Russia Watch Thread

[wjfox]

Wagner forces have halted advance on Moscow - reports

Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has agreed to "stop" the movement of his troops who are advancing on the Russian capital, according to a statement carried by the Reuters news agency and attributed to the Belarussian president's office.

We will bring you more updates shortly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-e ... type=share

[weatheriscool]

[raklian]

Wagner forces have halted advance on Moscow - reports

Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has agreed to "stop" the movement of his troops who are advancing on the Russian capital, according to a statement carried by the Reuters news agency and attributed to the Belarussian president's office.

We will bring you more updates shortly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-e ... type=share

I doubt this "agreement" is going to last very long. If Putin wants to save face, he needs to somehow punish Prigozhin but that isn't possible anymore. The tension between the two will be too big to go on without some sort of falling out.

[Xyls]

Lol bad move by Perogi if so, we all know Putin does not honour agreements. He has signed his own death warrant if this is true. As the momentum for the coup will now slow and many people who came to his side will desert him.

[Powers]

Lol bad move by Perogi if so, we all know Putin does not honour agreements. He has signed his own death warrant if this is true. As the momentum for the coup will now slow and many people who came to his side will desert him.

As funkervogt said I think he just wants to flee from Russia and maybe weaken them in the way.

[raklian]

Lol bad move by Perogi if so, we all know Putin does not honour agreements. He has signed his own death warrant if this is true. As the momentum for the coup will now slow and many people who came to his side will desert him.

As funkervogt said I think he just wants to flee from Russia.

After all that he's done, I strongly doubt the Ukrainians will welcome him. He knows that.

[Powers]

Lol bad move by Perogi if so, we all know Putin does not honour agreements. He has signed his own death warrant if this is true. As the momentum for the coup will now slow and many people who came to his side will desert him.

As funkervogt said I think he just wants to flee from Russia.

After all that he's done, I strongly doubt the Ukrainians will welcome him. He knows that.

"The end justifies the means" and I doubt he will stay there for long anyway.

[Cyber_Rebel]

It is in absolutely no one's best interest to support the Wagner Group. While I have no love for Russia, or Putin, a legit far right Fascist/SS style group would be an absolute nightmare geopolitically.

Imagine a Fascist version of Red October, the worst-case scenario if any attempted "Coup" went underway.

I hate Putin too, but always understand there could be scenarios which would be worse.

[firestar464]

Lol bad move by Perogi if so, we all know Putin does not honour agreements. He has signed his own death warrant if this is true. As the momentum for the coup will now slow and many people who came to his side will desert him.

As funkervogt said I think he just wants to flee from Russia.

After all that he's done, I strongly doubt the Ukrainians will welcome him. He knows that.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/be ... 023-06-24/

Dude has apparently been exiled to Belarus.

[Xyls]

Lol Perogi gonna fall out a Belarusian window by the end of the year.

[Powers]

The real question is why he did all this.

[weatheriscool]

The real question is why he did all this.

I was really rooting for him to go and f*ck Putin in the ass and break his neck. I wasn't expecting this. So much for being evil and being dangerous. Turned out to be a coward.

[Ozzie guy]

He might of won.
He made Putin look very weak and supposedly forced the military to change leaders to ones that like him.
He was made to look good by "not spilling Russian blood" after he was supposedly attacked by Russia.

He is now frontrunner for next leader and Putin's time is running out.

[Cyber_Rebel]

Literally all charges for a supposed military coup dropped, those who partook pardoned and won't be prosecuted? The orchestrator "exiled" to Belarus, where tactical nuclear weapons were just sent right before all this, and Lukashenko just so happens to be absent in Turkey?

The idea that this was all some elaborate ruse actually makes more sense than anything else I've heard.

[funkervogt]

Good article:

For Putin, the Wagner mutiny is a self-inflicted wound, the result of his suicidal war against Ukraine. Putin could have chosen to stay on the track of a middle-income economy, with oil and gas exports to Europe guaranteeing enough money to sate his cronies, repress his enemies, and keep the rest of the country quiet, if not happy. Yet the longer he stayed in power, the less interested Putin became in being remembered simply as the leader who stabilized Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was not enough. Putin wanted the legacy of restoring an empire, beginning with Ukraine.

...Under an agreement brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, charges against Prigozhin will be dropped, and he will be allowed safe passage to Belarus. But the deal hardly eliminates the threat that Prigozhin—or someone like him—poses to the Kremlin in the future. It is unclear if we are witnessing the beginning, middle, or end of Putin’s end. What is certain is that it is the final chapter of his rule.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/24/pr ... raine-war/

[funkervogt]

The reasons for the attempted coup and the back-channel talks that led up to and ended it are still murky, but one possibility is that Putin realized Moscow was vulnerable to a Wagner attack, so he paid Prigozhin off. After all, if Putin were a true iron man, he would not have negotiated with a traitor and would have instead used the Red Army to crush Wagner and to make an example of it before the world.

Russia's military is stretched so thin thanks to the Ukraine War and the attendant equipment losses that it can't reliably defend Moscow anymore. The May attacks by anti-Putin Russian units from Ukraine into the Belgorod area also highlighted the same problem.

Also, note that videos from Rostov-on-Don show average citizens helping the Wagner troops when they arrived, and then cheering them as heroes a few hours ago when they left the city.

The cracks in Putin's regime are showing.

[raklian]

The reasons for the attempted coup and the back-channel talks that led up to and ended it are still murky, but one possibility is that Putin realized Moscow was vulnerable to a Wagner attack, so he paid Prigozhin off. After all, if Putin were a true iron man, he would not have negotiated with a traitor and would have instead used the Red Army to crush Wagner and to make an example of it before the world.

Russia's military is stretched so thin thanks to the Ukraine War and the attendant equipment losses that it can't reliably defend Moscow anymore. The May attacks by anti-Putin Russian units from Ukraine into the Belgorod area also highlighted the same problem.

Also, note that videos from Rostov-on-Don show average citizens helping the Wagner troops when they arrived, and then cheering them as heroes a few hours ago when they left the city.

The cracks in Putin's regime are showing.

Not exactly news but this is the current sentiment by many about this strange end to the coup attempt -

[caltrek]

Does the U.S. Need a Diplomatic Blitz to Fill the Power Vacuum the Wagner Coup Leaves Behind?
by Colin P. Clarke
June 25, 2023

Introduction:

(Politico) It’s likely to take several more days, if not weeks and months, to make sense of the unusual insurrection staged by the leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin. But already it’s clear that Russia is facing twin crises, one at home and one abroad.

Further extract:

So while most of the focus in coming days is likely to be trained on events in Russia and Ukraine, we shouldn’t lose sight of the serious implications this episode is likely to have elsewhere, implications that the United States and its allies need to prepare for as quickly as possible.

The expectation is that Wagner forces in Ukraine are going to be integrated in the regular Russian military. But the Wagner Group operates worldwide — from the Middle East to Africa to Latin America. For years, Wagner has served as the tip of the spear for Russia’s foreign policy in countries from Syria to Sudan to Venezuela, even as it has long sought to maintain plausible deniability about the extent of its linkages to the Kremlin.

In Syria, Wagner has propped up the regime of Bashar al-Assad, supplying essential military force to help the dictator beat back the Islamic State and recapture important territory. In Libya, the guns for hire have backed warlord Khalifa Haftar, serving as a bulwark for the expansion of the Libyan National Army in its quest to prevail in that country’s civil war. In both cases, Wagner receives concessions from contracts related to oil and gas installations that the group helped seize and protect. These funds, as well as funds from extractive resources in Mali, Sudan, and the Central African Republic in the form of diamonds and gold have been helping the Kremlin evade sanctions.

If Wagner winds up being pulled out of some of the countries where it currently operates, that could create an opening for a U.S. diplomatic blitz to help figure out how to fill the resulting power vacuum and regain influence in those areas.

Read more here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine ... -00103556

[caltrek]

One thing that is helpful to me in understanding what has transpired is to recall Thomas Hobbes. In his Leviathan the king, easily translated to "the president" must be respected and obeyed above all others. The Russian twist is that this does not necessarily apply to advisors of the king...err president. All sorts of criticisms and even protests can be levied against lower rank officials as long as the authority of the president is in the end upheld. Hobbes postulated this all power to the king formulation precisely for the purpose of avoiding a civil war.

So, when Putin made clear in no uncertain terms that he still supported his immediate subordinates, there was nothing left to do but to negotiate a settlement. The nationalistic argument that this was needed to avoid a civil war was very much genuine and sincere. Perhaps, the only thing that was genuine and sincere in this whole affair. In the meantime, the criticism against subordinates stands in place in a very forceful way. In this way, Russia is not quite a totalitarian society. Elites still can openly criticize one another, as long as they are sufficiently deferential to Putin. An alternative to the existing party line is thus at least thinkable. Thinkable in that it is at least possible in theory that Putin will adopt such an alternative.

[caltrek]

What the Wagner Group Revolt in Russia Could Mean for the War in Ukraine
by James Horncastle
June 24, 2023

Extract:

(The Conversation) The Wagner Group suffered such significant casualties that it couldn’t maintain its traditional tactics. Instead, the Wagner Group initiated mass recruitment efforts, including from Russia’s prisons, to replenish its depleted forces.

That blurred the lines between the Wagner Group and the Russian army. Whereas previously the two organizations had distinct spheres of influence, both now operated as, essentially, conventional forces.

Overlapping domains of influence, while forced by necessity in the case of the Russian army and the Wagner Group, aren’t exceptional for Russia.
In fact, they’re a feature of the Russian political system, and one person is responsible — Vladimir Putin.

Putin’s influence

Ultimately, only the Russian president can arbitrate disputes among his subordinates. This not only limits the ability of Putin’s subordinates to build power bases that can challenge him, but also reinforces his importance to the political system.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/what-the-w ... ne-208428