So what are the chances that Prigozhin was blackout drunk yesterday, woke up in the morning and was like “How the fuck did I end up in Rostov? My men are where? Fuck you, my men are in Moscow! Seriously, where are they?”
Like that explains it about as well as anything else, right?
Think mutiny overall is a better description of what happened here. Still a lose-lose situation though. Putin looks awfully weak as a result.
Russian Twitter this morning thinks this was all a ruse so that Wagner troops could move into position to take Kyiv without anyone noticing. Seems mostly like huffing hopium, but the whole ordeal is so weird I can’t rule anything out.
Think I missed this in the drama, crazy they shot down half a dozen helicopters and a pretty serious looking airplane
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1673052618656997377?cxt=HHwWgoCzmcKf8LcuAAAA
Maybe they have different numbers in Cyrillic, but that looks like 75217, not 75917. Is he sure he’s got the right plane?
Edit: Never mind, If you zoom in you can see it’s a 9 and not a 2.
I honestly think this might be close to the truth, except that apparently US intelligence had assessed that something like this could be coming for several days leading up to it, so who knows.
So are the Russians on the front lines in disarray or what? Are we going to see some big gains soon?
Something I read made it sound Wagner role had been pretty diminished to none existent last month so I don’t think necessarily would have any immediate direct effects.
Although I’m sure would have some more intangible impact on morale or potentially other commanders starting to hatch their own schemes?
That seems absurd given you know they could have just went to Belarus on their own accord lol
But sounds like they are actually headed there
https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1673326118659579907?cxt=HHwWhoCzgajP7LguAAAA
Wagner troops abandoning Bakhmut after months of getting slaughtered there to then take up a position in south central Belarus would look awfully suspicious to the Ukrainians if it weren’t for the coup attempt though. Now no one will see them coming!
I dunno man. It seems stupid, but so does calling off a coup half way to Moscow. I can’t rule out anything for being too stupid.
They’re not attacking UKR from Belarus. I know it looks close to Kyiv on a map, but what those maps leave out is that what’s inbetween them is terrible terrain to maneuver through that is without a doubt under very close surveillance because of the possibility of Belarus invading. 8000 troops wouldn’t be enough even if that were the plan.
My money’s all in on FSB texting Prigozhin pictures of his wife/girlfriend/kids tied up and gagged at a black site somewhere. But, surely he would’ve thought of this before he went all-out coup. Very strange.
Yeah that’s got a ton of equity, but it’s also possible he just knows he can go hide in some remote part of Belarus surrounded by the 8,000 most critical/loyal Wagner people until Putin gets got by someone else.
The reason he started this was they were going to dissolve Wagner into the regular Russian military, and that would mean Prig would be basically powerless + had run his mouth a lot. There’s a good chance he probably correctly viewed the liquidation of Wagner as a death sentence for himself personally.
Then he takes the first viable off ramp most likely after basically being forced to make the coup play.
Yeah seems like that’s an obvious sort of thing you would either plan for or knowingly not care about due to being some sort of psychopath.
I wonder if he had some reason to think important generals were going to back him and didn’t happen so knew he was fucked and maybe stashing Wagner in Belarus to distract Ukraine was enough of a deal for Putin to let him live?
Now he straight up trolling the Russian military?? This remains so bizarre
https://twitter.com/Faytuks/status/1673342814778793992?cxt=HHwWkIC95ZOb9LguAAAA
Honestly the chances that Prig isn’t a psychopath are pretty low. Dude’s done some extremely dark things for a non-psychopath.
This game won’t be over until Prig or Putin is dead though. That’s just how this goes now. Neither one can ever trust the other one to remain breathing.
As for Prig now trolling the Russian military… my guess is that he’s pretty physically safe right now and is now back to doing his very best to delegitimize his political foes.
Mark Warner (D-VA), a member of the Gang of Eight, joins Andrea Mitchell with new information on the whereabouts of Prigozhin. “I understand, literally, as I was coming on air that he is, says he’s in Minsk,” Warner says. “This is just reports," he clarifies, "that he is in a one of the only hotels in Minsk that doesn’t have any windows
The falling out of windows thing is so weird, same with the poison, just shoot them?
I think it’s a little bit of aspect of plausible deniability as ridiculous as sounds? Like Russia pretends to be an actual lawful government, have legislature, during coup we have generals saying now remember the President is the only lawful person to choose commanders, they trot Navalny/Griner to court hearings and let them have lawyers/etc.
I was talking to polish guy down the street who lived through the communist days there about Russia war and he said Russia does a lot of confusing things to outsiders until you remember two things about how things works there
1- They just keeping tell the same lie until it seems true
2- They always have a plan but they are always very clumsy