"The 1980's are calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

If I were to guess the attempt to blame the generals over putin was merely a ploy to sew discord between Putin and his generals. Wagner is obviously going for control so why not see if you could get them to turn on Putin by giving him an opportunity to throw them under the bus to save his ass. Yes, it would be a long shot but if the generals don't it solidifies them with the brutal power structure that was abusing russian troops for oligarch's gain. It is a bit of a win win. Either Putin gets knocked off and you get handed the command by his troops who would stand down the military, or the military stands down on it's own because they see their salvation in Wagner who is trying to save them from their abusers.

When this first came through last night I first thought it was a bit of maskirovka - having Wagner "take over" something that had theoretical control of nukes, but in practice needed various things to launch, and provide Russia deniability when somewhere in Ukraine went radioactive in an effort to get out of the war on terms beneficial to them. I mean, would anyone be too shocked if Russia confessed that it turned out a three year old could start WW3 had they access to the right panels? At this point Russian incompetence is genuinely plausible.

Thankfully, turns out that Putin was just about stupid enough to think Prigozhin wouldn't do anything before the July 1st deadline, other than moan on Telegram, despite Wagner coming under Shoigu being a death sentence for him.

Prigozhin obviously feels its better to chuck the dice and possibly die with his boots on, rather than via defenestration or a drink related incident.

And it says everything that both Putin and Prigozhin are avoiding directly naming each other. If Wagner succeeds in taking out Shoigu, Gerasimov and their support, why Putin had faith in him all along, he was playing his part in Prigozhin removing a danger close to home. Wagner fails, and well, they were traitors who were killed.

Only direct risk to Putin is if Prigozhin takes him out too, which may be why he has apparently gone back to his compound. If Wagner succeeds, then maybe he can negotiate to retain his position, if not his power.

More hedging than Wall Street.

It's a little like a live action Game of Thrones, only there's not a single protagonist you'd like to see still breathing, let alone on a throne, by the end.

The cherry on the cake would be is if Prigozhin already had Kadyrov onboard, and this was just so they can be there to televise the revolution on TikTok without arousing suspicion.

Hopefully said cover is about as useful as the "cope cages" are.

Prighozin is certainly absolute shit, but one thing is that if he wins and either controls Putin or displaces him and takes over, he'll have a harder time prosecuting the war in Ukraine now that he has broken into Russian television to tell the Russian people that the war in Ukraine was entirely based on a lie and done only for the advantage of the elites.

Of course, it's Russia, and they roll over for dictators, but between that and Prighozin having to cement his rule I think that's the far better of the two outcomes.

Russian milblogger stating that a Wagner column of '150 to 400' vehicles was 350 KM south of Moscow - 3 hours ago.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1672583666935971842

I'm not sure Prigozhin would be interested in the war, indeed most war*, probably want to keep Crimea, but divvying up Africa with China would be far more lucrative.

Plenty of Big Men in Africa that can negotiated with, where they'd use Wagner/Russia to maintain rule and guard all the various assets, China to do all the infrastructure.

Lots of money, lots of grift, lots of rape, little consequence.

If you're Prigozhin, what's not to like?

Edit: Also, if you're a UK or EU government, what's not to like. Wagner would "handle" the refugee situation in exchange for them looking in other directions.

*apart from Ukraine, Wagner also got a taste of what the US can do to them in Syria. Their complete eradication wasn't as quick as a Q or Thanos fingersnap, but close. Safer to bully than fight with the bigger boys.

This is a good channel. A Russian group of Gen Zers have a youtube channel that takes questions from the Western audience and asks Russians on the street how they feel. It also shows the distinct generation divide in Russia. The kids generally know what is going on, the older people are either totally propagandized or got old because they don't say things Putin doesn't want to hear.

Random Factoid:

The Pentagon has spent 5.6% of its annual budget on Ukrainian military assistance.

Which amounts to about $2T, right?

Very early but there are reports that Prigozhin has reached a deal with Putin and said he is going to return his troops to their field bases.

Really hope not. Putin with nukes is bad. I don’t know if Prigozhin would be worse, but I’m sure Kadyrov with nukes would be.

If this does fizzle out like that, he'll want to steer away from tall buildings for a long time.

Listening to pro-Russian analysts if this is accurate what to look for is whether Wagner pulls out of Rostov and/or do changes happen at the MOD, specifically Shoigu and Gerasimov.

Gah.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-66006142

If I had to pin a psyop on this, it would be convincing Ukraine that they might have a chance at striking at Moscow directly, given how easy Wagner found their advance, thus luring them into an assault that would 1) be crushed, 2) would lose them international support and 3) would give Russia an excuse for going all-out.

But I think it's just as likely this is a lover's quarrel.

I have a hard time understanding how he thinks he'll walk away from this one. Either he's really smart and has an opening somewhere else, or he's stupid as hell. At the moment, we don't have any reason to think it isn't the later.

Long term Putin can't let this happen without consequences.

The only thing I can think of that makes sense is if we see Shoigu or Gerasimov go down. But even then Prigozhin needs to watch his ass, and he's probably seeing that as a step along the way.

An easy out is that Gerasimov is past the military’s mandatory retirement age and has been given a waiver. Shoigu is a civilian (even though he wears a uniform [poser]) but is Tuvan not ethnic Russian so has no power base so can be easily removed (a large part of why he is where he his).

Goddammit. I just bought $150 worth of popcorn that I'm now going to have to return.

He looks terribly weakened though. To let Prigozhin scuttle back to Ukraine having bagged a load of concessions shows that he's perhaps dependent on Wagner there. The calculation may be that Putin doesn't have a long term.

The world just learned that Russia has literally thrown everything at Ukraine.

There are no reserves.

The MOD couldn’t stop 20k infantry in SUVs from taking Moscow.

Look for Ukraine to get flooded with weapons now that we all know there is no need to hold back for future Russian aggression as the Russian army in Ukraine is THE ENTIRE RUSSIAN ARMY.

Now is the time to eliminate the threat.

The whole world knows for sure now that Putin isn't in charge of his own house. We've seen the king bleed, and that aint good for him.

So many weird moves. Prighozin breaks into Russian TV to say that the war in Ukraine is based on a lie and only serves the elites.

Prighozin says this is about spilling Russian blood - but supposedly this all started with an attack on Wagner group and it appears multiple helos were shot down.

Does he claim his two scalps? If so, what the hell do Shoigu and Gerasimov do? Are they powerless and have to just accept it?

And the Russian military not only has to be dispirited, the entire nation has to be. And what about the Russian military who appeared to have sided with Prighozin?

All sorts of ways this could still go south. If I were a betting man I'd take the odds that the Ukraine war is over by the end of the year and there's been a major reshuffling in Moscow.

Thread is moving fast so you might have missed it:

An easy out is that Gerasimov is past the military’s mandatory retirement age and has been given a waiver. Shoigu is a civilian (even though he wears a uniform [poser]) but is Tuvan not ethnic Russian so has no power base so can be easily removed (a large part of why he is where he his).

Two gangsters squabbling.

You can’t trust Russians to do fucking anything right

Warned for revealing UA's tribal name.

I didn't expect this week to end with another adventure imploding.

I hope so, but pretty much every bobble head in DC has been terrified of escalation since day 1, despite every breach of a Russian red line being met with X is crap and we blew them all up anyway rather than any actual response.

Russia's advertised its weakness fully today, the Belgorod incursions could be written off, this can't.

The fact Putin had to resort to negotiations won't be missed either, and every day Prigozhin lives from now on is a question to Putin's backers and supporters.

Did the military side with Prigozhin, or there was confusion paralysis when they took Rostov, and simply no one else left to fight when they marched on Moscow?