Given what we know now about Prigozhin's rebellion - particularly that some 3/4 of Wagner refused to participate - it's likely Putin knew about the plot well in advance and, ever the judoka, allowed it to go forward for reasons of his own.
What reasons? Short thread: ⬇️
1. Consolidation of power. Most of the Russian political class vocally lined up in support of Putin during the incident. Those who did not have doubtless been noted and can expect unusual but plausibly-deniable deaths in the near to medium term.
2. Fully discrediting Prigozhin as a leadership figure. Simply killing or arresting him would have run the risk of turning him into a martyr, particularly among his well-armed mercenary army. Now he's a traitor in exile with no troops to speak of.
3. Full integration of Wagner into the regular Russian military. To the extent that the Wagner Group is allowed to continue to exist going forward, it will act as a fully integrated branch of the Russian security services rather than a semi-independent actor.
4. Wringing the last bit of tactical usefulness out of Prigozhin's antics, which have spurred many disastrous Ukrainian counterattacks aimed at taking advantage of "chaos" in the Russian camp. The AFU redoubled their efforts in the last two days with huge losses and few gains.
I think it's fairly clear at this point that to the extent Prigozhin's various incendiary statements and acts over the last few months have been a "psyop," he wasn't in on the joke. RuMoD clearly let him run wild and exploited the predictable Ukrainian responses.
It's also obvious that if the regular Russian military was refusing to give Wagner a blank cheque of support over the last few months, their reasons for doing so were excellent. Prigozhin was as dangerous to Russia as Ukraine and required very close supervision and control.
Prigozhin's timing was likely spurred by his longtime anti-RuMoD talking point that "only Wagner brings victory" getting discredited daily in Zaporozhe. His outsized importance to the Russian war effort - and his standing as a warlord - was shrinking before his eyes.
He may have himself been banking on a Russian military collapse to seize power riding a wave of disaffection and demoralization. Which quite neatly explains many of his recent statements denigrating the efforts of the Russian Army in seeing off the Ukrainian spring offensive.
And how did it all end? Well, Prigozhin wound up and threw his punch - and found himself flat on his back with no idea how he got there. Remarkably on point.
Of course Western outlets will try to paint this as a loss for Putin, but let's be honest - that's cope.
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The closest historical analogy to the Ukrainian War I can think of is the American Civil War - ironically a conflict that Europeans have always shied away from carefully studying.
A thread.⬇️
The underlying causes of the American Civil War festered for decades, finally erupting into open conflict after a series of political calculations and miscalculations brought down a national compromise that increasingly resembled a house of cards.
Ditto Ukraine. I've said elsewhere the number of political offramps available to Western leaders to avoid this war were so numerous that the fact war broke out can only be explained as the result of anti-Russian policy - clearly miscalculated policy given the results thus far.
Top 10 pro-Ukrainian talking points - and why they're nonsense.⬇️
10. Ukraine is a democracy!
False. The last free and fair election in Ukraine - not held under an ultranationalist jackboot after the 2014 coup - was in 2010.
All elections in Ukraine have been suspended since 2022, and Zelensky's five-year term from 2019 expired months ago.
9. Russia is an autocracy!
False. Vladimir Putin and United Russia enjoy approval ratings among the Russian public that are extremely high, even in polling conducted by Western-backed, anti-Putin organizations.
Putin is popular enough to win any election held in Russia handily.
How many plans has NATO gone through to try to beat Russia in Ukraine?
Let's count 'em!
Plan A: The FGM-148 Javelin
It seems absurd now, but in late 2021 NATO's leadership thought Javelin was a tank-deleting magic wand that would deter Putin from challenging Zelensky's scheme to conquer the LDPR.
Javelin failed in service and is a rare sight on the battlefield.
Plan B: The Kazakh Gambit
The West quite obviously fomented an uprising in Kazakhstan in January 2022 in hopes of distracting Russia from the then-boiling Ukrainian crisis.
Didn't work. CSTO troops arrived and helped the Kazakh government crush the would-be color revolution.
Late last week the Ukrainian command, seeing their offensive in Sudzha-Koronevo bog down, tried to expand the flanks of their salient into Russian territory in Kursk. Part of this was an attack on the Glushkovo district to the west.
The Glushkovo District is somewhat isolated from the Russian interior by the Seim River.
Having learned the wrong lessons from their 2022 counteroffensive in Kherson, the AFU command decided to try to induce a wholesale Russian withdrawal by attacking the bridges over the Seim.
The large road bridge at Glushkovo, the district center, would be their first target. As in Kherson two years ago, HIMARS fired on the bridge with GMLRS. As in Kherson two years ago, it was ineffective.
Unlike in Kherson two years ago, the Russians killed the HIMARS launcher.
Today was probably the worst day for the Armed Forces of Ukraine since February 2022.
Let's walk through it.
The Russians started the day off by destroying two HIMARS launchers at their hide site in Sumy. This has likely ended GMLRS support for the Kursk operation temporarily.
Next to emerge was a video of a MiG-29* struck at an airfield near Dnipropetrovsk, just as it was being armed and the pilot had climbed in for preflight.
Once again the Russians coldly waited to cause maximum casualties among key AFU personnel.
* initially reported as an Su-24
13 Ukrainian soldiers were caught on camera surrendering in Kursk, and today was the first day I didn't even hear substantive rumors of new AFU advances in the area. Instead they seem to have lost considerable ground.
Top 10 Failed Wonderweapons of the Ukrainian War⬇️
My criteria are simple - these are weapons (defined loosely) that were heavily hyped by Western pundits that actually failed in service.
So, for example, the Leopard 2 isn't on here because it's actually a perfectly functional tank that has performed in line with other tanks.
10. The Ukrainian Foreign Legion
After the war kicked off, Western outlets began encouraging adventurous foreigners to travel to Ukraine to fight. These new recruits were housed in barracks at the Yavorov Training Ground.
One Russian missile strike largely ended the project.