Some key takeaways :
The Kremlin struggled to cohere an effective rapid response to Wagner’s advances, highlighting internal security weaknesses likely due to surprise and the impact of heavy losses in Ukraine.
Putin unsurprisingly elected to back the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and its ongoing efforts to centralize control of Russian irregular forces (including Wagner) over Prigozhin.
The Lukashenko-brokered agreement will very likely eliminate Wagner Group as a Prigozhin-led independent actor in its current form, although elements of the organization may endure under existing and new capacities.
Prigozhin likely gambled that his only avenue to retain Wagner Group as an independent force was to march against the Russian MoD, likely intending to secure defections in the Russian military but overestimating his own prospects.
The optics of Belarusian President Lukashenko playing a direct role in halting a military advance on Moscow are humiliating to Putin and may have secured Lukashenko other benefits.
The Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable equilibrium. The Lukashenko-negotiated deal is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution, and Prigozhin’s rebellion exposed severe weaknesses in the Kremlin and Russian MoD.
It’s hard to say what he was thinking to be honest. I can’t imagine why he’d think Putin would support him, or what he was really aiming to achieve. The whole thing seems incoherent.
The whole operation does have an air of incompetence around it. Either coup or don’t coup, don’t half-ass it. The guy seems like a loose cannon, and I’m surprised that they’re essentially going to let him go. Maybe they’re just happy to have him out of the way.
I’d argue that’s how you know the CIA wasn’t involved. They’re better at coups than this.
It would be surprising if they didn’t have an idea that this would happen given that even US agencies now claim to have been expecting it. One possibility is that it was allowed to happen in order to ferret out people who would support the coup. Prigozhin was likely let go in order to get the wagner troops to stand down, they figured they’d rather avoid bloodshed than go after him right now.
Meanwhile, CIA has bungled plenty of coups in its time. They couldn’t even get a coup in Belarus going, what chance would they have in Russia.
The West doesn’t actually want a destabilized Russian Federation. Could you imagine a rabid dog like Prigozhin in possession of nuclear weapons?
In terms of US agencies expecting it, yeah anyone following exploits of Prigozhin could see there was a probability of something like this happening. It was only somewhat surprising, but a scenario that’s been considered.
I think the stance on Putin and the Russian Federation is like Batman’s stance on Ra’s al Ghul. “I’m not going to kill you, but I don’t have to save you either.”
A coup on Putin may result in the collapse of the Russian Federation just as the coup on Gorbachev resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union. While a collapse of the Russian Federation isn’t really in the best interests of the West (because keeping nukes under one roof is preferable) at this point Putin is proliferating nukes to Belarus, and it seems Russia is just behaving in a self destructive way in general. We’re at a point where trying to prop up the Russian Federation for the sake of nuclear security may not be worth it anymore. It may not even be possible.
At any rate It’s very doubtful the CIA or any other Western intelligence agency had a hand in this. Ukrainian intelligence is possible. Given Ukraine is under threat of nuclear attack anyway, the’ye more willing to gamble. If this were the case Western intelligence probably were aware and just let it happen.
