Sources of British special services have reported that the Russian secret services threatened to hurt the families of chiefs of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) before Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner and leader of the Wagner PMC, stopped his offensive on Moscow.
Everyone agrees that we are missing some key information that would explain this. I don't know what it is any more than the rest, but we should bear in mind that the missing factor could be incompetence. Russia's power structure is complex and delicately balanced. Putin has gone to great efforts to insure that no one knows everything. More than one of the players may have badly miscalculated, resulting in the current mess.
Point three seems entirely noncredible to me. They were doing a thunder-run, by all appearances. That doesn't just happen. You don't accidentally cross the Rubicon, you don't just happen to go "whoopsie, we're in the Moscow Oblast, aren't we goofy goobers!".
And then the assertion: "However, I want to emphasize that image has always been a secondary concern for Putin." Isn't that just... objectively false? Image has always been huge for Putin. He presents himself as a strongman, a man able to lie to your face, but is so powerful that you, the Russian citizen, can do nothing about it.
I think Beau of the Fifth Column's hot take is more likely -- Wagner wanted out of the war for a host of reasons, they especially didn't want to be taken control of by the MoD and essentially dissolved into the state apparatus. So Prigozhin decided to gun for Moscow in order to be able to force Putin's hand and let Wagner return to Africa, doing the PMC stuff that Wagner has been running around doing for years. This has probably been something he's been trying to negotiate for a year or so, but it all just came to a head with Bahkmut and the new contracts MoD was trying to push.
Yeah, the image thing I thought was a weird take too. He puts out photos of him riding bare chested on a horse, ffs. Of course he cares about his “strongman” image. He hasn’t been seen since this happened. Something is still off about this whole thing.
Totally. This is some Game of Thrones level bs. We're the serfs of the town, and we just saw their interpersonal drama play out in public on the fields outside of King's Landing. They're going to negotiate behind the walls of the Red Keep, get their stories straight, then tell us what we need to hear to keep everything in order.
I’d hazard a guess that it was a joint mission between Putin and Prigozhin to flush out potential traitors. I mean, what’s a better time to monitor communication channels when you have ‘an invading army storming the capital’ to find out who’s with/against you?
Then you send the ‘invading army’ to a Putin-controlled border country, and offer any of his soldiers that didn’t invade with him a place in your military….
I mean they sent a women’s basketball player to prison for some cannabis oil, but a guy who tried to overthrow the government gets a vacation next door? His soldier’s get the same vacation? The soldier’s that didn’t join them (why? where were they?) get jobs with the government?
Doesn’t make sense unless the ‘event’ was nothing like it appeared. A ‘Red Herring’ if you will.
The actions taken after the 1-day event speak louder to the point of what actually happened then what they’re saying in the media.
It makes sense, but there was so much.... chaos. If the goal was to root out traitors, then he didn't really find many except the ones in Wagner. and there is still a lot of unknown alliances except maybe the airforce.
It also had the unintentional consequence of making Russia look weak, and more importantly gave us a glimpse into their tactics, escape plans, defensive plans. But most importantly, that Russia has no reserve forces except drafting civilians and police in the event of a blitz on moscow.
While I like this take, we really don’t know if it was sincere or not. Maybe Prigozhin made a deal with the FSB, or maybe he’s already dead by now. He hasn’t been seen since he left for Belarus.
It's weird if it's real, but it's also weird if it's fake. That'd mean that they moved a lot of troops out of Ukraine, split them up with some heading to Moscow and others staying in Rostov, destroyed the morale of the Russian soldiers staying in Ukraine and allowed Ukraine to continue their counteroffensive, shot down six of their own helicopters and a plane in the conflict, and killed and wounded several of their own soldiers, all just for show. They could have done this so much more efficiently.
I think it makes sense if it's the only thing they could do to him. Like, the threat against their families has the problem of "and then what". The secret services can only carry it out once, and once its been carried out there's still the issue of 25,000 war-criming mercenaries who are now super pissed off and have nothing left to lose. This deal makes a lot of sense when you consider that no one can actually do anything to Prigozhin that can actually physically stop him, the most they can do is to lean on his officers, and only if they never actually try to carry out any of their threats.
I think that the reason that Wagner rebelled now is because Russia was planning something with a nuclear power plant that would have put them up against NATO, in addition to making them part of the regular army. It was Moscow or fighting NATO and Prigozhin probably thought his chances were better in Moscow.
Everyone keeps talking Putin up like a genius, but they've been saying that since this invasion started and it seems progressively more unlikely. I think this is just what it looks like, a rebellion that was stopped by a last minute hail-mary. Because even if it was a secret plan to flush out traitors, Prigozhin still made Putin look weak, and a strong-man dictator can never afford to look weak. That means that even if it is a plan and it worked perfectly, Putin is still highly motivated to have Prigozhin killed. Prigozhin has to know this. I can't imagine he'd agree to this plan.
I’d be shocked if this was true. I would think that would be the first FSB tactic that they would’ve performed. It’s a classic one in movies as well. It’ll be absolutely insane if this is what stopped the coup.
The whole lot doesn't seem bright at all. Then they basically drove through to Moscow like they were having a leisurely stroll and lost one truck. Russia looks so pathetic right now.
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