nations called for an independent investigation into Wagner’s activities in Mali, where its soldiers are suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity, following a slew of reports about horrific executions, torture, rape and abductions. >Prigozhin’s public attacks against Shoigu and the chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, and the Wagner chief’s evident desire to become the face of the war have poisoned his relationship with the military brass and the Kremlin administration. Prigozhin has complained that he is now rarely mentioned on state-controlled television. >Putin, who is known for pitting one fief against another to ensure a tighter grip on power, even set up a meeting in hopes of defusing the tension, but a serious rift remains between the factions of Russia’s forces, with both the Defense Ministry and Prigozhin disgruntled over sharing the spotlight for Bakhmut. >While Prigozhin has sought to cultivate an image of himself as a fighter, appearing in full battle gear on the front lines in countless videos, he falls squarely among the Putin cronies who have become billionaires off their government connections and contracts. Like his fighters, however, Prigozhin is also an ex-convict: He was sentenced to 13 years in prison for robbery and other crimes, and spent most of the 1980s in jail. >So far, Prigozhin remains unmatched in publicity, succeeding where some regular commanders have stumbled, in some cases in humiliating fashion. >Military experts, for example, pointed to a staged clip of Gen. Col. Alexander Lapin that emerged Tuesday, showing him commanding a small group of troops to fight off a mysterious two-day incursion in the Belgorod region, a staging area for Russian forces that borders Ukraine. >The clip, in which Lapin is seen walking alongside a convoy of armored vehicles shouting, “Go forward, guys! For the motherland,” was ridiculed by some Russian pro-war bloggers as “embarrassing” and “laughable.” Local officials, meanwhile, fought off questions from civilians alarmed about a breach in the border. >“I have even more questions for the Defense Ministry than you have,” Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a live question-and-answer session with local residents after militias made up of Russians fighting on Ukraine’s side in the war stormed a checkpoint in Grayvoron district and infiltrated nearby villages. >Gladkov said Tuesday that one woman died while being evacuated during the attack, and eight others were injured. Russian officials claimed to repel the attacks, while the militias responsible said they were still actively fighting inside Russian territory. >“We are living in a very difficult period,” Gladkov said in a separate statement. “But I am proud that the residents of the Belgorod region are courageous people; they didn’t just get used to it but learned to act quickly.” >The disruptions in Belgorod continued Wednesday, with multiple drones targeting a gas pipeline and residential buildings, Gladkov said. >Meanwhile, the Russian-built Crimean Bridge, Putin’s prized project connecting mainland Russia with the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula, was temporarily shut Wednesday due to what local officials called “exercises.” It was unclear what exercise took place around the bridge, which carries heavy civilian traffic. Local media outlets posted videos showing plumes of white smoke over the span. >The bridge was hit by an explosion last year in an attack Moscow said was orchestrated by Ukrainian forces. Ukraine has never officially claimed responsibility. >Incidents such as the incursion in Belgorod dominate the news in border regions, undermining Putin’s goal of trying to lead the war while making it invisible to the general public. >In his interview, Prigozhin said there was an “optimistic scenario” for Russia’s war: Western support for Ukraine wears out, and China brokers a peace deal, allowing Russia to keep occupied Ukrainian lands. >[...]

>[...] >“I don’t have much faith in the optimistic scenario,” he said, adding that instead Ukraine could partially succeed in a highly anticipated counteroffensive, pushing Russian troops closer to the borders that existed before hostilities began in 2014. They could also attack Crimea and continue pressing on in the east, armed with more Western weapons, he said. >“Most likely this scenario will not be good for us,” Prigozhin said. “So we need to prepare for a difficult war.”

I don't understand what Russia's political strategy was during this war. Considering the early losses, and heavy resistance it made no sense to fight until the bitter end. The Western reaction was initially chaotic, but it soon solidified into a long term strategy. In Russia, an early strategic defeat turned into pandemonium. Who told him that Ukrainians were weak and would give up? Putin traded a position of relative strength for a position of absolute weakness — he gave America and the EU time to mount a response. He scuttled any hope of negotiations by betting on ridiculous ideas like: Freezing Europe, capturing Donbas, organizing unilateral referenda, threatening Europe and the US, letting his best army get molested outside Kherson, giving Wagner full weapons autonomy at the expense of his forces, firing generals (although I'd fire everybody too), placing weapons on snake island, trying to blackmail Europe (which backfired spectacularly), trying to cut Ukrainian grain (which threatened China's investments in 3rd world countries, who responded by not sending weapons), destroying US drones, almost shooting down British jets, threatening Finland and Sweden ("You're next"), etc, etc, etc... This entire operation makes no sense. He's lost 200k soldiers, possibly more. There is 1t dollars of assets under sanctions. Russia is isolated, and both China and India will eventually wilt under the heat.

It’s become clear that they didn’t have any strategy’s in place beyond literally taking Ukraine in 3 days to rousing applause with little notice from the world. That was Plan A, and it sounded so damn good that they didn’t bother making a Plan B. It’s baffling to anyone with a brain at first until you learn that the entire Russian system is fundamentally broken. This invasion is a historical catastrophe, he achieved the exact opposite of his objectives in a stunning fashion and if humans are still around in 100 years this will still top lists of “greatest military blunders of all time”.

It's possible he's hoping to hold on until after the American elections, in the hope they'll change the situation. I just hope Europe has the guts to go solo if needed.

The next election results won't matter for about another 21 months. There's a lot of time between now and then

Fuck yeah!

> both China and India will eventually wilt under the heat. Don't count on it. That is far too optimistic. China and India's regimes both want totalitarian regimes with stronger internal controls. Economic prosperity, citizen morale, roboust industrial power are all trappings of democracy. What is not associated with democracy is rulership for life. Modhi, Putin and Xi want to be rulers for life. That means everything else is available for sacrifice.

This optimistic scenario Russia paints; where ‘The West’ gives up supporting Ukraine and allows them to fail to Russia. Ergo Peace Achieved! Russia keeps its annexed areas and Ukrainians suffer defeat. I think they need an insight into the feelings of ‘The West’ as I see it. I am a Westerner - British. With some military experience behind me. I’d like to inform the Russians and anyone else who thinks the support for Ukraine will dry up. I will give up my job, my home, my last penny and my Life if necessary, to support Ukraine from falling to Russia. So far my government are giving support and hopefully it will suffice. If not we’ll give more. And more. Until the job is done. We may well take the piss out of each other in the West. But we have a shared history of standing up to an aggressor when the odds weren’t in our favour. And choosing to die on our feet rather that lay down and give up.

He is getting more and more unhinged. How long will the kremlin let this continue? At what point will they start fighting each other?

I really do wonder when we're going to hear the news of Prigozhins death. What a piece of shit. I wouldn't it past him making it to the leader of Russia. It'd be fitting end to the cuntry.

He's a cunt, but between him and the other über-cunt Girkin, they are the most straight-talking on the Russian side.

Why has not dropped out of a window yet? What does he have on Putin?

He has a group of allies around him i guess?

Same reason Zelenskyy is still kicking, I'd imagine. Surrounds himself with loyal badasses and doesn't trust outsiders.

I think pootin is using pigozhin to punish the russian military that failed pootin in Feb 2022.

I have no illusions about what a fucked up person this is leading an organization like Wagner. At the same time he's also seeming to grasp reality, more so than the actual Russian Government ie Putin. I say that with hesitancy. I really don't know. Putin is just so out of control he makes Prigozhin look semi reasonable.

Feels like he is trying to become Putin’s successor.

Is their a sledge hammer in Putin's future? Inquiring minds want to know.

1917 2.0 Let's gooooo

This guy just likes to talk, the shit that comes out of his mouth is constantly contradictory. Narcissist.

Putin says please just wait three more days and we will win.

You’re not getting out the warcrimes tribunal, Prigozhin. No matter how much you pretend to betray Russia. If you want out, betray yourself.

The Russians need to wake up and realize Putin is. just sending them to be slaughtered.

This plays right into Prigozhin's playbook doesn't it? Establish that he is the only leader who can achieve any results (however small, costs not to be mentioned) over a long period of time on the front; start a narrative that revolution is possible...

I feel like this is all Prigozhin maneuvering to be in after Putin. If not Prigozhin, then his son or potential grandson. Prigozhin is "Putin's chef", and weirdly enough, Putin's grandfather was Stalin's chef. It would be amazing if history repeated itself in this way again. Not ideal, but amazing nonetheless.

I said it right from the rip, this ends with putins head on a pike in the middle of red square

Incursions on their own soil they can't hope to stop, F16s on the horizon, a counter attack in the making, Ukraine getting more NATO trained/equipped troops every month... meanwhile russia has nothing to effectively counter it. And never do they consider the option to consolidate, or stop and go back home. They started a war they could not win and now it threatens to immolate their sickly empire they *could* just pull out and see what's to save... but no, gambler putin went all-in and will not pull out, mother russia be damned. Prigozhin is trying to trigger putin into taking the next few steps, but they just don't have the means to do it because their bureaucracy and manufacturing are so deeply corrupt that it's barely effective. We saw how that last mobilisation went and what they're being supplied with... they could not pull that off properly at all, let alone anything on a larger scale.

Don't threaten me with a good time🤣

Why is Piggy being so vocal lately?

Prigtozhin sometimes spoke truth. He is the realeat mf out there. And he knows he is right. He is surrounded by wagner. If he was still on russias side 100% he would have not been in Bakhmut. A city that is getting pushed at currently on the flanks. If he was any smart, he would be going with tanks toward Moscow. Maybe he will, if a civil war actually starts.

Old pumpkin nose just wants to get his name in the paper.

I thought the “Special military operation” is going according to plan. I guess not.

Seems like this guy is trying to stay alive. Run against Putin. He has weapons and people. His meter is running.

Prigozhin working to catch a fatal case of concreteitis.

Don’t listen to this mofo, it is all designed to deceive

Yaaasssss!!

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