[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
If you have a bead on what transpired in Russia from Friday through Saturday, you’re ahead of most folks.
I’ll let VOA’s Steve Herman give a tick-tock:
1:14 p.m. ET / 8:14 p.m. Moscow —
There’s a bit more in the audio:
Dmitri @[email protected]
Prigozhin says it’s over:
“They were going to dismantle PMC Wagner. We came out on 23 June to the March of Justice. In a day, we walked to nearly 200km away from Moscow. In this time, we did not spill a single drop of blood of our fighters. Now, the moment has come when blood may spill. That’s why, understanding the responsibility for spilling Russian blood on one of the sides, we are turning back our convoys and going back to field camps according to the plan.”
Audio: https://t.me/concordgroup_official/1303
1:31 PM · Jun 24, 2023
The recent order for mercenaries to sign a contract with Russia’s defense ministry does appear to be a trigger. It would be tantamount to disbanding Wagner group since its personnel would be directly subordinate to Russia’s Defense Ministry and not Prigozhin and Wagner leadership.
Many, MANY people are still scratching their heads about Belarus’s president Alexander Lukashenko acting as a peace broker.
For my part I thought Lukashenko had flown out of Belarus late last night Belarus time according to reports in social media. Indeed, The New Voice of Ukraine reported he’d left just after midnight and arrived in Turkey at 5:15 a.m. local time after taking a wide detour:
According to the map, the plane tried to bypass Russia’s Krasnodar and Stavropol Krais, flew over the Caspian Sea and then reached the Turkish resort via Georgia.
That’s nearly twice as long as necessary to get to Turkey, which one might do if concerned about missile launchers in or near eastern Ukraine/western Russia.
Why Lukashenko, who appears to be a rather inert figure save for Putin’s puppetmastery, especially since he’d been rumored to be quite sick for weeks?
At 2:20 p.m. ET the advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine tweeted —
Anton Gerashchenko (@[email protected])
Former supporter of Prigozhin about alleged agreement between Prigozhin and Russian authorities:
“Now it’s finally allowed to say the three things he’s been promised. 1. Shoigu’s resignation. 2. Amnesty for “musicians” [Wagner mercenaries]. 3. The possibility to return to Africa. I’m sure that in reality he signed his own death sentence. And Wagner PMC as well, of course.”
In general, many “Wagner war correspondents” are extremely disappointed with the situation.
Some publicly resign. And curse Prigozhin.
2:20 PM · Jun 24, 2023
To be fair, let’s acknowledge before Prigozhin’s feint over the last day either Putin and/or Shoigu wanted to seize control of Wagner group personnel directly to augment what’s left of Russia’s armed forces.
But Prigozhin signing his own death warrant? Hmm — who’d execute it?
In the course of sorting through all the feeds and news articles related to the last 24 hours in Ukraine and Russia, I ran across several social media reports regarding the parties to the negotiations with Prigozhin. It contained a tidbit which at the time the deal was reported didn’t seem important.
Now I realize it may have been critical to understanding why Prigozhin traded away what looked like his leverage by stopping the march to Moscow and reversing Wagner personnel’s direction back to Rostov and the front.
In these reports it was noted Lukashenko was not the actual negotiator but that the other participant was key to the process — Tula’s governor Aleksey Dyumin. Lukashenko may instead have been a guarantor of the deal while Dyumin, a former member of FSB, GRU, presidential guard, and deputy defense minister, handled the negotiations.
Tula Oblast is a province located in Russia’s Central Federal District; its capital city, Tula, is located about 140 miles/224 km south of Moscow.
The M4 highway on which Wagner group personnel convoy worked its way toward Moscow runs right through the heart of Tula Oblast.
One could see why Tula’s governor might have a vested interest in negotiating a de-escalation of tensions since the convoy might begin to run into conflict in the middle of the oblast.
But if negotiations were between Lukashenko, Dyumin, and Prigozhin, why was Lukashenko given top billing with Dyumin’s role rarely mentioned in media?
This article in Meduza from last autumn, focusing on the relationship between Prigozhin and Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov, also spells out their connections to Dyumin:
Meduza’s sources also say that Kadyrov’s and Prigozhin’s criticisms of the army are silently supported by “a group of ambitious young FSO-men” — that is, Putin’s former security officers, the Governor of Tula Alexey Dyumin and the former head of the Yaroslavl region, Dmitry Mironov, who is now an assistant to the President. According to sources close to the President’s Office, Mironov and Dyumin often talk and meet in person. Sources in the Yaroslavl and Tula regions confirm this information.
A source in Tula’s regional administration points out that, even before the war, Evgeny Prigozhin collaborated with the local government – for example, by bringing political consultants to manage elections. The Insider (a media project deemed a “foreign agent” and “undesirable” in Russia) has also written about Dyumin’s connection to Prigozhin.
According to two sources close to the President’s Office, Ramzan Kadyrov got to know both Dyumin and Prigozhin when they were still Putin’s bodyguards. Apparently, Kadyrov was friendly with both of them – and even called Dyumin his “elder brother.”
“FSO men” — members of the Federal Protective Service which includes Putin’s guards. What an interesting common link.
Lukashenko is also connected to Dyumin economically; Belarus and Tula Oblast have swapped commodities since a deal last autumn. It’s possible this is a means to get around sanctions on Russia though it’s not clear from financial reporting.
But Lukashenko has another relationship which hasn’t surfaced in all of today’s reporting. Belarus has been useful to Wagner group:
The last weeks of the 2020 presidential election campaign in Belarus brought an unexpected development: on July 29th, Belarusian authorities arrested 33 Russian citizens who allegedly belonged to the Wagner Group. While Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko used the story of the arrested Wagner operatives for his election campaign, accusing them of planning to interfere with the elections, independent sources revealed that, in fact, the Wagner Group has been using Belarus regularly as a transit country to various operational theaters; thus their presence on Belarusian territory was by no means extraordinary.
Wagner uses Belarus to move to its other operations and programs while it also proved useful as a scapegoat — or willing partner — in the 2020 election.
One of the sources which mentioned Dyumin was the real negotiator also said he was the likely next Russian Defense Minister.
Which means that Dyumin may have had a vested interest in looking useful to Putin, making sure the negotiations included the removal of Sergei Shoigu as Defense Minister, and that Prigozhin would get something out of this show of force demanding Shoigu’s ouster.
Was all of this just theater by a handful of buddies who had shared histories in order to shift one of them into Defense Minister — the guy who’d likely award contracts to mercenaries?
~ ~ ~
One other critical point to keep in mind about Russian private military companies (PMCs) like Wagner: they don’t technically exist in Russia. They’re not licensed in any way; the government looks the other way allowing weasel words to justify companies having their own security. They’re meant to be a means to do off-the-books work so they aren’t in public or government records.
By being off-the-books, Putin can opt for maximum plausible deniability while keeping head count and subsequent losses out of the public eye, undocumented by Russian Ministry of Defense in casualty reports.
Between this fact and the Defense Ministry’s move to consolidate head count between regular armed forces and PMCs, Putin and/or Russian military’s top brass can hide the mounting Russian casualties in Putin’s misbegotten war on Ukraine.
Prigozhin didn’t spell this out directly, but he did point out that he felt Wagner was going to be broken up. He made this seizure of his PMC public if not on the books, and he punctuated it with the march, ensuring the head count Wagner committed to this statement was in the public’s consciousness.
Which brings up another point: responsible as he was for the Internet Research Agency troll farm which has screwed with the U.S. through online influence operations since 2013, Prigozhin knows how to influence perception and public opinion even with this march on Moscow.
How much of the march was an influence operation?
How much of the subsequent negotiations and the response of other key players was an influence operation?
Who was the intended target of the operation(s), if that’s what Wagner group’s weekend’s march toward Moscow was?
What was the ultimate intent of the operation(s), assuming that’s what this was, apart from the concessions revealed to the public?
~ ~ ~
It will be quite some time before all the details fall into place to explain what really happened.
Ukrainians may be amused by some of it, may have taken advantage of the situation by pressing east along the front during the confusion, but Russian missiles continued to fall on Ukraine. Three died when Kyiv was hit though Ukraine’s air defenses managed to deter 80% of the attempted strikes.
The U.S. intelligence community, though, had information suggesting Prigozhin could attempt a coup two weeks ago.
At least one news report suggested this possibility the last week of May.
Let’s hope Ukraine had been informed and will continue to be informed about another potential coup. With Putin’s grip on power proven weak by Prigozhin, it’s more likely there will be more marches toward Moscow ahead, increasing confusion in Russia about its leadership, and improved opportunities to seize more of eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
Mutiny or coup? Some say what Prigozhin did with Wagner personnel was a mutiny. I lean toward coup because Russia’s power structure was changed by this event.
What say you?
It was a Kabuki Coup and in mafia terms it was ended when Lukashencho guaranteed the outcome of negotiations between Prigozhin and Putins Consigliere Dyumin.
Has it been made official, or at least “independently confirmed” by someone(s) believable that Dyumin is now ‘Defense Minister-Elect’ or whatever you want to call it? I’m having a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff among all the words flying around today (outside of here).
Have seen nothing of that yet though I have seen analysis suggesting Putin wouldn’t take immediate action on anything Prigozhin demanded because it would legitimize Prigozhin’s march whether mutinous/seditionist, and doing so would come at the expense of Putin’s remaining political power.
Dyumin, having been a former Deputy of Defense Minister to Shoigu as well as a lieutenant general, would be a natural choice as Defense Minister which works to Putin’s benefit if/when he should yank Shoigu’s job.
The one piece I can’t find in all the chaff is how much of Shoigu’s situation is bound up in racism. Shoigu has been quite deft in keeping his job in spite of all the fuckup across MoD and Russia’s defense industry, but it’s damned hard to tell how much fuck-upery is pure corruption, how much is Russian culture (including so much alcohol abuse that Prigozhin expected little reaction on a drunken Friday night), and how much is laid at Shoigu’s door because it’s easy to blame a Tuvan ethnic minority.
Great post.
Prigozhin called Putin’s hand. From all of the infighting over the last several weeks it seems obvious he was being set up to take the fall by MoD and/or others.
Putin signaled his buy in by ordering the PMC to be folded into the RU forces. Cut off from the spoils, Prigozhin doubled down In carefully parsed accusations about military incompetence and played his ace; Caesar crossing the Rubicon.
Would have enjoyed the Russian Orthodox version of High Noon, but Putin is as much a coward as Trump.
Assassinating Prigozhin would trigger civil strife. I have zero faith in any principled revolt, but Putin’s team has brought little more than poverty and shame. Wagner PMC has connected with the since of patriotism that is required for their survival.
I’m of a mind that it was staged in order for Ukraine to be tempted heed the call of the PRV who’ve been fighting a semi-guerilla action in S Rus for a couple months. When the strung out Wagner convoy (great military tactic, right?) made its way toward Moscow, the RVC and the FRL made a siren call for Ukraine to step into the breach, across the boarder. There are some of the Ukrainian nazis in that group, as I understand, as well. Prigozhin’s commentary about the Russian invasion pretext being bullshit was another shiny object to juice up the Urainians into thinking Putin will be neutralized in terms of the war effort, as well — perhaps.
If the Ukrainians had been that stupid, they’d have handed Putin his tactical nuke pretext (in his own mind) for defending Russian soil against a NATO-allied aggressor.
Just a theory. The “battle of Rostov on Don” was a joke with no punch line. There’s a video on Telegram of Prigozhin having tea with the Regional commandant and another guy, talking with each other like they are discussing soccer standings, or what their kids are up to these days. And the “attack” itself was basically a stroll into the lobby and an usuring to the deck out back for tea and crumpets.
And then there was that miles long, strung out convoy to Moscow, a bona fide drone shooting gallery.
And correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Belarus now a much more threating-to-Kyiv shadow at the other end of the country? And is Prig going to be the general for that front going forward?
What guarantee is there that Prigozhin will stay in Belarus?
I haven’t seen or heard of any guarantee. You’ll see in the last related thread commenters suggesting there was a threat made to Prigozhin’s/Wagner members’ families, but there’s nothing concrete.
Prigozhin offers the means to bypass sanctions with his mining interests on the Africa continent. What happens to that if Prigozhin is defenstrated?
I love that word, defenestrated: out the window!
Been in common parlance since there were windows. Still a fun visual. I guess “infenestration” might be another. My old favorite in grade school (1950s) “antidisestablishmentarianism”. German don’t get no better than this!
I don’t see any reason for Prigozhin to remain in Belarus unless he is either locked down or has a death wish. I doubt he has the latter, if he did he could have just continued the march toward Moscow.
I don’t think he is (or can be) confined to Belarus. Damned hard to oversee diamond mines from there.
Based on what defenses looked like in Moscow, I doubt he’d have had a problem. It wouldn’t have helped his image with some factions, and it certainly would have hurt Putin’s.
About the same as Trotsky retiring comfortably in Mexico.
at this point, we don’t even know whether Prighozhin even made it to Belarus.
Too few ask why Prigozhin would fulfill his end of the deal and make himself look obedient when the other party to the agreement has yet to fulfill any part of their end — that the public can see.
For me none of this adds up from any angle. If it was some kind of staged Potemkin coup, it seems so poorly calculated. They gained nothing in Ukraine from this move, and they gained nothing in terms of public perception. Why would Putin allow any false flag exercise that would make him look so weak? That seems completely out of character.
And if it was a true effort to force a change in defense leadership, why would Prigozhin agree to go to Belarus just when he was gaining momentum? Surely he knows better than most that assurances are cheap, and he’ll eventually find his way out of a high window or poisoned.
Why would Prigozhin sign away his force to become part of MOD? Wagner forces are better trained, better fed, less regulated by the state and probably also more likely to stay alive in comparison with Russia’s military troops. That move seems more like a betrayal of them than a boon. Maybe being under MOD contract gives them pensions they’d not have gotten through Wagner, but they’ll always be marked.
Lastly, according to CNN today, Belarus claims to not know where Prigozhin is. Was he coerced into reading his surrender statement? If so, why hasn’t the Russian government trotted his capture out as a warning to others?
“… They gained nothing in Ukraine from this move, and they gained nothing in terms of public perception. …”
Who is “they” here? There are more than one party with an agenda, and their agendas aren’t identical.
“… Why would Putin allow any false flag exercise that would make him look so weak? That seems completely out of character. …”
You mean this guy meeting with Shoigu and Gerasimov in March 2022?
(That photo was published by WaPo with an op-ed, “Putin needs to watch his back” by Leon Aron, in which Aron warned about coup threats less than two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine.)
I’m not even going to touch the rest of your comment.
we don’t even know what the deal actually was.
the most likely possibility to me is that, however this started, nothing went according to *anybody’s* plan and now all of the main players are improvising
Thank you for your research and dot-connecting; most of what I see in the media seems to be innocent acceptance of spin, perhaps unrelated to the underlying reality.
“…innocent acceptance of spin…”
Well said. I can only send my heartfelt thanks to Marcy and the regulars here that seem to counter that, um, tendency.
[Thanks for updating your username to meet the 8 letter minimum. /~Rayne]
It’s rather ridiculous to accept what happened on face value when the key persons involved managed to throw a monkey wrench in the U.S. 2016 elections with their own spin, ensuring a Russian-sympathetic occupant in the White House.
When wouldn’t they use spin to serve their aims?
Among other lessons, many philosophers from Sun Tzu through Machiavelli and Clausewitz have warned against mercenaries.
I think the whole thing is fake. From the start its just felt like theater to me. A distraction for some reason.
[Welcome to emptywheel. Please use a more differentiated username when you comment next as there are more than one community members here named “Bluebird” or “bluebird.” Your name will be temporarily changed to reflect time/date of your first known comment until you’ve chosen a new name. Thanks. /~Rayne]
Now that the Wagner force is in Belarus, will there be an attack on into Ukraine from the north. The whole exercise seems to me a switch and bait operation, with shades of the 1917 Czar troubles.
Good post. Thanks.
I readily confess to having zero clue as to what’s really going on. The US/EU/NATO haters who overpopulate the commentariat over at Naked Capitalim are having a field day. A tsunami of contradictions, however erudite.
Then, there’s our predictable clown car Republicans, claiming this is all one big disinformation false flag Op to take Hunter Biden out of the news. As was, of course, the sunken submersible tragedy.
“Then, there’s our predictable clown car Republicans, claiming this is all one big disinformation false flag Op to take Hunter Biden out of the news. As was, of course, the sunken submersible tragedy.”
I’m sorry but what the actual fuck? I have to wonder if it’s an article of faith among GOP that they must sniff deeply from the same psychedelic-infused clown car gas tank every day.
A percentage of the GOP in office have a good grip on just how gullible there base is. The rest are gullible themselves.
Knaves and fools, Molly.
Knaves spew what they know to be nonsense in order to manipulate and/or propitiate fools, who are in earnest.
sniff deeply from the same psychedelic-infused clown car gas tank every day.
they’re also huffing the tailpipe fumes.
Good one, Rayne . . . “same psychedelic-infused clown car gas tank” — need to write that down.
Two thoughts:
1. Maskirovka, enticing Ukraine to over-extend and become more vulnerable?
This would mean the whole thing was theater… if so our media lapped it up.
2. China is watching to see how vulnerable Putin is and always looking for advantage.
These events seem to indicate very weak internal security and potential for the endgame scenarios Peterr laid out.
Interesting times.
I don’t think #1 worked if that was the intent, it looks like Ukraine just went about their business of liberating a few kilometers a day in some of the 4 areas they are advancing.
I tend to think Prigozhin is actually Beijing’s man in Russia.
To me, this seems a warning shot by Xi, or the PLA at least: Buckle down Putin and turn around this Ukraine thing, or you’re next.
Are there supporting facts for that?
WTF?
Thank you for pulling these various resources together and for your own thoughts on this evolving situation.
Thank you for the link to the ISW CT, a valuable resource.
You asked “Prigozhin offers the means to bypass sanctions with his mining interests on the Africa continent. What happens to that if Prigozhin is defenstrated?”
I certainly don’t see Ramzan Kadyrov as sophisticated enough to replace Prigozhin in these financial ‘ventures’. Kadyrov is more like The Hulk; Prigozhin’s super power has been his PR chops. He is a showman/ bully/ bullshitter like Trump, but with actual testicular fortitude.
“…we walked to nearly 200km away from Moscow.”
It seems to me that Prigozhin may have walked into a monkey trap. The ease with which Wagner took Rostov-on-Don and sped up the highway toward Moscow was suspicious. Either the whole thing was Kayfabe or the MoD set an irresistible trap for the Wagner Group by letting it penetrate far beyond their logistical capabilities. All Lukashenko would have to say is, “Nice banana you got there, Yevgeny, too bad you can’t get your hand out of the jar.”
Just how would it have looked if a guy and his 25K personnel, respected enough to be welcomed into Rostov-on-Don by its residents, were suddenly attacked by MoD?
The same MoD which can’t muster enough personnel that it has to seize personnel from PMCs?
Nah — especially not with Team Putin using the dolchstosslegende to characterize Prigozhin’s march while Prigozhin demands Shoigu’s job for damaging Russia. It’d take the kind of double jointedness even pretzels can’t manage.
I am not a military analyst and I can’t speak for the popularity or otherwise of the Wagner Group in Russia. I do know that there have been two very well-known military campaigns aimed at Moscow. You may have heard of them. One by Napoleon and one by Hitler. Napoleons, btw, was launched on June 24, 1812 and is documented in the greatest infographic of all time:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Minard.png
“The data narrative told through the infographic is that of Napoleon’s Russian Campaign, when his Grande Armée crossed the Neman (Niemen) River with over 400,000 men from across the French Imperial Empire, in what has been called the largest European force ever assembled up to that point. It crossed into what was then Russia on June 24th, 1812. Just under six months later, the Grande Armée returned over that same river on December 14th with just 10,000 men… a 97% loss of life.”
Yeah, and maybe Napoleon wasn’t thinking about running for president of France in a couple years, and Hitler didn’t give a fuck because hubris.
You’re entitled to your opinion, like assholes everybody has one. That goes for your “greatest infographic of all time” which I personally believe pales next to XKCD’s 1732: Earth Temperature Timeline.
You can actually cross reference those two graphics – notice the temperature on Tufte’s chart in Paris on Napoleon’s return…and where it sits at the end of the Little Ice Age on XKCD.
I always enjoy a thoughtful and courteous exchange of views.
I always enjoy a dearth of mansplaining.
Message to Rayne, DO NOT PUBLISH THIS COMMENT.
** Content deleted **
[Been nice chatting with you. Bye! /~Rayne]
And we must add Vizinni’s two classic blunders, because they absolutely correlate:
“The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this; never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line! Aha ha ha ha….” (Sadly, he then died.)
Rayne, small typo, “Prigoshin” in the 2nd graph after the tweets.
[Typo fixed, thanks. /~Rayne]
I thought about the land war line, but they’re not in Asia.
It’s unlikely that Prigozhin would have been stopped by the sudden onset of a brutal Russian winter a couple of days after the summer solstice, but whatever.
~guffaw~
This, exactly, crossed my mind.
Russian pretzels do exist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH2e9UXx7JA
I wonder what the story is with those Russian helicopters being shot down and how that squares with Prigozhin’s claim that, “Now, the moment has come when blood may spill.” Surely there was some bleeding from the soldiers inside those helicopters.
Yeah. Not certain, but I wonder if there was a concern on Prigozhin’s part about loyalties within Russian Air Force versus ground forces. I haven’t run across anything which situates the air force commander Sergey Dronov for/against any faction in MoD or out.
SFAIK Russia still has a lot of air assets and if the Air Force wanted to they could have taken Putin’s yelling out “traitor” as permission to launch strikes on Prigozhin’s columns. They didn’t. Worried about civilian casualties? Perhaps. But maybe the Air Force leadership decided to sit this one out until whatever it was got settled. Lots of other possibilities too, of course, but columns on open highways are vulnerable targets, yet very few attacks appear to have been undertaken, a few helicopters at most.
Ray E, I don’t know if this is significant but this site I put in the website location gives information on Air Force losses
Rayne I am not good at posting – my apologies- the list includes a Il-22М11 air-borne command post aircraft
When he said none of “our” blood had been spilled I took that as referring to his own forces.
I have seen video of a Wagner truck being destroyed by an air to ground missile, there is no chance the driver or anyone in that truck survived. It’s not news that Pregozhin lies as easily as Putin or Trump.
All true but he also was supposedly also using civilian trucks for transports. I can’t help but think what might have happened in the US had the armed forces been headed by someone loyal to Trump and if Mike Pence had capitulated on Jan 6th.
Prigozhin didn’t become a Russian prison boss by being indecisive, hesitant, or meek. Once he shifted responsibility for Bakhmut to the MOD he needed a way out of an increasingly losing battle. With the threat of his forces being transferred to the MOD he saw no choice but to up the ante and use the turmoil to escape with his life and more forces and equipment than he started with. Belarus may now become his operational base and his bread baskets in Africa remain. But the chef should probably cook his own food …
Seems a reasonable plan. But he was also supposedly deep in with Putin. Why couldn’t Putin have worked his dictator magic and ordered the MOD to back Wagner? Is there a division within the Russian military and perhaps within the MOD and other security organizations?
I realize what I’m about to say is a bit crazy. There is speculation that Prigozhin is in danger because of the fact that Belarus is closer to agents who may come from Moscow to defenestrate him, or offer him some tea. But, and here’s the crazy part, being located in Belarus puts Prigozhin closer to Moscow (take the E30). What if he were to reassemble whatever forces he has combined with some segment of the Belarusan armed forces and march on Moscow from that vector at a time advantageous to Prigozhin? Such a setup would be of benefit to Lukashenko as well.
This is clearly a case for Max Meladze. 🤣
Russian jets based in Belarus would probably act quickly. But being a sofa colonel, what do I know?
Throughout the series of angry statements from Prigozhin in recent weeks i’ve strongly believed that he had Putin’s blessing. All of the ranting was aimed at Shoigu, Gerasimov, and others responsible for the conduct of this military operation, but never Putin. In fact, he’d several times explicitly stated that those others were misleading the Russian president, and had repeatedly let him down. I think that this theatre has been about voicing deserved frustrations, as well as deflecting responsibility away from Putin.
Some might say that, if this were the case, Putin himself ought to have been the one to be ranting like that. But he is no Donald Trump. He surely understands that such moaning and bitching to the public would make him seem weak. Having his psychopathic gangster do it instead seems like a safer approach.
Even after the events of this weekend i am still somewhat in favour of this scenario.
Selected snippets from Josh Marshall quoting some experts:
This was really a battle to keep Wagner independent from the Russian military proper, to maintain Prigozhin’s business, his power as an independent though subordinate military force in the Russian state structure. He was doing something dramatic to get Putin’s attention and get him to decide the matter in his favor.
The key seems to be that he was in a way more successful than he anticipated. Most of the Russian Army is in Ukraine or near the Ukrainian border. What remains in Russia was either unwilling or unable to act quickly enough to stop his troops’ drive toward the capital. Kofman notes that Prigozhin appears to have had an intuitive grasp of the brittleness and weakness of the Russian state. But in this respect it was even weaker than he anticipated.
Suddenly the entire domestic and global audience is debating whether Prigozhin will be able to “take” Moscow when his troops arrive. But he was never trying to “take” Moscow or become a new head of state. He was trying to stop the Ministry of Defense from taking away his company.
Stanovaya doesn’t say this explicitly. But it occurs to me that if you’re someone like Putin, if you’re involved in a bloody spasm of urban warfare to defend your own capital, that’s the kind of situation where someone else might decide to push you aside, even if you’re “winning” that battle.
Here is a link to Phillips P. OBrien’s Weekend Update. Covers the coup/mutiny and current Ukrainian strategy/tactics. https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-34
Wow. I really needed a scorecard to follow the post! Seems like everyone involved has several degrees of connection to everyone else, with lots of alliances, side deals, understandings, etc. Is that unique to this group of countries, who not that long ago all flew one common banner? Or would I find that elsewhere also — for example, in the Middle East, or (in the US) between business and Dems/Repubs?
I really wish NNDB could help map relationship networks on demand if provided substantive supporting material from which to work. There’s all this content out there documenting these context-rich relationships in Russia, but almost nothing in the west depicting how they all mesh together. Frustrating, because I’m sure I’ve left huge holes and they’re blind spots. Where are the women, for example? You know they play some role but how and where?
No idea where one would look in Middle East though it depends a lot on country, culture, and subculture.
I’d look to NNDB for US business relationship maps first, those are much easier because you already know the country and culture.
Building on some of the recent comments I’ll suggest that Prigozihn’s rhetoric over the past few months, and Saturday’s muscle flexing, were part of the negotiations over the price of disbanding Wagner.
Perhaps Shoigu wanted to capture some of Prizogihn’s business by bringing it into the regular forces, and Putin was happy to see Prigozihn’s private army get scaled back.
Prigozihn wasn’t happy with the deal as offered and upped the ante.
A better offer was made and he was satisfied.
Another thought I had was that Prigozihn wanted something from the southern military headquarters that his forces took control of, and the rest was a distraction.
One thing for sure, though: These guys don’t mind sacrificing thousands of lives to make money and gain the power to make more money. This wasn’t a “March for Justice”!
We’re all a bit daft including myself in interpretation. I was reminded what Russia’s ‘view of normal’ is from exiles from it. It’s organized crime at the end of the day. Nothing is what it seems to be IOW.
I have no idea how we begin to analyze that which we have no real time experience with, and I do not know how any media here in the “west” can either, apart from essays, historical and otherwise, that everyday people have no time for.
Prigozhin is ‘Putin come lately’ . Not good news for Putin, or any of us for that matter.
This is one of the toughest challenges Americans struggle with when analyzing Trump’s behavior. We begin with the assumption he’s making rational decisions within a legal framework at least some of the time, and we’re constantly surprised when something he’s done is even worse than his last crime.
Ditto when looking at the narco/petro mafia states. Their populations are inured to constant corruption — most of us in the US would never dream of paying bribe to have electrical service turned on, for example, but it can be the norm in mafia states.
Which is why I laugh every time I see someone mention Prigozhin’s possible assassination by Putin, as if it would never occur to Prigozhin, a guy whose business is off the government’s books, to take measures in advance to protect his interests being wholly unfamiliar with mafia behavior.
Ya, as if we are dealing with reasonable people.
We aren’t.
Oh, they’re reasonable. Both you and Rayne have pointed that out.
Only that the structure of reason is not what most of us in the west think it is. Much of the world is run on a variety of rules that apply to some and not others. Think baksheesh/bribes/tips as the normal way of doing business.
The US has just experienced a level of bribery/etc. that is explicit, not hidden. It is ongoing and will be hard to root out.
Thank you Rayne.
Approximately, 39 of Putin’s critics have died. Is Prigozhin next? Will it be poison, a fall from a window, pushed down the stairs, kidnapped then shot, stabbed or airplane accident?
Putin Quotes:
“The worst thing for a politician is to try and cling to power by every possible means, and focus only on that.”
“My notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education.”
“One has to be insincere and promise something which you cannot fulfill. So you either have to be a fool who does not understand what you are promising, or deliberately be lying.”
I’m thinking how does the free world deal with organized crime on a whole country level that has set it sights on a whole other country.
Who do they deploy to assassinate someone who hires assassins?
I’d start with Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, aka “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”, 2005: “a bored upper middle class married couple surprised to learn that they are assassins belonging to competing agencies, and that they have been assigned to kill each other.” An on-again off-again duo, just like Vlad and Yevgeny. In the end, and regardless of good/bad, you can at least say that they are four people who are really, really good at what they do.
This premium streaming series is going to be awesome, yes?
And the kicker… everyone is invested in the award winning first season, mid season break for season 2 and the headline actors hold out for more money and then the series goes to a new obscure streaming service and we don’t know how it finishes
What is most hilarious is the notion that this is a geopolitical thing. I’d say it’s mostly a familgia thing at this point. Prigozhin spelled it out – the premise for Putin’s war in Ukraine is based on bullshit. They eat their own in the end so pay attention.
Yes. And, as Rayne notes one comment above, the streaming series is going to be awesome; this is great drama. Succession meets The OK Corral?
Oh, that and Chernobyl, with so much less heroism. All the late Soviet cultural factors which led to that disaster are still present.
Sorry I don’t get it.
Current events with strong dramatic elements often become the direct subject of or fodder for streaming series and movies.
bloopie2 offered two examples of very popular drama series in which a toxic family is central (Succession on HBO) and an armed showdown is climactic (I think bloopie2 really meant the 1993 movie Tombstone which was based on the gunfight at the O.K. Corral), both of which contain elements we can see in the current Russian political conflict.
So you gave up. We can find cynics anywhere. Never thought I’d find them here.
What in the living hell are you barking about? Don’t shout at the moon on this blog. Ever.
I’m sorry, where the fuck did you come from? At light speed, you are establishing yourself as an irritant. We already had enough of that, and do not need more.
And, if you get gone, don’t let the door hit you in the ass.
An irritant? I’ve been a follower here for years.
Sorry if I came out and said something. What did you think bmaz? lol
Seems a bit soon for this but tensions are high as are the stakes.
nadin brzezinski @[email protected]
A car exploded in Moscow…hmm.
https://t.me/nexta_live/55558
NEXTA Live
⚡️⚡️ Мощный взрыв машины в Москве Подробности скоро. @nexta_live
Telegram
Jun 25, 2023, 19:34
Posted on Mastodon; embedded link is at Telegram, use with all due caution.
Historians have been warning, and how this war could likely end.
I’d been wondering if was about $$.
Why sign everything over for free? Has Wagner been doing this all gratis? It kinda looked to me like someone wanted to get paid. But now they’re moving to Belarus, is it possible contract services ended from Russia are now being paid for by Belarus? Lukashenko and supporters are probably happy to have guard that will take orders and do things local military won’t do.
[Thanks for updating your username from “Pick2” to meet the 8 letter minimum. /~Rayne]
Wagner is paid. This is not a question of payment.
You see Prigs? Cut from the same cloth as Putin.
He talks the same talk of old but Putin rose above that shit years ago while Prigs still sees it’s advantage, alludes to ‘elites’ – Putin now among them. What we’ve witnessed is akin to mob family quarrels.
Mob family disagreements can certainly be about money. I wonder how we can know who has paid (or is refusing to pay) Wagner for what, and what his accounts payable/receivable look like. When Prigozhin claimed his guys, all “getting bombed from the rear” it sounded like a rather ugly way to say a deal had gone sour by someone who also wants his piece. Walk thru that very danger to confront the customer? Why let up the bombing and let them pass? A simple talk over tea and an amicable deal reached later on and everyone goes home? Paychecks. I know I’ve had a contractor or 2 try to duck the phone calls when payment came due. Sometimes it’s the embarrassment of the situation, in the end, that causes someone to pay up.
That would be a reasonable assessment in our world, but we are actually discussing a very different world.
I think someone on the last thread (or maybe had linked to it) mentioned that the other way to view the raid in St Petersburg at Prigozhin’s residence as evidence of payment. Cash and gold is the payment, white powder is the “handcuffs” but also payment.
What if it is all a ruse to get Belarus/Lukenshenko to accept Prighozin/Wagner into their country under reasonable circumstances and helping Putin. lol. Arguably, Putin now has his chef cooking inside Belarus where who knows what kinds of things he may cause.
What if it’s all an operation?
It all smells too good to be true for me!
We’ll know if / when:
A. Belarus -> Ukraine
B. ????
I would disagree with your speculation. I think Prigs is dead man walking.
Here is what Ruth Ben Ghiat has to say about the situation: https://twitter.com/ruthbenghiat/status/1672982515097763850
“Hello to all – in case it got lost in the shuffle yesterday, I’ll repeat my point that autocrats don’t pardon people who have staged uprisings against them, esp. autocrats who have been killing dozens of elites since war started for one or two critical remarks.”
Prigs not only exposed Putin’s corruption, he laid bare his bullshit premise for invading Ukraine. Prigs said what the ‘West’ has been saying all along and that is an unforgivable sin.
And your sources for all these comments are? (We don’t know you.)
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
(keep clicking for changes)
To support the emptywheel site, choose the option below that works best for you.
ABOUT | CONTACT | SUPPORT | COMMENT POLICY | PRIVACY POLICY | LOGIN