Talking head on my teevee says that Putin doesn’t spend much time in Moscow. He’s mostly in his highly secure private residence with his 4,000 member personnel security force.
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I hear that Wagner is subcontracting the coup out to Erik Prince.
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Is there a viable “neither of the above, please” option for Russian leadership when the dust finally settles here? We clearly don’t want Prigozhin in charge but Putin has been pretty ruthless in taking out anyone who appeared to be a potential political rival.
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Malcolm Nance predicted this back in January.
His scariest concern was some general with access to nukes joining the coup and using them to decapitate the Kremlin.
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‘Mom, come out — the civil war has begun’
Most Russian moms: “I’ve already seen one!”
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right? although, i have to say, the only thing that concerns me more than russia having nuclear weapons is a private army having them instead
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What are the chances that someone else cough NATO cough might be paying Wagner at this point?
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The GUR (Ukrainian military intelligence) allegedly has a back channel to Wagner.
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If true, then they’re really stupid. Nukes in the hands of a cultish leader of a private mercenary force? What could go wrong? I don’t see any good side here. I don’t know how this is going to play out, but this is not how anyone reasonable should have wanted Putin to be deposed.
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Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore:
The key questions in this momentous revolt against Putin r those that faced nicholas II in 1917, Nicholas 1 1825, Peter I 1698 and many other Russian tsars: 1. watch to see if any regular forces & security forces join the mutuneers. If not, this will fail…
Russian history is full of relatively small but committed units seizing power in this vast land. Not least Lenin’s Oct coup or Elizaveta 1741 or Catherine 62.Wagner may be too small to overthrow Putin. Probably.Depends if army & organs r disgusted w Putin & refuse to crush Prig
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I don’t think that Wagner will succeed in deposing Putin, but I do believe that they’ll weaken him to the point where a palace coup is virtually inevitable.
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This is going to get interesting.
Unless Putin completely crushes this, he is going to look weaker.
Crushing it means he took ~25,000 half way motivated fighters off the front lines.
Coming to some sort of agreement, or shuffling of Military leaders may get them appeased and back into Ukraine, but, again, he’s going to look weak. His military was stood up to and he backed down/compromised.
I don’t think this would spark a popular revolt, but who knows at this point! This internal conflict is great for Ukraine and will continue to build morale. The conscripts are ill trained and don’t want to be there. The mercenaries, many of them pure mother fuckers, are disgruntled and don’t want to be there. Ukraine is fighting for their homeland and have an influx of new western equipment. I hope this all adds up to a tipping point.
I watched a short video the other day about a guy who got a Mig-23 to fly, and he was saying that it took awhile to get used to the instrument panel and how everything was laid out. He said that the difference between that and US jets is the attitudes of the two militaries. Russian pilots were expected to do what they were told, and American pilots were trained to make their own decisions. I wish he gave an example, but I assume it means that instruments a US pilot would check, were less accessible to the Russian who wouldn’t need to check it.
It also made me recall how on the early spaceflight missions, pretty much everything was controlled by the ground. Yuri Gargarin, for example (IIRC), didn’t have any hand in his flight. It was all controlled by the ground and the automated systems.
Assuming this attitude carries on today, it probably contributes to Russia’s lack of ability to adjust and overcome.
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Yeah, but…is there anyone in the current Russian leadership who would be any better, really? I’d rather see the political opposition come to power, but they’re all in jail, dead, or exiled.
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Very true. Maybe not NATO, maybe someone else. Or maybe it’s just Prigozhin looking for a chance to grab power, which is the most likely
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This is putting it mildly! What a world we live in; I am glued to this story.
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I would imagine that there are a lot of oligarchs who want nothing more to put a stop to the war so they can get back to making money. Once that’s accomplished, it’s hard to say who will wind up in power, but whoever it is will be in a very precarious position.
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I wish there was. The most popular option after Putin is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
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Not to mention to stop falling out of windows.
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