Thread by @UmlandAndreas

1. Sad to watch #Шустер today: While the Kremlin is amassing troops at the border of Ukraine, its political elite is drowning in a scandal around the aborted operation to catch 33 members of the notorious Wagner PMC.

2. The underlying assumption is that:
(a) the arrest of 33 Russian experienced and ruthless #mercenaries in a passenger plane would have been a successful operation with no collateral damage and civilian victims, as well as that

3. (b) such a successful operation would not have had led to a major escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian war, or other negative repercussions, such as a debate about the admissibility of secret operations endangering foreign civilians.
Perhaps.

4. In any way, it is an eventually minor story. In the best-case scenario of a successful operation and no subsequent negative after-effects, 33 more POWs would not have changed much for #Ukraine - a fact that questions the wisdom of engaging in such a risky operation.

5. Moreover, #Ukraine may have been later forced to return the GUR-catched #WagnerGroup #mercenaries, like the GUR-catched Tsemakh before, in a prisoners exchange. While being an intriguing spy story, the Wagner operation is, at the end of the day, a strategic nothing-burger.

6. Today, Ukraine's political elite needs to be debating other topics than #Wagnergate.
PS: For the details of the aborted operation to catch the Wagner mercenaries, see this excellent @bellingcat report: bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…

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