Europe under extreme duress

[sevenhelmet]

You know, the cynic in me leans towards agreeing with you. But I'm having trouble figuring out how this gained Prigozhin power. Seems if that was his goal he would have continued to Moscow. As it is, he seems to have accepted a deal that has him without an army in Belarus.

I don’t understand this one yet, either, but I’m leaning toward a simpler explanation: Prighozin is a hothead. His troops got hit as revenge for his comments against the regime or due to poor force deconfliction measures by Russia (either one would be true to brand), and he started raging down the road to Moscow in angry reaction. The Belarusian president stepped in to try and defuse the situation, seeing that everyone was about to lose.

In other words, maybe this whole thing was due to incompetence and emotional reaction to a misunderstanding. Long term, I don’t think this goes well for Prighozin or Putin.

 

[Brett327]

I too worry about @Max the Mad Russian. I think internet access is being severely restricted right now.

Wasn't he living/working in Belarus?

 

[vxc961]

Wasn't he living/working in Belarus?

Yup. He went dark a few months ago. I think a few of us have tried to PM him, but as far as I know nothing heard back.

 

[nittany03]

Wonder if he’d want his username changed to the mad Ukrainian at this point.

 

[Uncle Fester]

Kinda feel like this is what just happened in Russia:

Prigozhin doesn't have anywhere near the number of troops the regular RuAF, FSB, Rosgardia, and Interior Ministry can bring up. They've been kept back from the fighting in Ukraine for exactly this sort of thing. And the regular Russian military leadership won't support him. Putin purposely bult up a system of patronage and protection amongst his inner circle, sort of "if I fall, you're going with me" sort of deal.

The question was what all those Interior troops were going to do if ordered to fire on Wagner. If they didn't openly come over to his side, Prigozhin was done. Simply standing aside for Wagner wouldn't have been enough; they get to Moscow, and the FSB still answers to Putin, then what? They might put a few selfies on social media before the Interior guys turn them into cat food. If they did go over to Wagner, Putin was done. It'd be like the French Royal artillery turning guns on the Bastille.

Putin didn't know with certainty if he ordered an airstrike on the Wagner column that it'd be done. Prigozhin didn't get the spontaneous uprising amongst the rank-and-file that he was counting on.

So they both turned around and went back to their corners. The immediate situation is defused, but there's no way this is over. Putin cannot tolerate any kind of open defiance and stay in power. He's had people poisoned and thrown out of tall windows for simply criticizing him in the media, and this was an open armed rebellion. Everyone was already comparing the Wagner mutiny to the mutiny on the Potempkin, including Vova himself, and that dude is obsessed with Russian history, so he knows that analogy puts him in the role of Nicholas II. He knows he has to crack some heads together, and Prigozhin has to be arrested or suffer a sudden fatal Novichok-induced health issue soon. If he does nothing and lets Prigozhin continue posting angry Telegram rants from a nice hotel suite in Minsk, Putin looks impotent, and Mr Judo Master Shirtless Cowboy will not tolerate looking impotent.

 

[SynixMan]

Only thing that stood out to me was the number of aircraft downed by Wagner's air defenses in their push. Somewhere around 8 helicopters (including possibly two of the rare ELINT/EW variant Hip) and one IL-22 Airborne Command Post. Big yikes for giving your mercenary army modern air defense.

 

[ChuckMK23]

Only thing that stood out to me was the number of aircraft downed by Wagner's air defenses in their push. Somewhere around 8 helicopters (including possibly two of the rare ELINT/EW variant Hip) and one IL-22 Airborne Command Post. Big yikes for giving your mercenary army modern air defense.

Doom on you Vladimir!

 

[HSMPBR]

Mr Judo Master Shirtless Cowboy

 

[Mirage]

Kinda feel like this is what just happened in Russia:

Prigozhin doesn't have anywhere near the number of troops the regular RuAF, FSB, Rosgardia, and Interior Ministry can bring up. They've been kept back from the fighting in Ukraine for exactly this sort of thing. And the regular Russian military leadership won't support him. Putin purposely bult up a system of patronage and protection amongst his inner circle, sort of "if I fall, you're going with me" sort of deal.

The question was what all those Interior troops were going to do if ordered to fire on Wagner. If they didn't openly come over to his side, Prigozhin was done. Simply standing aside for Wagner wouldn't have been enough; they get to Moscow, and the FSB still answers to Putin, then what? They might put a few selfies on social media before the Interior guys turn them into cat food. If they did go over to Wagner, Putin was done. It'd be like the French Royal artillery turning guns on the Bastille.

Putin didn't know with certainty if he ordered an airstrike on the Wagner column that it'd be done. Prigozhin didn't get the spontaneous uprising amongst the rank-and-file that he was counting on.

So they both turned around and went back to their corners. The immediate situation is defused, but there's no way this is over. Putin cannot tolerate any kind of open defiance and stay in power. He's had people poisoned and thrown out of tall windows for simply criticizing him in the media, and this was an open armed rebellion. Everyone was already comparing the Wagner mutiny to the mutiny on the Potempkin, including Vova himself, and that dude is obsessed with Russian history, so he knows that analogy puts him in the role of Nicholas II. He knows he has to crack some heads together, and Prigozhin has to be arrested or suffer a sudden fatal Novichok-induced health issue soon. If he does nothing and lets Prigozhin continue posting angry Telegram rants from a nice hotel suite in Minsk, Putin looks impotent, and Mr Judo Master Shirtless Cowboy will not tolerate looking impotent.

Source for the bold portions? Why did Prig need a spontaneous uprising instead of just enough soldiers to stand aside and watch? Also curious how the FSB would have stopped an army without an army of their own. I'm not being sarcastic.. genuinely curious what you think.

 

[Uncle Fester]

Source for the bold portions? Why did Prig need a spontaneous uprising instead of just enough soldiers to stand aside and watch? Also curious how the FSB would have stopped an army without an army of their own. I'm not being sarcastic.. genuinely curious what you think.

ISW is probably the best open source one-stop-shop for what’s going on in Russia and Ukraine. They know what they’re talking about but their stuff is still accesible to the layman.

Wagner probably has somewhere around 8-10K “front line”-quality troops, most in Ukraine and Russia, the rest scattered around Africa and Syria. They marched on Moscow with everything they still had serviceable after Bakhmut, which wasn’t nothing but it wasn’t all that much. And FSB and the Interior Ministry do have armies of their own, as it happens. The Russians keep a lot of internal-security troops within the country, and they aren’t part of the regular RuMOD but they’re just about as heavily armed.

Without being joined by the rank-and-file guys, Prigozhin had enough to start a coup but not finish one, in other words. It’s not like you reach Red Square, touch the Arsenal wall, and you win, you’re the new President of the Russian Federation.

Shoigu and Gerasimov, not to mention FSB, were apparently caught with their pants down by the mutiny, and they’ll be lucky to get out of this with their heads still on their shoulders (after a long enough delay that it doesn’t look like Putin fired them because that’s what Prigozhin was demanding).

 

[Notanaviator]

ISW is probably the best open source one-stop-shop for what’s going on in Russia and Ukraine. They know what they’re talking about but their stuff is still accesible to the layman.

Wagner probably has somewhere around 8-10K “front line”-quality troops, most in Ukraine and Russia, the rest scattered around Africa and Syria. They marched on Moscow with everything they still had serviceable after Bakhmut, which wasn’t nothing but it wasn’t all that much. And FSB and the Interior Ministry do have armies of their own, as it happens. The Russians keep a lot of internal-security troops within the country, and they aren’t part of the regular RuMOD but they’re just about as heavily armed.

Without being joined by the rank-and-file guys, Prigozhin had enough to start a coup but not finish one, in other words. It’s not like you reach Red Square, touch the Arsenal wall, and you win, you’re the new President of the Russian Federation.

Shoigu and Gerasimov, not to mention FSB, were apparently caught with their pants down by the mutiny, and they’ll be lucky to get out of this with their heads still on their shoulders (after a long enough delay that it doesn’t look like Putin fired them because that’s what Prigozhin was demanding).

Agree with all this and your previous post. Prigozhin has been pretty insubordinate and vocal about his beef with the MoD for a while now, but he certainly crossed a line he couldn't uncross over the last few days. What would lead him to do that? He would have had to have a sense, even if that was fed to him or he just misjudged, that he'd have a lot of support from both the FSB and the Rosgvardiya if he crossed that line. Early on, there were some rumblings that he had some support there and those rumblings could have been correct but those folks thought better of it, or certainly possible they were just wrong.

But by the same token, Putin maybe misjudged how well he was calibrating the balance between tolerance for Prigozhin's bluster (given Wagner's efficacy on the field and in allowing him to avoid more of a public draft), and the need to not give him too much clout. Tough thing to strike, and certainly agree with the sentiment that this weakens him, and he long term takes more of an L than Prigozhin. The knives are probably out and not going anywhere. Prigozhin may be a dead man walking but Putin didn't need any more reminders out there that his power seems more and more brittle.

 

[Mirage]

ISW is probably the best open source one-stop-shop for what’s going on in Russia and Ukraine. They know what they’re talking about but their stuff is still accesible to the layman.

Wagner probably has somewhere around 8-10K “front line”-quality troops, most in Ukraine and Russia, the rest scattered around Africa and Syria. They marched on Moscow with everything they still had serviceable after Bakhmut, which wasn’t nothing but it wasn’t all that much. And FSB and the Interior Ministry do have armies of their own, as it happens. The Russians keep a lot of internal-security troops within the country, and they aren’t part of the regular RuMOD but they’re just about as heavily armed.

Without being joined by the rank-and-file guys, Prigozhin had enough to start a coup but not finish one, in other words. It’s not like you reach Red Square, touch the Arsenal wall, and you win, you’re the new President of the Russian Federation.

Shoigu and Gerasimov, not to mention FSB, were apparently caught with their pants down by the mutiny, and they’ll be lucky to get out of this with their heads still on their shoulders (after a long enough delay that it doesn’t look like Putin fired them because that’s what Prigozhin was demanding).

Do you have a reliable source indicating there is a standing army that is fighting ready that could have protected Moscow from Wagner's claimed 25k troops? Details are scarce, and if that's true, it would help me understand how this came about. My understanding was that the Russian national guard was mostly in play in Ukraine already, and any force to counter Wagner would have had to come from the front lines.

 

[wink]

Without being joined by the rank-and-file guys, Prigozhin had enough to start a coup but not finish one, in other words. It’s not like you reach Red Square, touch the Arsenal wall, and you win, you’re the new President of the Russian Federation.

So he started the slow one man clap and the rest of the audience never joined in applause. AWKWORD.

 

[Uncle Fester]

…Prigozhin has been pretty insubordinate and vocal about his beef with the MoD for a while now, but he certainly crossed a line he couldn't uncross over the last few days. What would lead him to do that?

But by the same token, Putin maybe misjudged how well he was calibrating the balance between tolerance for Prigozhin's bluster (given Wagner's efficacy on the field and in allowing him to avoid more of a public draft), and the need to not give him too much clout. Tough thing to strike, and certainly agree with the sentiment that this weakens him, and he long term takes more of an L than Prigozhin. The knives are probably out and not going anywhere. Prigozhin may be a dead man walking but Putin didn't need any more reminders out there that his power seems more and more brittle.

A few days earlier Shoigu ordered that the Wagner units sign contracts joining the the regular army or disband; if they refused to do either, they would be declared an “illegal” force. Prigozhin has so many enemies within the nest of snakes Putin keeps around him, owning a personal army was about the only thing keeping him untouchable. So it looks like Shoigu forced his hand, and he and Putin either didn’t know or didn’t believe that Prigozhin would mutiny rather than go quietly.

There’s also the matter that the Wagner units remain loyal to Prigozhin personally, and nobody within Putin’s circle really knows how effective Prigozhin’s “I’m the savior of the Rodina” act has been with the army or the general public. So crushing the mutiny in good old traditional bloody Russian fashion risked both losing one of the few effective formations they’ve got left, and possibly making it worse by rallying the people to Prigozhin or making him a martyr. And whatever else happened, Vova would have to deal with a Russian civil war being live-streamed to the world.

Putin’s in real trouble. No matter what move he makes going forward, he risks looking vulnerable and out of control.

 

[Duc'-guy25]

Only thing that stood out to me was the number of aircraft downed by Wagner's air defenses in their push. Somewhere around 8 helicopters (including possibly two of the rare ELINT/EW variant Hip) and one IL-22 Airborne Command Post. Big yikes for giving your mercenary army modern air defense.

Helicopters aren’t exactly hard to shoot down, especially with MANPADS… insurgents were shooting down Blackhawks every other week in Iraq for awhile with just RPGs. While modern weapons, they didn’t have any resemblance of an IADS as we know it on their little March. A further data point that attack/utility/lift helicopters are exactly survivable in modern war anywhere near a front line.