Wagner troops on the outskirts of Moscow. A dozen different theories on what’s really going on. Complete chaos.
It will be days or weeks before we know what this all means.
With the control of nuclear weapons in play, this is a dangerous situation. There are worse outcomes than having Putin remain in power.
Potentially any situation could go nuclear, so while it’s possible, nearly nobody wants that. People in Russia are increasingly sick of a pointless war. Putin lets armed mercenary groups develop under oligarchs and that is a situation ripe for coups. We could have - completely new piece of shit dictator in Russian by this time next year.
To nuke Prigozhin, Putin would have to nuke Russian soil. That is not going to happen.
The fear of nukes is mostly because if Putin loses control who’s to say that Russia won’t descend into anarchy with a bunch of splinter groups taking partial control, you wouldn’t like having the Chechens or the Belarusians taking possession of a nuke, or even a small terrorist cell getting their paws on one or two of those weapons. That’s the real fear.
I Fixed It For You All, you are welcome:
“Potentially any situation could go nuclear, so while it’s possible, nearly nobody wants that.
People in the USA are increasingly sick of a pointless proxy war.
The POTUS lets armed mercenary groups develop under oligarchs and that is a situation ripe for coups.
We could have - completely new piece of shit POTUS/dictator in the USA by this time the year after next”
Nukes going off in Russia? Nah….
Somebody in Russia getting ahold of some nukes and selling them to someone else that would use them? Now that’s scary.
The fear of Chechens, Belarusian, and terrorists getting their hands on a Soviet nuke or bioweapon has been around since 1990. 33 years later and it has not happened, and it's not going to happen because a PMC wants to renegotiate his contract. There's nothing to fear, except demented old fools who have never made the right foreign policy decision in their life.
Putin recently placed nukes in Belarus
It appears Wagner has struck a deal to pull back. None of this makes sense. Why go to all this effort, with Moscow in range, only to pull back ? That must be some deal their leader was offered.
^Exile and a pardon. When Putin turned the Russian army (e.g. attack helicopters), Wagner realized they were not going to be able to pull it off. While he was justified in raging that his men were killed in a blue-on-blue attack, he realized that discretion was the better part of valor.
Putin and Prighozhin go way back. Putin was ignoring Prighozhin's complaints about Shoygu using his men as cannon fodder.
So he demonstrated just why he shouldn't be ignored. I think Prighozhin knew full well he wasn't going to truly march on Moscow. I think he wanted out without having to fight his way out.
But Prighozhin has done excellent work for Putin in Syria and Africa. He probably has enough personal leverage to keep from getting killed so long as he shed no Russian blood.
As far his actual end game that's a good question. But I suspect he handled enough truly dirty business in Syria and Africa that he can stay alive to negotiate. Too much risk that he has documents waiting to be sent around the world if he suddenly ceases to breathe.
If there were no nuclear weapons in the picture I'd be grabbing the popcorn, eager to see how this plays out. Let the assholes fight it out. But there are nukes in Russia, which makes it a little scary. In the short term it's probably good for the rest of the world for the Russians to be fighting themselves. For instance, I think it's a lot less likely that Putin uses his tactical nukes against the Prigozhin's forces in Russia than abroad. But medium to long term? cringe