please post any subsequent updates here unless they’re huge happenings. i just woke up and half our news front page is updates which is nice but also A Lot and most of these don’t have to be their own thread
Well that was… weird.
I saw several alleged videos of russian frontline units pledging their support for Prigozhin. Combine that with how little resistance wagner faced and Putin might have realized how weak his position is and given in to replacing MOD staff. Not a good look the same day he declared Prigozhin a traitor and promised punishment.
Trading the long-term stability for the short-term. Because now every aspiring russian warlord know that if you don’t like something about the state, all you need is just a big enough private army to bully the kremlin, lol.
What a weird outcome. Putin now looks weak and Prigozhin looks stupid for trusting any deal that Putin could make.
I wonder how many russians are actually happy with this outcome. Kremlin loyalist must be depressed, since their leader basically turned into a puppet. And the extreme wagner supporters wanted it to go all the way. So both sides hardcode supporters are now depressed. Some wagner members probably just wanted putin to concede even after his speech so they may be happy. Civilians that support none may be happy that their society didn’t collapse and cities turned to war zones.
Ukrainians are disappointed that the distraction didn’t last a little longer, but none the less content with a weakened Russia.
“Opportunity to return to Africa.”
Yeah, I suppose massacring badly equipped CAR “rebels” (while also guarding their diamond mines) and civilians is a lot more fun than having to fight someone being equipped by the military-industrial complex of the combined West.
Edit: oh and related to how many Russians are happy with this, this Mastodon post had some numbers from a Russian political blogger:
A popular Russian political blogger Tatiana Stanovaya ran a poll on her Telegram earlier today, asking: “how do you feel about the current situation”
Votes:
- 12% supporting Prigozhin
- 48% “let them fight, there are no heroes here”
- 29% “this is a catastrophe, I’m scared”
- 8% against the coup
- 3% “give power to the people”
The numbers will be skewed due to the audience, but still interesting>
Just had a thought, what if Putin has taken Prigozhin’s family hostage and pretending to take the deal is just a play for time while they rescue them? It would be a great movie plot.
What if the Ukrainians paid Wagner to do this to cause a distraction? That would be pretty crazy too!
I mean, what would Wagner do once they reach Moscow? Sit at Putins desk and start giving orders? No one would listen, they’d all still take orders from Putin sitting in St Petersburg or just quit an go home and wait it out.
I don’t know why anyone is taking any of this seriously. For all we know, this was done to lure Ukraine into following them into Russia to fall into a set trap, or theater or withdraw and resupply without looking weak. It is odd that it looks like Putin had weakness, but they can always say that’s what it was later and the propaganda will work like it always does.
Do you really think Ukraine has an interest in following them into Russia? If I was them I would just want to take back Ukraine and secure the borders.
It would be weird to shoot down friendly helicopters and launch cruise missiles at friendly formations just to make a big feint.
Ukraine just needs to take the land bridge to Crimea, I don’t see they have any incentive to go inwards towards Russia.
Do we know for certain that any of that happened though? Because I haven’t seen any video of actual engagement between Wagner and Russia.
Trying to constantly remind myself that none of us are immune to propaganda, and that it would be really easy for this scenario to be misrepresented as a clean-sweep against the Russian military. Wagner’s def gonna cause serious problems but I’d frankly be shocked if this ended with a successful coup or any meaningful change
Even if they win, this dude is a literal war monger fascist. Not better or worse than Putin.
Actually Prigozhin is arguably waaayyyy worse. Putin is a ruthless warlord just like Prigozhin, yes. They have equally virulent ideologies, yep.
But Putin is a politician first and Prigozhin is 100% not. Say what you want of Putin but deep down he still gives a shit about projecting certain images of control, law, etc – he still values the opinion of certain international communities. He is still the leader of a government, not just a battalion or an army.
Prigozhin doesn’t give a shit about any of that, he is a simple and ruthless warlord without any pretense of governance at all, who only understands force and who has no qualms about being open in his toxic ideologies.
I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely Prigozhin actually accomplishes any of his own goals towards Russia because he isn’t a politician and he’s just a thug, but I also think it’s equally unlikely Putin’s Russia recovers from this. Wagner was Putin’s pitbull. They were virtually the entirety of professional real soldiers Russia had under its command. No more pit bull changes things dramatically. We can easily expect a social “downgrade” of Russia’s status as superpower in the eyes of other nations. That leaves some big doors open for China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and of course, the United States.
We may be on the cusp of a second break up of the USSR, further breaking Russia down into disparate nationstates. That possibility offers a lot of problems on its own. It’s no longer a question of “rogue warlord gains control of russian nukes”, now its “russian nukes don’t exist, now those nukes belong to 15 new whatever-istan nations, each without any pre-existing relationships or treaties”. That’s scarier. Doubly so because in that big muck of former Russian states, Wagner could still be around in the middle of it with the biggest dick on the block. He’d predictably go Atilla, march through every one of them and conscript every dude over 16 to fight. And history tells us over and over just how those situations end: global-scale wars. Conqueror types never stop, they just keep conquering until they get stopped.
Just to add to this, a Prigozhin government would likely be far worse for Ukraine. While Putin had few qualms brutalizing civilians and committing war crimes Prigozhin has none. He’s a ruthless, murderous thug. The best outcome would be that he is defeated by the Russian military but that they have to withdraw troops from Ukraine, allowing the Ukrainians to seize the initiative with their offensive. The worst outcomes don’t bear thinking about.
How do you know all this about him? I’ve never heard of this guy until 5 minutes ago and am very curious.
Edit: 2022 corrupt person of the year… Great.
I think you’re mistaken, it is Putin who is the warmongering conqueror here, not Prigozhin.
I have such mixed feelings. Happy that there is visible weakness in Putin’s power, which could maybe lead to his eventual removal from power which would be amazing. Very frightening though that the ones replacing him might have the same goals as Putin, except this time, actually be competent at their jobs. That’s a horrible outlook for Ukraine. Oh man…
The guy has gone on the record stating that he thinks the war in Ukraine was not justified and was done simply to please the defense ministry. Who knows what he would get into as a leader, but at least with him in charge Ukraine should be less worried.
2021: “The Russian Empire has the second strongest army in the world.”
2022: “The Russian Empire has the second strongest army in Ukraine.”
2023: “The Russian Empire has the second strongest army in Russia.”
Beau has three videos out on it already. He’s really good for context on military things.
Does he have a military background or something? Why is he more of an expert on this topic?
He is intentionally vague in his videos, but he has worked with the military in some capacity as a civilian before, and he still has a lot of contacts in the military. Mostly though, I personally trust him more than most because I’ve been watching him for years and he usually turns out to be correct. He’s also pretty level headed and willing to admit what he doesn’t know.
I’ve not done a deep dive into his background, since he’s clearly been in journalism for a long time with the choice of tangents he goes off on and presumed questions he addresses. I needed only one video to know he was becoming part of my daily news diet. If he does not have a military background in some way, I would be surprised.
His real name is Justin King, and his background is… checkered at best. His politics on screen are solid but he also has prior convictions for human trafficking. These are things you can look up. So I take everything around him with a grain of salt.
For context: I’m Estonian. Our nation has a great deal of history with Russian imperialism, under both tsarist and soviet rules. Even Putin has threatened us before. So clearly I’m not a supporter of the Russian regime or their imperialistic ambitions. However, I’m going to present an unpopular opinion.
The balkanization of Russia, if it were to happen, would not be beneficial in the long run. At least not for the people at large.
Yes, the big western cities would be a lot more liberal and open to democracy than the vast countryside. However, we need to consider the fact that different Russian oblasts have VAST differences in economic power. The big cities will thrive on their own, sure, but their tax money would then no longer be used to help people in the more remote regions. Not that these regions are getting a lot of attention now, but at least under a different regime for the current Russian nation as it is, it’d be possible to improve infrastructure, education, industry, etc. for towns in remote oblasts.
And leaving those people farther and farther behind, will cause new unrests. And definitely there would be military dictatorships who promise better lives, etc.
Therefore, a division of Russia into small states might actually cause more issues in the long run. Not that I’m a fan of it staying intact either.
It’s a choice between two evils of unknown magnitude, the only good thing is that none of us are the ones making that choice so we don’t have to live with it on our consciences.
To me, the larger issue for the world outside of Russia is the ensuing chaos would be pretty scary when there are nukes sitting around. All it would take is one bad actor to get ahold of those for bad things to happen. I don’t think it’s likely and I can’t currently see the motivations for using nukes on any other nations apart from Russia itself and Ukraine, but chaos is chaos and many would consider the evil we know to be safer than whatever else lurks around the corner.
Personally, though, despite being aware of this it would regardless please me so much to see Putin fall. I would especially love to see Russia democratize more, but I’m afraid that’s probably a pipe dream anytime soon. Uncontrolled chaos generally doesn’t lend itself to more democracy.
Counterpoint: Smaller oblasts may be better suited to deal with corruption and accept foreign aid
Having some of these countries turn into democracies is better than having none of these countries turn into democracies. Large countries like Russia cannot cohesively rule over its populace without establishing some sort of dictatorship. Democracy in Russia didn’t last because there were too many rich oligarchs corrupting government power back to a form they could control. China is in the same category.
If they have any hope to establish and maintain a democracy, the country must be broken up.
Nice theory but it doesn’t hold up very well. Both Canada and Australia are enormous countries that are both well functioning democracies.
There are a number of great sources that describe the conditions for good democracies - and intolerance of corruption is a vital condition. That’s something that has never really been taken seriously in Russia, so in some ways it’s no surprise it’s come to this.
India is also an example of a very corrupt and badly managed democracy, so your point is moot.
The reality as far as we’ve seen is that certain cultures where information is tightly controlled, traditional masculinity is prized, and sole survivor mentality among men is very valued, there tends to be more of an acceptance if not casual support for the simplicity of a dictatorship.
The other issue is that not all democracies are equal and an educated and experienced populace where individuals are most capable of taking care of themselves while providing maximum utility for themselves and others is where democracy is most likely to be of greatest compliment for a system.
About 90% of Canada lives 100 miles from the southern border, so I wouldn’t call the whole country “populated”. Australia is in a similar situation with its deserts. Sure, Russia also has cold, sparsely populated regions, but most of the landmass is still habitable.
Even then, Russia is still twice as large as both of those countries, and has at least double the population density.
It might cause more issues in those states but wouldn’t each of them be weaker? I don’t know how to fix Russia, but if it can’t be fixed I’d rather they not be strong enough to attack other countries.
Depends on whether they’ll manage to get control of the nukes. They’re likely stashed all around the nation, but the question is how difficult it would be to gain launch capability, since the existing infrastructure would likely not be usable by local militaries.
We’re also talking about the potential suffering of millions of people.
Chances are decent that the nukes don’t work any more, so that may not be a threat at all.
I’m still reluctant to put that hypothesis to the test, though, for obvious reasons…
If the local economies fail to sustain and source advanced material and components needed for the infrastructure, it might end up not being a big problem.
I imagine the nations would end up falling under the control of other nations, such as China, who does not desire nuclear war.
But yes, it would very much still be a humanitarian nightmare for those places.
I doubt anyone would seriously want to fire a nuke even if the country fell into a civil war.
It’s more of a saying or sentiment so to speak - that the system could be nuked and people would perhaps arguably be better off to reform from scratch, with the knowledge of hindsight rather than with the current difficulties.
The big cities will thrive on their own, sure, but their tax money would then no longer be used to help people in the more remote regions.
As an Australian, I assure you it is possible for a country of “big cities” to fund activity in remote areas. I won’t say we do it a perfect job of it here, but we do a decent enuogh job and some of our remote towns are far more remote than anything in the northern hemisphere. Some Australian towns are several hours by airplane to the nearest city and don’t even have a reliable source of water. And yet, the people living there have relatively comfortable lives.
I think what most of those warmongers will say that they have wanted to sing all along, after all this is not Eurasian Nazism per say, but a strong unified “Eurasian” or Cyrillic federation that can provide an economic and cultural alternative to the EU which currently heavily favours Germany and France - but hey man, I could be wrong, it could just be good old familicide after all
