HeavenlyPossumWhat are the odds Putin threatened to nuke the Wagner column (in the apparent absence of any credible conventional force that could stop Prigozhin from reaching Moscow)?
Bob Davidsonmore likely Putin and Prigozhin are in cahoots!
That seems unlikely to me but 🤷♂️
just a hypothesis. possibly solves some problems for Putin.
charli (they)@HeavenlyPossum odds are certainly better than i'd like
darcher 🦋@HeavenlyPossum Well, shit.
That would certainly explain everything that's become public so far, and it works great with Ockham's razor.
I presume that the coup attempt was legit and the absence of any *conventional* obstacle makes me wonder if this sudden resolution wasn’t the result of an *unconventional* threat.
Threatening to nuke his own country to stay in power seems perfectly consistent with Putin’s behavior.
@HeavenlyPossum Yeah, exactly. Very hard to explain the sudden reversal otherwise.
The situation reminds me a lot (because I’m a nerd like this) of Muhammad Ali’s attempt to overthrow the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s by marching on Istanbul; he was only stopped when the European powers got together and threatened to destroy him if he kept going.
@HeavenlyPossum Well that's certainly an interesting comparison. BRB have to go look some stuff up.
That said, don't you know studying actual history is terribly dangerous? Please be careful. 😉
Lol. Learning about history is indeed one of the most radicalizing things one can do!
Mordantivore@HeavenlyPossum hovering just above zero tbh
Putin has an entire military to field, even if a lot of it is tied up invading Ukraine & even Putin would be extremely reluctant to threaten to nuke Russia itself to put down a mutiny--- his rule there is in large part by ensuring the various factions have more to benefit from him than against & by inundating the populace with pro regime propaganda.
It's like with Trump threatening to bomb US cities--absolutely could happen if he failed to suppress a revolt & only had some military assets under his power, but it's difficult to imagine things escalating so rapidly to that point.
Possible, but extremely improbable imo
but then I feel like I barely know anything about Russia these days so
It’s just the speed of the advance, the apparent failure of Russian conventional forces to meaningfully stop Wagner, and the sudden reversal by Prigozhin that lead me to wonder what sort of dramatic threat might have been made to divert Prigozhin from what looked like an apparent victory.
@HeavenlyPossum I strongly suspect that Prigozhin wanted Putin to stop using Wagner as canon fodder & to compensate Wagner/him a lot more either way
It struck me as more a fascist military protest. If they really wanted to mutiny, they could've just wasted that Rostov MoD building from a distance with their tanks.
They also aren't very far from where they were stationed & the Russian military probably was busy invading Ukraine so it couldn't quickly turn around and smash Wagner. Given a few more days it definitely could
all around it is just an embarrassing clusterfuck for putin and will weaken him politically
but again
I feel like I know nothing now lol
ophiocephalic 🐍@Mordantivore @HeavenlyPossum
Just my $0.02, but it looks like there's a lot of wishful thinking and agenda-projection going on in the perception of the Russia situation, especially among the ukraine-flag crowd. Prigozhin's agenda is Prigozhin. He was being painted into a corner, now he's stronger. It seems the Russian system has degenerated into a kind of slick warlordism
Just my $0.02, but it looks like there's a lot of wishful thinking and agenda-projection going on in the perception of the Russia situation, especially among the ukraine-flag crowd. Prigozhin's agenda is Prigozhin. He was being painted into a corner, now he's stronger. It seems the Russian system has degenerated into a kind of slick warlordism
Joe Ray Golds@HeavenlyPossum The most likely explanation is thet Prigozhin overestimated the level of discontent against Putin, and realized that seizing power would bot go over well with the general Russian populace.
I dunno, when you’ve started a fight with a ruthless nuclear-armed dictator it seems like “Russian public opinion” would be pretty low on the list of concerns but maybe 🤷♂️
@HeavenlyPossum I elaborated on the idea further in a post of mine, but tldr, there isn’t enough discontent against Putin yet among the military to minimise loss of life, nor amongst the general public to hold the rest of Russia.