I’d be shocked if a genuinely better person rose to the top; but getting someone acutely aware that domestic politics are kill-or-die, while Ukraine can simply be walked away from, seems much more plausible.
Similarly, finding someone who is genuinely in favor of not being a belligerent imperial power seems unlikely(even a lot of the opposition don’t fit that criterion); but just about anyone finding that purging the army until it won’t kill them is vastly higher priority than trying to strengthen it for international adventures or as a hedge against Atlanticist boogiemen seems highly likely.
Agreed; walking away from Ukraine would be easier for a Russian leader of any political stripe who is not Putin himself because they can frame it as his mistake rather than their own. Putin is the one person who can’t walk away from the conflict without looking like an immensely weakened fool.
Moscow’s mayor warns that traffic could be restricted and declares Monday a non-working day as rebelling mercenaries with the private military company Wagner move closer to the capital.
The Wagner Group, a military group of 50,000 mercenaries and former allies of Putin, has taken up arms against the Russian President. Military vehicles surround the center of Moscow, with planes and tanks filling the streets. There is talk of a coup against Putin.
“Today is casual monday here in Moscow so that explains why there are folks in fatigues carrying sledgehammers. They’re actually happy construction workers.”
Belarus president says Progzhin accepted de-escalation proposal
The office of Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko just announced that Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin accepted a proposal to “stop the movement of armed persons of the Wagner company on the territory of Russia and take further steps to de-escalate tensions,” the president’s office said, with similar reporting in Russian news outlets.
The statement said that Vladimir Putin briefed Lukashenko in the morning and, with his approval, Lukashenko held negotiating talks with Prigozhin.
“Negotiations continued throughout the day. As a result, they came to agreements on the inadmissibility of unleashing a bloody massacre on the territory of Russia,” the statement read.
Wagner nor Prigozhin has not commented on the negotiations.
Prigozhin says it’s over:
“They were going to dismantle PMC Wagner. We came out on 23 June to the March of Justice. In a day, we walked to nearly 200km away from Moscow. In this time, we did not spill a single drop of blood of our fighters. Now, the moment has come when blood may spill. That’s why, understanding the responsibility for spilling Russian blood on one of the sides, we are turning back our convoys and going back to field camps according to the plan.”
It’s difficult to see what “safety/security guarantees” Prigozhin would trust or Putin would be willing to give him at this point; Putin surely isn’t going to allow him to keep his private army - the only real guarantee of safety Prigozhin has.
I’m sure Navalny’s better than Putin and Prigozhin, but that’s a fairly low bar to clear. I sort of expect that if he comes into power, he’ll pull an Aung San Suu Chi… same repression under a sham democracy ripe for overthrow by a more strongly authoritarian figure.
It’s unfortunate for Ukraine if the orcs aren’t going to fight each other. But maybe they were able to take advantage of this momentary retreat to make it hard for Wagner to return to their previous positions.
