Thread by @marmar_ae

Prigozhin's appeal to Botox has always been the promise that he could deliver results without the need for further mobilization, but simply through better management of resources already committed, namely through their transfer from RUMOD's to Wagner's control.

Strelkov has been haranguing Botox for not allocating the necessary resources from the start and so he earns the latter's hatred.

The authorization of withdrawals from Kherson and Kiev show that privately this was also eventually RUMOD's message to Botox: with the present commitment of resources the desired goals are impossible to attain.

In rides Prigozhin offering miracles; significantly better results through better management of what has already been given to the military but allegedly foolishly squandered by RUMOD.

Where Strelkov detests the top of RUMOD (and was mercilessly bashing Shoigu long before Prigozhin got in on the game) he nonetheless places the bigger portion of the blame on Botox for not giving it the resources necessary.

In fact his first critique of RUMOD is that excessive cronyism led it to bend to Botox and acquiesce to an under-supported enterprise that their education should have told them was doomed.

Strelkov wishes that men like him were in charge at RUMOD but that is only secondary for him. His first demand is that RUMOD, even while it is still being led by people he detests and are his political rivals, be allocated more resources for Russia's sake.

Prigozhin meanwhile absolves Botox of all blame, heaps all kind of praise on him, and reassures him he did perfectly fine but was merely failed by his underlings.

What botox-injected boomer who has been clinging to seat of power for a quarter of century despite having no political vision of what he wants to accomplish doesn't like to hear that?

Botox having been flattered and desperately averse to making the necessary tough call starts to transfer more and more RUMOD resources to Prigozhin. Wagner becomes the most well-supported Russian formation, expands by leaps and bounds, gets an air force...

..., and a skyscraper in Saint Petersburg, and gets the special privilege of exclusive access to convict manpower. And the unstated and extra-legal power to shoot the convicts in the back of the head should it deem it necessary.

At the same time as he is gaining strength via the cannibalization of the Russian military, he wages a ruthless self-promotion campaign to the widest public, appropriating all success where Wagner was present exclusively for himself, regardless of how involved RUMOD was.

He also uses his access to Putin to start interfering in RUMOD affairs, scapegoating individual RUMOD generals (for the time being not the highest-ranking ones) and campaigning for their sacking. Worryingly he is successful and his sights move upward the RUMOD chain.

It's an unequal contest; the civilian Prigozhin can mouth off as much as he wants, target anyone he wants...

...meanwhile, the professional code of the RUMODs demands that they stay inside the chain of command and – aside from the Konashenkov idiot show -- keep perfectly quiet, making them defenseless against Prigozhin's media persecution.

Yet after all of the backing that sweells his force into the tens of thousands, what does Prigozhin have to show for it? Nothing. First he is contrasting his gains in the Bakhmut direction to RUMOD's flight from Izyum and Kupyansk...

...(ignoring that Botox overstretched them and left them with their pants down), but soon he gets bogged down himself, his gains shrinking from tiny to microscopic. By the end of it he takes Bakhmut in an endless, nearly year-long slong for a cost that would make RUMODs blush.

His promise of a more rational, modern, corporate management is exposed as more of the fradulent new-age start-up guru bullshit and even his escalating attacks on top RUMODs can no longer conceal this.

This gives RUMOD the space to start turning the screws on him, and Botox reluctantly goes along with it, but being the king of half-measures that he is, he does it in such a lukewarm fashion that it leaves his chef with the impression that he might still get him to turn.

Prigozhin launches a "March for Justice" – an outfit that until now operated outside the law (PMCs are illegal in Russian law) with the permission of the regime enters into open disobedience of the regime.

It surrounds a RUMOD HQ in Rostov and launches a column toward Moscow presumably with the intent of doing the same to RUMOD's HQ in the capital.

The panic and paralysis that the Kremlins manage to demonstrate in the face of this mutiny is impressive. It reaches the levels of loserdom and cringe not previously thought possible.

But the pathetic response to Wagner's march conceals just how hollow Prigozhin's challenge itself was. There were no grand demands issued, and there was no political content to the mutiny.

Despite Botox not wasting time in proclaiming that Wagnerites must be "neutralized" as insurrectionists (and seeking assurances of support of Turkey and Kazakhstan) and Medvedev imploring the West not to let Russia's nukes fall into wrong hands, ....

... the extent of Wagnerite demands amounted to no more than "don't fire us, fire RUMODs instead".

It was as pathetic and limited as begging Putin not to rollback taxpayer funding for the Wagner program as demanded by RUMOD. This reduced most Russian citizens and soldiers alike to spectators.

The stake in whether Kremlin folds a PMC or continues to bankroll it is rather low for any Russian not in Wagner or the Russian general staff.

Twitter's temporary indulgence of a vision of Prigozhin as the new dictator-reformer aside who would take power in Moscow and set Russia's war back on track, the stakes were never this high.

Literally all that Wagner was asking for is that the cannibalization of RUMOD might continue and that subsequently the Wagnerite rise along the societal and fiduciary ladder under Botox may go on.

The truth is that at the end of the day Botox and Wagner are two sides of a coin and together represent the worst aspects of the Russian regime (I can't say government because being extra-constitutional Wagner is at most shadow government).

Putin the coward bought into Wagner lies knowing they can't possibly be true because it was easier for the time being than doing what the war he launched of his own accord rationally demands, ...

... and Wagner sold him the illusion knowing they couldn't possibly deliver because it would jumpstart their social mobility within Russia even at the expense of further sidetracking her war.

The truth is that in the "speaking truth to power" category Wagners are the biggest shits. Strelkov tells Botox exactly how it is. RUMODs tell him how it is to an extent (recall Surovikin and Kherson). Prigozhin tried to sell him on a magic pill

and couldn't stop prostrating himself before him even as the latter and his media tagged him as a CIA-backed traitor.