Or, a fart wrapped in a turd inside a cess pit.
Anyone remember the battle of Khasham in Syria, when 500 Assad pro-government soldiers including Wagner mercs attacked a base filled with U.S. soldiers? They attacked with artillery, T-72 and T-80 tanks.
Result: No US casualties. Not even wounded. 100 pro-government fighters, including Wagner Mercs, dead. The attack was completely disrupted and destroyed.
I agree that Wagner is overrated.
The following is 100% my personal guesswork …
Wagner may be a bit like the Pakistani ISI, but more separate.
ISI runs as an independent government within the government. As some countries e.g. China do with the Party as a separate government within the government.
ISI by and large does its own thing using its own people. The upside is the formal government retains plausible (and often actual) deniability for everything ISI does. The bad news is the ISI considers the formal Pakistani government an advisory body at best, not something it reflexively obeys. So the formal government cannot cause or prevent any particular action by ISI; they only influence it at the margins.
I will posit that there is an ISI-like entity inside the Kremlin. Which has Wagner as its public face and its hired muscle. This shadowy entity probably doesn’t formally exist in the public wiring diagrams of the Kremlin. But it is real. Who exactly pulls its strings and how elastic those strings are is a total mystery out here at the level of the US public. Likewise who pays how much of Wagner’s budget from what sources.
I emphasize this is all my personal speculation, not proven fact or even publicly speculated fact by the US punditocracy nor by the US government.
But IMO this particular fowl does make quacking noises from time to time and seems remarkably waterproof.
I think the ISI comparison is interesting, and there is no doubt that the Kremlin uses Wagner in places where it wants deniability around ‘gray’ operations.
Wagner gets a lot of funding from the Kremlin, but it also self-funds by selling mercenary services and protection. Wagner has made a bundle of money in Africa.
My understanding is that the Kremlin lets Prigozhin sell his services to countries where Putin doesn’t want official military action, and in return Wagner gets to keep the foreign profits to fund its operations and pay its leaders. This takes a load off the Kremlin’s military budget. I would assume a kickback to Putin and cronies as well. If you want to stay healthy in a thugocracy, better let the thugs wet their beaks a little.
The problem now is that Progozhin’s bunch are fighting for Russia, not for gold and diamonds, and they are being used as cannon fodder. The only reason Prigozhin is still staying in the game is because he needs Kremlin approval for the real money-making stuff after the war is over.
But if he feels like Wagner’s days are numbered, or that the war will go on long enough that all his people will be dead, well, you might get the behaviour we are seeing now.
Or the importance of air superiority should never be undervalued. In that battle it was pretty much aircraft, drones and artillery pounding the crap out of Wagner et al
Yeah, for sure. Which made the assault doubly stupid. They had no chance, and should have known it. Big failure in command there.
Oh, I’m under no illusions that Wagner is actually competent, by global standards. I just think that they’re more competent than the regular Russian army.
I agree with that. Or rather I’d agree that they WERE more competant than the Russian military. But before Ukraine, estimates were that Wagner had between 1,000 and 5,000 soldiers. If so, they are now mostly convicts and conscripts. Wagner has suffered more than 5,000 losses.
Wagner was made up of tough, battle-hardened mercenaries. Ex-Spetznaz, etc. I’m not sure their leadership was any good at any time, given their tactics in other countries. Now their rank and file is filled with mobiks, and their leadership will be no better than it was. And those mercs and hard men don’t do better than anyone else when lying in a foxhole waiting for a 155mm shell or a drone to find them, which seems to be a common way for Russians to die in Ukraine. Not a lot of house-to-house fighting going on, which is probably where these guys would excel.
Apparently, newly-minted Russian artillery shells have a nasty habit of “self-detonating”.
“Russia’s defense industry is affected by international sanctions. According to available information, large batches of 122mm and 152mm artillery ammunition manufactured in 2023 have been prohibited for use due to its self-detonation. In addition, the provision of the occupiers’ units with weapons and military equipment is deteriorating,” the General Staff said.
Sabotage, factory hacking a la StuxNet, or simple craptacular manufacturing?
NFL Films Presents: You Make The Call.
Probably all of the above. Not to mention the endemic corruption leading to provision of cheap substandard materials for manufacturing, and suborned quality control inspections that ignore obvious flaws.
YES …
Maybe it’s the same with Russian air-defense ammo?
This is interesting: I can’t vouch for the video’s authenticity, but skulls, one in a German WWII Stahlhelm helmet, have reportedly appeared out of the mud as the waters of the Kakhovka Reservoir drained away.
Spoilered for skulls:
Putin should test them himself.
By coincidence I saw the full quote for the first time earlier today:
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
Not sure that last part obtains any more.
The difficult part in any discussion of this sort is what constitutes “national interest” as opposed to the interests of one or a handful of persons who claim to be the nation.
not to, you know, risk going on another pissing-off-What_Exit? derailment
There’s the old saw, “never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity.” Sabotage is hard; skipping quality control because you’re short of money, time, or concern for life/limb is really easy.
Maybe that’s faked, but I’m still laughing.
There has to be some weak spots in the Russian lines. It’s tough fighting.