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On June 25 2023 05:41 Magic Powers wrote:
I can't figure out what drove Prigozhin into any of this, but I think I can perhaps explain what's saving him now. Killing Prigozhin right now would require also killing some Wagner mercs. There's hardly an upside to that but plenty of downsides, so instead they let him live and incorporate Wagner into the Russian military. He's gonna receive protection from a select few Wagnerites.
Does this mean Prigozhin will be safe? Maybe, maybe not.
Prigozhin might have been driven to this due to the July 1st ultimatum for mercenary groups to be subordinate to the MOD. Wagner is most of his influence right now, and he has been clashing with the MOD. His influence was already threatened when he was no longer able to recruit from prison, wagner being under control of the MOD means they could deliberately kill of wagner through attrition. And the MOD has all the reasons to since prigozhin has been quarrelling with them constantly.
He couldn't afford losing control of wagner in ukraine, because that means losing his influence, which then makes his quarrels with the MOD really dangerous for him. That is my best guess for now why he made a move on the MOD, putin only came into the picture once he declared prigozhin a traitor. Prigozhin's initial statements all put the blame on people within the MOD.
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Well this was an interesting day.
The audacity of the whole spectacle. All of this, of course, went on with the backdrop of the disastrous failed offensive of the Ukrainian army, obviously Prigozhin went ahead with this at a time when there was no chance of a failure at the front but I doubt we will find out why any time soon (I'm going to be very interested when the memoirs' start coming out about 24.06.2023. in a decade or so)
So what was the point of all of this? What's the end game here? Wagner was part of one of the greatest combined arms victories in modern military history. They played a key role in destroying very large quantities of Ukrainian men and armor and delayed the Ukrainian offensive by months, giving the Russian military time to get its shit together. And we've seen the results in the last few weeks. Basically gold status in Russian society and then they go and do this... Because they were going to be integrated more into the RAF?
Why? Why degrade yourself to the point where you get the 'moderate rebel' tag from the western MSM. Everyone looks like an idiot. The Russian government especially, it didn't finish without bloodshed and its insane to think a nuclear power has this happening on its front lawn. Blowing up your own bridges to slow down your mercenary army? What? NATO look like tools because they are losing to these idiots. Not to mention the cringe amounts of fake news stuffing going on throughout the day, this thread being full of it. Its embarrassing to read (yes its funny sometimes to watch the peremoga-zrada cycle but the kind of trash people unironically posted today goes beyond, almost satire)
edit: CIPSO working long hours for nothing, ya hate to see it
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On June 25 2023 05:52 Artesimo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2023 05:41 Magic Powers wrote:
I can't figure out what drove Prigozhin into any of this, but I think I can perhaps explain what's saving him now. Killing Prigozhin right now would require also killing some Wagner mercs. There's hardly an upside to that but plenty of downsides, so instead they let him live and incorporate Wagner into the Russian military. He's gonna receive protection from a select few Wagnerites.
Does this mean Prigozhin will be safe? Maybe, maybe not. Prigozhin might have been driven to this due to the July 1st ultimatum for mercenary groups to be subordinate to the MOD. Wagner is most of his influence right now, and he has been clashing with the MOD. His influence was already threatened when he was no longer able to recruit from prison, wagner being under control of the MOD means they could deliberately kill of wagner through attrition. And the MOD has all the reasons to since prigozhin has been quarrelling with them constantly. He couldn't afford losing control of wagner in ukraine, because that means losing his influence, which then makes his quarrels with the MOD really dangerous for him. That is my best guess for now why he made a move on the MOD, putin only came into the picture once he declared prigozhin a traitor. Prigozhin's initial statements all put the blame on people within the MOD.
That sounds like good reasoning, it would explain a lot. Prigozhin may've miscalculated the impact of his march on his standing with Putin, or he may've been fully aware of the risk, but overall the plan itself would be relatively sound.
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On June 25 2023 05:54 zeo wrote:
Well this was an interesting day.
The audacity of the whole spectacle. All of this, of course, went on with the backdrop of the disastrous failed offensive of the Ukrainian army, obviously Prigozhin went ahead with this at a time when there was no chance of a failure at the front but I doubt we will find out why any time soon (I'm going to be very interested when the memoirs' start coming out about 24.06.2023. in a decade or so)
So what was the point of all of this? What's the end game here? Wagner was part of one of the greatest combined arms victories in modern military history. They played a key role in destroying very large quantities of Ukrainian men and armor and delayed the Ukrainian offensive by months, giving the Russian military time to get its shit together. And we've seen the results in the last few weeks. Basically gold status in Russian society and then they go and do this... Because they were going to be integrated more into the RAF?
Why? Why degrade yourself to the point where you get the 'moderate rebel' tag from the western MSM. Everyone looks like an idiot. The Russian government especially, it didn't finish without bloodshed and its insane to think a nuclear power has this happening on its front lawn. Blowing up your own bridges to slow down your mercenary army? What? NATO look like tools because they are losing to these idiots. Not to mention the cringe amounts of fake news stuffing going on throughout the day, this thread being full of it. Its embarrassing to read (yes its funny sometimes to watch the peremoga-zrada cycle but the kind of trash people unironically posted today goes beyond, almost satire)
edit: CIPSO working long hours for nothing, ya hate to see it
You might think this is satire or trolling but some of them do believe all of the above.
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Yeah, nothing about this makes sense. It reminds me of the movie Knives Out: Glass Onion. We assume that there is a genius masterplan for everything that is happening, but in the end, sometimes people are just fucking stupid. Like, really, really stupid. So, maybe Prigozhin was just stupid, didn't think it through, got some liquid courage and made a mistake. And the longer the day went, the more he realized that there is simply no endgame here. And at the start, Putin and friends believed that if he started it, there must be more to it then simply moving 25k soldiers around Russia hoping to catch someone. When nothing else happened, they extended a hand to hold him for a few days and then push him out of a window later next month.
Holy shit this is stupid. 
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On June 25 2023 05:54 zeo wrote:
Well this was an interesting day.
The audacity of the whole spectacle. All of this, of course, went on with the backdrop of the disastrous failed offensive of the Ukrainian army, obviously Prigozhin went ahead with this at a time when there was no chance of a failure at the front but I doubt we will find out why any time soon (I'm going to be very interested when the memoirs' start coming out about 24.06.2023. in a decade or so)
So what was the point of all of this? What's the end game here? Wagner was part of one of the greatest combined arms victories in modern military history. They played a key role in destroying very large quantities of Ukrainian men and armor and delayed the Ukrainian offensive by months, giving the Russian military time to get its shit together. And we've seen the results in the last few weeks. Basically gold status in Russian society and then they go and do this... Because they were going to be integrated more into the RAF?
Why? Why degrade yourself to the point where you get the 'moderate rebel' tag from the western MSM. Everyone looks like an idiot. The Russian government especially, it didn't finish without bloodshed and its insane to think a nuclear power has this happening on its front lawn. Blowing up your own bridges to slow down your mercenary army? What? NATO look like tools because they are losing to these idiots. Not to mention the cringe amounts of fake news stuffing going on throughout the day, this thread being full of it. Its embarrassing to read (yes its funny sometimes to watch the peremoga-zrada cycle but the kind of trash people unironically posted today goes beyond, almost satire)
edit: CIPSO working long hours for nothing, ya hate to see it
You are the only one that can look at this and somehow drag NATO into it. Also, the greatest combined arms victories in modern military history? What? Are you smoking? Literally every other phase of the war so far has been a bigger combined arms victory for one of the two sides so far...
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I’m trying to make sense of the withdrawal and only 3 options come to mind. 1) the withdrawal is false, give his troops a night to rest and then continue. I don’t really like this option because time almost certainly is on Putin’s side. The longer it takes to take strategic locations, the worse Wagner’s situation is.
2) He was counting on certain key individuals to come out on his side, but they decided to remain hidden or work against him. He realized that he didn’t have the resources he needed to win and thus made a deal to temporarily spare his life by giving Wagner over to the MoD (what MoD wanted in the first place).
3) The FSB found Prigozhin’s children. I would assume he told them to hide before he started his coup. Perhaps they didn’t hide well enough and Prigozhin got some pictures and an offer from Putin. He may be falling on the sword to save his kids, knowing that he won’t survive more than a couple years in Belarus.
I tend to lean towards option 3.
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On June 25 2023 05:59 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2023 05:52 Artesimo wrote:On June 25 2023 05:41 Magic Powers wrote:
I can't figure out what drove Prigozhin into any of this, but I think I can perhaps explain what's saving him now. Killing Prigozhin right now would require also killing some Wagner mercs. There's hardly an upside to that but plenty of downsides, so instead they let him live and incorporate Wagner into the Russian military. He's gonna receive protection from a select few Wagnerites.
Does this mean Prigozhin will be safe? Maybe, maybe not. Prigozhin might have been driven to this due to the July 1st ultimatum for mercenary groups to be subordinate to the MOD. Wagner is most of his influence right now, and he has been clashing with the MOD. His influence was already threatened when he was no longer able to recruit from prison, wagner being under control of the MOD means they could deliberately kill of wagner through attrition. And the MOD has all the reasons to since prigozhin has been quarrelling with them constantly. He couldn't afford losing control of wagner in ukraine, because that means losing his influence, which then makes his quarrels with the MOD really dangerous for him. That is my best guess for now why he made a move on the MOD, putin only came into the picture once he declared prigozhin a traitor. Prigozhin's initial statements all put the blame on people within the MOD. That sounds like good reasoning, it would explain a lot. Prigozhin may've miscalculated the impact of his march on his standing with Putin, or he may've been fully aware of the risk, but overall the plan itself would be relatively sound.
I think he was hoping for more support from the lower military rather than them just standing down in some cases. Because from what we have seen, they had no shot at actually being a military threat once the russian military get involved. Even the internal security forces might have been enough without wagner getting some serious support from the military... for reference, the police force of the moscow region alone is 10 times of what wagner claimed marched on moscow (they said 5k, and I believe its safe to assume that this number is either true, or exaggerated, but def not undersold). Not suggesting that cops should stop the wagner forces, but just to give a idea on the scale of what wagner was trying to do here and how futile it seems, even token resistance from the russian military would have been a major obstacle for them. But it makes sense if you assume it was prigozhin being with his back to the wall.
And as it seemingly turned out, putin sided with the MOD, called him a traitor, and even his allies within the MOD like surovikin came out against him. He did not have the support he needed, so now all he can do is try staying alive. For now.
Or the situation takes another wild 180 tomorrow, I really don't know.
For now I begrudgingly feel like this has the potential to be a win for russia in the long run. Wagner being under control of the MOD is a net positive for them, given how prigozhin has been problematic for them. And the unified command will make logistics and coordination better, at least in theory. In practice we have to wait if wagner really gets transferred over to the MOD and how well that will sit with the troops. There is quite a lot of bad blood between wagner and the military by now, so the relatively smooth inclusion of wagner fighters into the russian military command is a really big if on the road to this being good for the russian war effort.
Its bad for optics ofc, but we also have to wait on the final judgement there and how the propaganda will be able to spin this to determine if there will be long terms damage from it.
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On June 25 2023 06:09 Broetchenholer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2023 05:54 zeo wrote:
Well this was an interesting day.
The audacity of the whole spectacle. All of this, of course, went on with the backdrop of the disastrous failed offensive of the Ukrainian army, obviously Prigozhin went ahead with this at a time when there was no chance of a failure at the front but I doubt we will find out why any time soon (I'm going to be very interested when the memoirs' start coming out about 24.06.2023. in a decade or so)
So what was the point of all of this? What's the end game here? Wagner was part of one of the greatest combined arms victories in modern military history. They played a key role in destroying very large quantities of Ukrainian men and armor and delayed the Ukrainian offensive by months, giving the Russian military time to get its shit together. And we've seen the results in the last few weeks. Basically gold status in Russian society and then they go and do this... Because they were going to be integrated more into the RAF?
Why? Why degrade yourself to the point where you get the 'moderate rebel' tag from the western MSM. Everyone looks like an idiot. The Russian government especially, it didn't finish without bloodshed and its insane to think a nuclear power has this happening on its front lawn. Blowing up your own bridges to slow down your mercenary army? What? NATO look like tools because they are losing to these idiots. Not to mention the cringe amounts of fake news stuffing going on throughout the day, this thread being full of it. Its embarrassing to read (yes its funny sometimes to watch the peremoga-zrada cycle but the kind of trash people unironically posted today goes beyond, almost satire)
edit: CIPSO working long hours for nothing, ya hate to see it You are the only one that can look at this and somehow drag NATO into it. Also, the greatest combined arms victories in modern military history? What? Are you smoking? Literally every other phase of the war so far has been a bigger combined arms victory for one of the two sides so far...
The battle for Bahmut in sheer numbers exceeded anything we've seen since the Korean War. Maybe the Siege of Basra? Aleppo for all brutality had less troops deployed and the Jihadi's never had air support. Again, looking at combined arms Bahmut/Artemovsk will always be near the top
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It was a battle between malnourished teenager and morbidly obese drunkard who used to play football 40 years ago, there was nothing great about it.
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Whatever this thing was it has certainly pulled back the curtains on just how fragile Russia is atm.
1. First of it's a coup attempt. Which in itself is wild when your country is at war.
2. Secondly they just drive into Rostov and take over the HQ for the Ukrainian theatre unopposed.
3. The regular Russian army seems to have 0 interest in actually fighting against the coup, the only ones who show up is the Chechens.
4. Just by driving up the highway Wagner goes 3/4 of the way to Moscow from the front-lines, without any serious attempt to even delay them.
5. Judging by the flights leaving Moscow a lot of powerful people took this very seriously.
5. In the end they get bought off in order to back down.
Pretty wild ride in under 24 hours. Even if it's a win for Putin I doubt he feels reassured.
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So Wagner gets a country/vassal state. While Putin is able to stay, seemingly, in charge of his fragile and now exposed throne....
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On June 25 2023 06:45 zeo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2023 06:09 Broetchenholer wrote:On June 25 2023 05:54 zeo wrote:
Well this was an interesting day.
The audacity of the whole spectacle. All of this, of course, went on with the backdrop of the disastrous failed offensive of the Ukrainian army, obviously Prigozhin went ahead with this at a time when there was no chance of a failure at the front but I doubt we will find out why any time soon (I'm going to be very interested when the memoirs' start coming out about 24.06.2023. in a decade or so)
So what was the point of all of this? What's the end game here? Wagner was part of one of the greatest combined arms victories in modern military history. They played a key role in destroying very large quantities of Ukrainian men and armor and delayed the Ukrainian offensive by months, giving the Russian military time to get its shit together. And we've seen the results in the last few weeks. Basically gold status in Russian society and then they go and do this... Because they were going to be integrated more into the RAF?
Why? Why degrade yourself to the point where you get the 'moderate rebel' tag from the western MSM. Everyone looks like an idiot. The Russian government especially, it didn't finish without bloodshed and its insane to think a nuclear power has this happening on its front lawn. Blowing up your own bridges to slow down your mercenary army? What? NATO look like tools because they are losing to these idiots. Not to mention the cringe amounts of fake news stuffing going on throughout the day, this thread being full of it. Its embarrassing to read (yes its funny sometimes to watch the peremoga-zrada cycle but the kind of trash people unironically posted today goes beyond, almost satire)
edit: CIPSO working long hours for nothing, ya hate to see it You are the only one that can look at this and somehow drag NATO into it. Also, the greatest combined arms victories in modern military history? What? Are you smoking? Literally every other phase of the war so far has been a bigger combined arms victory for one of the two sides so far... The battle for Bahmut in sheer numbers exceeded anything we've seen since the Korean War. Maybe the Siege of Basra? Aleppo for all brutality had less troops deployed and the Jihadi's never had air support. Again, looking at combined arms Bahmut/Artemovsk will always be near the top
Both Desert Storm and the 2003 invasion of Iraq combined were executed faster and for a fraction of the casualties. The size of the forces and the scale are laughably not comparable.
Buy hey, to a person that lives with the russian propaganda, the Bahmut disaster is "one of the greatest combined arms victories in modern military history" and "exceeded anything we've seen since the Korean War". Actually, fascinating.
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Mexico2170 Posts
Maybe it was an inside job in the sense Putin and the MoD got fed up with that guy talking shit about Rissia army but recognized his mercenaries as a valuable asset, so they made him think he had a chance to do something, so he tried it, only for the people who were supposed to help him betray him at the last moment. Now he was forced to surrender and will live in exile for a year before dying suspiciously and he lost his army of mercenaries.
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On June 25 2023 05:54 zeo wrote:
Not to mention the cringe amounts of fake news stuffing going on throughout the day, this thread being full of it. Its embarrassing to read (yes its funny sometimes to watch the peremoga-zrada cycle but the kind of trash people unironically posted today goes beyond, almost satire)
We are reaching levels of irony that shouldn't even be possible.
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United States42738 Posts
On June 25 2023 05:54 zeo wrote:
the backdrop of the disastrous failed offensive of the Ukrainian army
I find comments like this so irritating. The lack of attention span you people have is beyond childish and I have no idea how you ever coped before a 24 hour news cycle in which your need for new information and progress is continuously sated.
This is a war in which neither side has air control because both are former Soviet states with a doctrine of air denial.
Armour is unable to deal with ATGMs, especially given both sides are fielding armour that was out of date 30 years ago, and minefields.
The combination of close aerial intelligence from drones and rocket artillery makes putting more than 50 men in one place suicidal because they'll just get annihilated by rocket strikes.
And so both sides have resorted to dispersed groups of infantry because that's literally all they can do at this point. You can't group up for a mechanized assault, both sides have proven that many times over. You get bogged down by mines and then destroyed by artillery. You can't fly close air support with so many MANPADs on the ground. You can't even group up your infantry because the only counter to the kind of modern artillery in use is to not put enough people in any one place to be worth the destruction of that grid square.
And so the war is slow and attritional. All the two sides can do is trade the lives of their infantrymen and the industrial output of their armaments factories with each other until one side runs out. That's why Ukraine hasn't even begun to use their reserves at this point, there's literally nothing they can do with the reserves because putting more men into combat just increases the losses to artillery. So behind each man engaged on the underpopulated front they have a dozen more in reserve to rotate men out or replace losses. That's all they can do.
And within the limited scope of the fighting that is possible they are doing an excellent job. They are attriting Russian forces at a greater rate than Russia can replenish them. They are destroying Russian ammunition dumps, aircraft, armour, artillery and so forth at a greater rate than Russia can build them. They're doing exactly what they need to do and what they planned to do. It is costly, of course, because that is the nature of the war. There's no non costly way of waging a war of attrition. But it's the only strategy that has a hope of success and they are seeing that success every day.
Furthermore you were always of the opinion that Ukraine stood no chance and that Russia would overwhelm them in 3 days 4 weeks 5 months 6 years? And now your complaint is that Ukraine's counteroffensive is failing because it's not defeating Russia fast enough? Sure they've taken back 113 sq km since starting earlier this month but that's not enough for you.
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The Russian foreign legion captured more territory and previous population in their raids.
The Kharkiv offensive was more decisive and carried more space and population than Russia deciding to do a ww1 seige of a city. And do you think the attacking force lost less than a defense force? In the Kharkiv offensive they were able to capture more equipment than the west has given them. Russia gained ruins of a city that had a pre war pop of 71k. What are you talking about? The iran-iraq war had bigger movements than that.
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On June 25 2023 07:54 [Phantom] wrote:
Maybe it was an inside job in the sense Putin and the MoD got fed up with that guy talking shit about Rissia army but recognized his mercenaries as a valuable asset, so they made him think he had a chance to do something, so he tried it, only for the people who were supposed to help him betray him at the last moment. Now he was forced to surrender and will live in exile for a year before dying suspiciously and he lost his army of mercenaries. you come up with some wild conspiracy stuff every time  ; i mean, it tracks 'cause you're a writer but damn, that's some novela script.
there are actual events that don't support your claims: russians bombed their oil depos for what?, to make the coup attempt look more realistic?; they've destroyed their roads ... for what?; Putin made a fool of himself on television calling it a rebellion that he will punish ... f o r w h a t?.
was all a theater for the west?.
some dudes made a call based on info they had and you got to watch it unfold. the end.
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EPT
