About five minutes after I wrote that Wagner mercenaries were advancing on Moscow at "light speed," they suddenly . . . stopped. Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that he had accepted a personal deal to exile himself to Belarus while his troops would be pardoned and put under the control of the Ministry of Defense. It's all over.
That's assuming this is on the up-and-up, not some kind of weird ruse. And who knows about that? Wait and see.
Didn't donnie's owner, Putin, send nukes to Belarus?
He probably didn't give Lukashenko a supply of his poison but he mughtxsend a special emissary.
The whole thing is strange. Hard to believe he would start this and then just roll over. Very odd…. No use speculating. Stay tuned.
Sure seems like there would be a “colonel” just under Prigoshyn who would pick up this plan which was already underway. P, I imagine, would have to agree to give all those people up as part of any deal. Which would mean it’s now or never for his No 2
Best guess, Prigozhin gambled hard on support from inside the regular military. Today he realized he wasn't going to get it (or not enough of it), and he's now trying to cut his losses. And Putin is letting him do it because it's the fastest way to defuse the insurrection. I expect he's already making arrangements to ensure Prigozhin gets his recommended daily allowance of vitamin Po.
So, barring any further reversals, Putin comes out on top... for now. But the debacle can't be good for him. It makes his control of Russia look shaky, and that's the kind of prophecy that can turn self-fulfilling real fast.
Maybe he was drunk when he started this crazy plan, and in the sober light of morning thought, “oh shit…”
My uninformed comments likely add zero value, but seemed odd to me that his casus belli looked so minor. “They attacked Wagner Group positions from the rear”…
That could be anything - a friendly fire accident, a rogue fragging attempt - so things must have been boiling up before that, between the Russian command and the Wagners. And he must have felt like he had nothing to lose, it was now or never, he’d likely die either way.
March on Moscow to get rid of commanders he opposed? How, without an insane battle? He thought he had enough allies to accomplish it relatively bloodlessly?
He was ready to die for this? Plus thousands of his troops? And civilians, and fighting in Moscow?!
It all sounds like a very crazy thing to undertake without more of a plan, and a possible goal. unless things were already essentially at some point of no return. They were moving on him in a big way, it was now or never, he was probably going to die either way.
I'm pretty sure that the main reason Putin is letting him back out is to prevent Prigozhin from becoming a martyr. There is a lot of sympathy in the ranks for Prigozhin's broadsides against the military hierarchy for running an incompetent war that is getting them a lot of them killed. It wasn't enough to get them to back the putsch attempt, which has a lot to do with those troops already being engaged with the Ukrainians, but killing Prigozhin would have been counterproductive for morale.
Even so, this whole misadventure is going to join the list of things chipping away at the Russian will to fight. The benefits might not show up soon, or distinctively from all of the other things sapping their morale, but show up it will.
It depends on what the goal was...
Was the goal a coup? Or is this better framed as a strike, as an industrial action for better working conditions (ie more munitions, replace incompetent management, figure out a goal and stick to it).
IMHO the strike framing fits the evidence and behavior on BOTH sides a lot better than the coup framing.
Same. This was what I wondered after Kevin's first post - this seems awfully weak for an actual coup attempt, so what's the purpose of it? Seems like it was basically a labor strike, but the military version.
This is one of the weirdest little war dramas I can remember in recent history.
I have difficulty imagining the mass of Wagner troops just switching to a Russian command where they will be treated as cannon-fodder and their paychecks could be unreliable to non-existent. I wouldn't be surprised to see a mass exodus of mercenaries into Belarus where they might look for other "employment." Just guessing, but the story is probably not over.
No, this isn't over. There's too much weirdness and fog to conclude much, but one thing is clear - Putin comes out of this looking weak.
One datapoint: Gorbachov survived a coup attempt in '91, but was out a few months later.
We still got the rest of the weekend....
Like +5.
It's obvious Biden ordered Prigozhin to march on Moscow in order to take out Tara Reade. Seeing Wagner on the road, headed to the capital, she called Joe to tell him she wouldn't trouble him any more, so Biden called the whole thing off.
That's how Joe "Trilateral Commission microchip vaccines" Biden rolls.
WAKE UP PEEPLE !
This is so great. How soon until it appears on ONN?
+10
Wingnuts are not going to think this makes Putin look weak, they're going to think it makes him look like an incredible genius.
And what will the Wagner fighters think? They'll think they can look forward to being disarmed and summarily shot, and if not that they may have to try and change their names.
In thinking about it Prigozhin is not really a leader, he's a fantastic brute, he's great at bullying people, beating them up and pushing them around, but imagine him as a political leader, of even a minor faction. He wouldn't last a day.
What he needed was someone to get behind, but no one presented themselves, so he took the best deal he could get.
Imagine what could have been accomplished if Donald Trump had been there!
What they could have done together!
Bigly!!
And the president of Belarus flees to Turkey. https://www.turkishminute.com/2023/06/24/lukashenkos-plane-lands-in-turkey-amid-mutiny-in-russia-reports/
Just saying someone got an offer they couldn't refuse.
Well, that de-escalated quckly.
Let's say it's not on the up and up -- wasn't that ruse the dumbest thing ever? As it stands right now, both Putin and Prigozhin have lost a ton of cred and respect. Putin was revealed that the emperor has no clothes and was less than 200 KM from being deposed.
For this reason alone, I think we can assume it wasn't some stupid ruse.
Therefore, it seems very likely that Prigozhin must have gotten significant guarantees that appealed to his ego, his pockets, and his perverse sense of loyalty to his troops. And for Putin, he stopped the single most important threat to his legacy and power.
People keep telling (me) us that a coup against Putin is next to impossible, and yet, we were less than half a day away from finding out if this were true. Which means that Putin had something much greater to lose than a chunk of his cred -- his short neck.
In the 2-person game theory matrix, both sides found the optimal solution -- the win/win box.
That’s a shame, I was hoping for a bloodbath in Russia.
A bloodbath in a country with almost 6,000 nukes and the means to deliver them to where my family lives. No thankyou.
I was concerned about a non-zero chance of Russia nuking its own territory to stop a coup, and what a precarious situation that might lead to.
All Democratic liberals want a bloodbath of Russians.
Projection must be a specialty of yours.
I took Justin's comment to mean a bloodbath "between two opposing military forces" -- the reduction of which would contribute positively to Ukraine's attempts to kick Russians out of Ukraine.
This whole scenario is way beyond bizarre, even for Russia. What is really going on? Will we ever know. I worry that Wagner will have free access to Ukraine from Belarus and this is not good. Waiting, waiting.....
What if Puti is going to make Prigozhin the new head of Belarus and ousting Lukashenko. Maybe that is why he headed off to Turkey. Since when has Lukashenko become a negotiator??? All too weird. We do not want Turkey getting any ideas about fully siding with Russia. Not good.
Prigozhin may have been tired of the way he & his forces were being used; while Putin's comment about consequences for traitors doesn't mean that his former ally would be safe from retribution (poison or other common Putin tactics).Maybe Prigozhin strategized for an out, now might head for Africa, where he has other troops & mine holdings. Surely he wouldn't be so naive as to trust Lukashenko for any length of time ,but can he can travel safely ? Any operative Putin might send to Africa might be more easily spotted & avoided there.
My uninformed opinion he saw this as a way out for him and his troops from an unwinnable war in Ukraine. Their other options in the long run were probably body bags or prison. Putin wasn't going to give up or let anyone else do so.
Prigozhin appears to have attempted a coup in the hopes institutional and/or popular support would join and propel him to national power, without which no success could be possible.
Ultimately it's going come down to whether he gets the changes he wants in the Russian MOD to show his little putsch was worth it or not. If so, then he can say he accomplished what he sought out to do. The last thing he wanted was to try and run the country and if given a way out without further bloodshed, he gladly took it. If not well, then all one can say I hope enjoys digging up potatoes in Belarus and stay away from any open windows.