If you’re the average Russian soldier and you bump into some Wagner guys after this, will that affect morale? “Hey, those are the guys who left the fight and tried to attack Moscow!” I’d give money to know their thoughts. Anger? Envy?
I’ve got to believe Putin is deeply concerned by the reception Prigozhin received in Rostov on Don. The Guardian (and other news sources) report he was treated like a rock star.
Prigozhin’s rockstar exit from Rostov shows public support for ‘traitor’ | Russia | The Guardian
What if Belisarius had been a mercenary general?
So is he a rock star because they want someone to win the war or because he wanted to stop Putin and end the war.
Trying to make sense of this, I had a weird thought: What if this was all a setup to drag Belarus into the war? If Putin had just sent Wagner to overthrow Lukashenko, he could have prepared and it would have been a mess. Instead, Progozhin pretends to feud with Putin, a crisis starts, then Putin suggests to Lukashenko that he can be a big hero and stop the crisis by giving Progozhin and his men (assuming the ones that followed him to Rostov are allowed to go), and Prigozhin gets into Belarus with no one suspecting.
If Lukashenko suddenly falls ‘ill’ and Prigozhin takes over, that will be telling.
I think this is a longshot and not likely, but at least it would explain the past two days’ events.
It’s a crazy hypothesis, but then, at this point, everything is a crazy hypothesis.
Putin lost some serious assets so I don’t think this is the case. And he could have just sent The Wagner group up North so he didn’t need the subterfuge.
It was not a setup. It has made Putin look pathetic and weak and has probably cost him Shoigu who is one of his most trusted underlings. I don’t think anything has been heard from either Shoigu or Gerasimov since this started. There is absolutely zero possibility that this is 4D chess by Putin. 1) Russia under Putin would never be able to pull an operation like that off, and 2) Putin would never be willing to pay the price in terms of reputational damage just to get Belarus into the fight, and 3) the primary reason Belarus isn’t in the fight already is that Lukashenko doesn’t have enough authority over his own army to get them to fight Ukraine. My understanding is that the Belarusian army is well aware of their capabilities relative to the Ukrainians, wants no part in this fight, and will mutiny if commanded to join the Russians. But despite being a 4th rate army, it’s capable enough that Putin would never risk effectively bringing it into the war against him. He doesn’t have enough combat capacity as it is, let alone to open another front.
That said, it is remotely possible that it’s 4D chess by someone else who wants to undermine Putin and replace him with someone more effective and more willing to take risks to win this war. That someone would presumably have to be pretty high up in the GRU.
https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1673171204209795072
This account doesn’t have a superb reputation for reliability, but won’t have made up the quoted Russian social media quotes. That does leave open the possibility that his sources are making shit up.
Nonetheless, this nicely illustrates one aspect of Putin’s Russia. Any member of the elite can be disposed of at any time, because being a member of the elite requires that one engage in the corruption that is endemic to the system, thereby exposing oneself to prosecution should it suit the purposes of the Tsar.
I kind of doubt that Putin is getting rid of Shoigu due to Prigozhin’s demands. Rather, because Putin is pissed off that Shoigu didn’t prevent the weekend’s events from happening making Putin look weak and worse making Putin afraid. I’m not sure if Putin actually cares about looking weak, but we know he’s super paranoid about his own safety, and he won’t have had a comfortable weekend in that regard.
Back in May, I said that Prigozhin’s rhetoric only made sense if he was trying to lay foundations for a coup. Otherwise, he was just painting a target on himself. I still think that was the case, and that this was not a fake attempt–the fact that Putin fled Moscow clinches that for me. Had it been a fake, he would have stayed in place and played strongman.
As to how it played out, I’ve tried to put together a narrative that makes sense to me:
In May, Prigozhin began the public phase of his campagin to undermine the MoD and Putin. His public messages were designed to portray the top brass as wasting soldiers’ lives and position himself as the champion of the ordinary soldier, with the aim of turning army regulars against the brass. June 11-16 saw escalations, with the MOD attempting to co-opt Wagner soldiers and reports of violence between Russian regular forces and Wagner. Things simmered at this level for about a week.
Now we get into more speculative territory. On or just before June 23, something made Prigozhin decide he was out of time for stoking anti-MOD sentiment. Either he saw a window of opportunity, or he got a push–maybe an assassination attempt on him or an open attack on his forces–that told him he had to jump. He turned his troops toward Russia.
The push toward Moscow, combined with his rhetoric, leads me to think Prigozhin hoped to capture Putin alive to use as a puppet, at least for a while. He managed to get most of the regular military inside of Russia to stand down, and my guess is that he was in contact with someone high in the Rosgvardiya, trying to get them to stand aside, or even hand Putin over. When he got word that Putin had fled the city, he knew that had fallen through, and without control over Putin, he was in danger of Putin and the MOD rallying a bigger force against him than he can survive.
He reassessed, and he decided the operation no longer had a chance. However, his force was in a position to cause a lot of damage and require the withdrawal of units from the Ukraine front to eliminate them. Leveraging that, he managed to extract terms that kept him alive (at least in the near term). Removal of some of his opponents in the MOD seems like a bonus, but I don’t think that was for his benefit.
And I’ll join the chorus saying that we haven’t heard the last of this.
Russia didn’t stop being a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma just because they aren’t Commie any more.
No need for an assassination threat - he was up against a deadline. Around June 10th or 11th the MoD with Putin’s verbal backing ordered every Wagner merc to sign a contract directly with them by July 1rst, which would have put archenemy Shoigu at the administrative head of Prigozhin’s private army. It was less a shot across the brow than it was a full-on political assault. Prigozhin had already been accused of fomenting a coup in May, so this was probably the final stage of an escalating behind-the-scenes covert war. Which may well still be ongoing.
Prigozhin refused to accept that order, began ratcheting up his rhetoric and preparing to rebel. Per the NYT US intelligence was onto him before he began his move, so he was absolutely prepping for it.
Yes, I mentioned that in my post. I was just tossing out examples of things that could have pushed him to move at a specific time, rather than trying to cook his scheme a little longer. As I said, it may have just been his window of opportunity–if he knew that the MOD was about to start moving troops into place to enforce the order at gunpoint, that window was about to close, so he had to act. If they weren’t, then the order was toothless, and he could have milked it for his rhetorical campaign for a while. I’m sure he would have liked more time.
Weirdly, I somehow missed that. Apologies 
.
Well, I did throw an awful wall of text at you. Brevity is not my gift.
Russian state news agency TASS:
- Shoigu going about business as usual
- the criminal case for mutiny against Prigozhin continues
The headlines yesterday were variations of “Putin weak” and “Putin humiliated.” I’d suggest that this aborted rebellion could just as easily be a mere bump in the road for Putin. He doesn’t need to be omnipotent to stay in power; he just needs to be stronger than his potential rivals. And whatever he said to Prigozhin, it worked.
https://twitter.com/TelegraphWorld/status/1673071205803347971
Could be true, although I believe that Wagner’s leaders are all psychopaths.
Kakhovka Reservoir today:
