I have to admit with great bitterness that the Russian Federation is one step closer to its final and irrevocable demise.
As of today, the Russian Federation has two presidents - the real president, Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the acting president to serve his term. The main purpose of the acting president is to periodically address the real president, kneeling down, with the question: “What do you want, Yevgeny Viktorovich?”
Never, even in my worst nightmare, I couldn’t imagine that I would see this shame and destruction of my country.
So any remaining conspiracy thoughts of this being orchestrated by Putin as an awkward “out” are clearly gone. Also, this will more clearly set up direct armed confrontation between Wagner and the Russian armed forces. It’s probably not that hard to get some of the regulars riled up against Shoigu and the MoD, but now Wagner has to convince them to go against Putin.
While I agree there will be a lot that hate Putin like that, I think the intercepted phone calls are too anecdotal to get a reliable picture of the loyalties within the military.
Footage of Prigozhin in Rostov, pictured with Deputy Minister of Defense, Colonel General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov (at left, from 0:13 on) — see the latter’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunus-bek_Yevkurov#/media/File:Official_portrait_of_Yunus-bek_Yevkurov.jpg for reference; looks like a match.
edit: and Lt. Gen. Vladimir Alekseyev, deputy chief of GRU military intelligence 1
Partial translation summary: Wagner issues orders to MoD commanders it has captured; will “blockade Rostov and go to [ed: towards?] Moscow until we get the Chief of the General Staff and Shoigu” 2, 3
Machine translation here. Highlight: Lt. Gen. Alekseyev tells Prigozhin, “the biggest thing that upsets me is… I hear there’s a party in Kyiv. With champagne”
"The current situation today was a rocket attack on us. After that the helicopters worked off. After that the artillery commands came from the Chief of General Staff to destroy the Wagner Cheka. After a meeting with Defense Minister Shoigu, where they made this decision to destroy the recalcitrant units, which are ready to defend their homeland, but their asses are not. At the moment we have crossed state borders in all places. Border guards were coming out to meet us and hugging our fighters. Now we are entering Rostov, a unit of the Ministry of Defense, or rather, the conscripts who were thrown to block our way, have stepped aside. We do not fight children, we do not kill children. Children are being killed. Shoigu throws untrained soldiers, including conscripts, into the war. He put 18-year-old boys against us, they are our children, they are all our grandchildren. So these guys will live and go back to their mothers. We only fight professionals. But if anyone gets in the way, we will destroy anything that gets in the way. We extend our hand to everyone. No need to spit in that hand. We move on. We go all the way. As for the statements about the arrests. This is brotherhood, this is justice, this is honor, this is conscience. That's what we have. And when you make statements, you don't have these feelings, you have destroyed these feelings. So you cannot understand anything but betrayal."
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.
Does someone have a link to Prigozhin's actual outlets? All of this is pretty indirect and suspect as a result. (In the age of deepfakes, a recording means little with no provenance)
Belarussian soldiers, who are supporting Ukraine 🇺🇦, have called on Belarussian citizens to unite behind what is transpiring with Wagner, to liberate Belarus of Russia 🇷🇺.
That means they have made halfway from where they started to Moscow in the last 16 hours. At this rate we will be seeing them clash with Moscow troops in the next day.
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