Is this for real?

Is Russia cracking, or is this story a crock?

15 comments:

E Hines said...

There is this, that seems real enough: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672314259907158028

I'm not sure Russia is beginning to crack. This is a dispute between Prygozhin and Putin, and it's not helping the barbarian, but it's not a harbinger of disaster.

Eric Hines

Christopher B said...

Whatever the outcome, it's unlikely to change Russian actions in the mid to long term though it might cause a short term disruption (channel a Peter Zeihan take).

Grim said...

It sounds legit. I don’t agree that it’s unlikely to change things; it sounds like it realistically might.

E Hines said...

Turns out it's likely to be more serious than the French army mutiny in WWI. Wagner forces apparently are on the M4 headed for Moscow and exchanging sporadic fire with regular army units en route.

Eric Hines

Anonymous said...

Probably fake and gay and reported by perverted satanic kid touchers….. just like Elections

Greg

Grim said...

I don’t think Wagner has a lot of gay employees.

Christopher B said...

Grim, I fully agree it's going to be significant.. Just saw a blurb on Instapundit that Putin has left the building. There's going to be a power vacuum and a struggle for the top spot, and that will hopefully cause a fair amount of paralysis that will benefit the Ukrainians and others who attracted Putin's attention. Nobody who replaces Putin is going to be pro-Western, democratic, or content to sit inside Russia's current borders however .

E Hines said...

A friend of mine, Claire Berlinski, puts out a newsletter, The Cosmopolitan Globalist, and she has a sober analysis of this (now starting to get dated) here: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/cp/130673380 .

Whether Putin has left for St Petersburg (a claim I've seen) is questionable. The same reports are saying Putin is still in the Kremlin doing his job. I lean toward the latter; I don't see Putin as such a coward as to cut and run at the first sign of trouble.

Regarding that trouble: apparently, Prigozhin has agreed to return his troops "to their camps" under a deal brokered by Lukashenko. To the extent that's true, and if so, to the extent the deal includes at least some of what Prigozhin has claimed he wants, that makes his move closer to the French army rebellion than seemed a few hours ago.

Eric Hines

Assistant Village Idiot said...

These things are often both.

Dad29 said...

As usual, the British press ran with "Putin Flees". They are a very reliable MI6 publicity vehicle.

Which raises the question: how much money did Wagner Group take from CIA/MI6 to pull this stunt?

Surely, he did not think he would be successful in invading Moscow.

Texan99 said...

I find myself wondering whether any deal to call this off could be for real. Whatever he's been promised, he's got to have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel from now on, and Putin can't be thrilled about how weak this has left him looking, either. If's there's a deep strategy, I don't get it.

james said...

Nothing makes a lot of sense to me, but the nearest to something rational is that Prig looked at the Russian army around him and figured that he had a good chance of getting the support of enough of the rest to make a coup work. Maybe a bit of believing his own press releases too. Then when he started to learn that the praetorian guard was going to be quite a bit tougher than he expected, he negotiated. I assume that he will head to earth somewhere far away from Belarus and stay away from high windows.

Or maybe people just don't act rationally all the time, and he wound up caught up in events he started.

Dad29 said...

Then there's this: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/06/25/sunday-talks-anthony-blinken-spins-a-tale-of-woe-for-vladimir-putin/#more-248140

The author strongly hints that he is VERY knowledgeable about Priggy.

Grim said...

The stories thus far floated don’t make sense. I’m not sure what the truth is, but it’s not any of these tales.

james said...

Or: Even clever people can get dementia, or have an off day and make some colossal blunder they can't back out of.