I didn’t want to hijacker’s the other threads on this aspect. The idea seems to be that since Prigozhin is further to the right than Putin, he might be even more brutal in Ukraine. We know what he’s already done, but on the other hand, he hasn’t actually been in charge. The comparison I’m considering is the US against Afghanistan and Iraq. Trump was clearly to the right of Bush Jr., but from the perspective of the ordinary Afghani or Iraqi, they were better off with Trump. Could it be that in a potential future Russia led by far right hardliners (the Russian versions of Trump / MTG / Boebert / etc. rather than the Russian Bush Jr. / Cheney / McCain etc.) that Ukraine would be better off with the far right leaders, or is this line of thinking hopelessly naive?
Moderating:
To all: this thread is not an invite to talk about Trump & Bush and which is further to the Right. That is just a comparison for setting up the debate.
In the very (very) unlikely event Prigozhin somehow manages to install himself in the Kremlin, he will be extremely busy for the next few weeks and months solidifying his position and eliminating opposition. Whatever he might want to do in Ukraine would necessarily emerge at the other end of that process and would likely be informed by it.
My take is we really don’t know. Ideally a more Western Friendly government or at least more peace loving government that wants to take care of its own people will emerge after Putin is weakened by Prigozhin.
They will extract themselves from Ukraine and work hard to swiftly rejoin the normal world.
That’s my take on in. Prigozhin is not a nice person at the best of times. Were we to do a simple one-for-one swap with him and Putin, Prigozhin would be even harder on the nationalism front.
But it won’t be a simple swap. Prigozhin would have to consolidate his power, and deal with all the damage his current coup/civil war does to the structure of the Russian state, both physical and political. And he’s stuck trying to do that with a Russia that is already weakened by more than a year of a losing war, and the economic sanctions.
Him winning will be better for Ukraine than him losing, but only because that means Russia is just than much more messed up. It will give Ukraine more time to re-take lost territory, and to build up defenses against the eventual next Russian attempt to take Ukraine.
I don’t think that more to the right or more to the left are useful categories in RuZZian politics: we are talking about thugs that will do anything to remain in / gain power, because otherwise they fear falling out of windows or worse. They do not have an overarching political theory apart from wanton violence and crude fascism. They all utter some hollow phrases, yes, and “love of the Fatherland” and respect blah blah blah, but their political ideas are as deep and complex as MAGA, that is: not at all.
As to whether Putler or Prigozhin in command will be worse for Ukraine, it is hard to say. Whatever keeps the infighting within RuZZia is good for the rest of the world until the loser of the infight uses a WMD, then all hell can break lose.
Right. But at some point nationalism moves so far to the right that it becomes more about “the leaders need to work on relieving the suffering of us ordinary people” rather than “let’s go kick some foreigner ass”. That’s what I’m trying to get at. Could the current far right Russian nationalism reach that point?
Yes, this is the biggest concern now. Putin can’t use nukes in Ukraine, because that will certainly bring about a NATO response. But he could nuke Rostov-on-Don. That would be nasty, but survivable for Russia and the rest of the world.
At this point, Prigozhin and Wagner are committed: they have to take Moscow, and do it before Putin uses a nuke. Moscow is the one city Putin can’t nuke, because, even if Putin isn’t in Moscow right now, he needs the established bureaucracies to maintain day-to-day control over the rest of Russia. Lose that, and the country falls apart, with local leaders scrambling to replace the systems that used to be controlled from Moscow.
Someone might, in a few decades, re-forge the Russian state from that mess, but it wouldn’t be Putin.
I think that Prigozhin would be a worse leader overall, and especially for Russians. But I also think that he’s going to be eager for scapegoats, and will want to blame everything on the Old Bosses and their disastrously stupid war, which means that he’s likely to pull out of Ukraine. So better for Ukraine, at least in the short term.
I think that in the short term, Prigozhin is better for Ukraine. He has been very critical of the war and its execution and would likely look for a settlement to give him time to consolidate power and end economic sanctions. Whether he would be better for the region and the world in the long term is hard to see. Russia’s brain drain continues and will surely pick up speed, an unstable Russia is bad for everyone,
General Piggy would absolutely be better for Ukraine. Unlike Putin, a man who’s never tasted a day of combat in his life, Prigozhin has been in Ukraine firsthand and has no enthusiasm or reason to continue what he can accurately see is a totally failed and botched adventure.
I think the last 3 posters have pretty well outlined my POV.
If Prigo has any understanding of the actual situation in Ukraine, he’d want to withdraw, and unlike Putin, if he gained power he could withdraw without losing face (can simply blame Putin and say Putin’s incompetence meant they have to withdraw and regroup). Maybe he’d say he’ll come back later, but if Ukraine can retake all of their territory, then they can join NATO, which would preclude any further invasion.
Prigozhin fighting Shoigu and Putin is definitely for the better for Ukraine. Prigozhin actually taking power is IMO wayyyy too much of a wildcard to classify it as being better for Ukraine, it could just as easily turn out for the worse. A lot of Prigozhin’s beef with the Russian high command is over their incompetence in carrying out the war special military operation, and a lot of his supporters in the RuZZian social media sphere are of the ever more extreme nationalist sort than those already in power. If Prigozhin were to magically be in fully consolidated control of Russia tomorrow, he might be more favorable to a negotiated settlement, though that has a lot of caveats to it. He might also do what Putin has been unwilling or unable to at this point and actually enact a full mobilization of Russia rather than the half-assed partial mobilization calling up ~300,000 men that Putin has done.
Regarding the possibility of a negotiated settlement and its caveats, what Russia might find palatable under different leadership than Putin and what Ukraine would accept are worlds apart at the moment. A simple return to the status quo ante bellum by returning to the borders pre-Feb 24, 2022, wouldn’t be acceptable to Ukraine. They want the Donbas and Crimea back, not just the ejection of Russia from what it has occupied in the current war.
I’d also point out the irony of Wagner taking control of Russia being the outcome of a war special military operation with the goal of de-Nazifying Ukraine. Let’s not forget it’s neo-Nazi origins.
His most recent Telegrams have also stated, though, that the premise of the war was false, and Ukraine (and NATO) wasn’t going to attack Russia. Whether he believes that or not, I have no idea, but having said it, he’d kind of be committed to ending the war.
Oh, that irony has been present right from Day 1.
Maybe. He could be saying that to appeal to the rank and file of the Russian army disillusioned with the war to appeal to them to not resist his march on Moscow if not join him in it. It’s frankly astounding that he’s been able to walk right into Rostov and then road march north to Voronezh in a day with almost no resistance.
As I said, a lot of his support in RuZZian social media comes from extreme nationalist who feel the problem is that Russia hasn’t been prosecuting the war harshly enough. Whether he actually believes the war was started on false premises or not, any commitment on his part to ending the war runs into the problem of Russian and Ukrainian negotiating positions being incompatible at this point. Even if Prigozhin’s potential negotiating position abandons the illegal annexation of the four Ukrainian Oblasts that they don’t even fully control into Russia, Russia - even under such a Prigozhin - agreeing to return the Donbas and Crimea to Ukraine is as much a non-starter as Ukraine agreeing to surrender those four oblasts to Russia.