Mercenary Warlord turning on you wasn’t on many Russia/Ukraine bingo cards yet here we are!
For those who aren’t following the news right now, there looks like an attempted coup is under way in Russia and that will have enormous geopolitical consequences.
Prigozhin seems to have determined some attack on him yesterday was directly from the Russian Military after he said Putin had been deceived by them for invading in the first place. After the attack on his mercenary army, he vowed to drive straight to Moscow to take over the Ministry of Defence and there is a claim he has shot down a Russian Military helicopter and his forces are using the M4 motorway to Moscow.
Unless this is all a very advanced psy-op – shit just exploded and there’s no going back now – the MoD can only accept his death by firing squad and he seems hell bent on leading a populist revolution against the MoD.
Where Putin is right now matters more than ever.
If he is in his doomsday bunker…
Putin Reveals Existence Of New Nuclear Command Bunker
Russia already has two very large bunker complexes built underneath mountains, including one housing a key nuclear doomsday command system.
…we should start getting a tad concerned.
Sorry to interrupt your weekend.
As you all were.
UPDATE: Prigozhin blinked and the latest news is that he has now turned his forces around and are returning to base after a deal brokered by Lukashenko. This gets more ridiculous by the day.
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Yeah
Now might be the time to worry who comes after Putin(after all the hand wringing about how Putin must go )
Beware what you wish for
I can assure you it won’t be anyone dovish
Putin gets criticized in Russia most for being too much of a pussy
Prigozhin wants to go all out and declare all out war
Mostly he pissed off for potentially losing his meal ticket
Putin ordered that all mercenaries and volunteers must register with the MOD
Prigozhin said no way
And here we are
The same exact thing is happening to Zelensky in Kyiv. The real neo nazis don’t want him to run in the election they’re preparing for. They’re pissed he lied to them about him signing the Peace Treaty with Russia last year in February in Turkey.
Prigozhin certainly does appear to have lost the plot, unsurprising when you have a bi polar leading the meat grinder. System of a down so to speak.
Coup? more a storm in a tea cup as a warrant is already put out for his arrest, Wagner has no change against the full might of the Russian military.
Expect Ukraine to have a major push into Bakhmut with the following of more catastrophic losses.
Martyn – CIA pushing attempted coup perhaps?
Prigozhin said there was no reason to have invaded in the first place, and Putin was duped. Interesting that these guys have no issue with going off to kill people when they have zero belief in the reason. Guess it’s all about earning more money.
I wonder if Putin will call Martin Sheen out of retirement to go and take him out.
Mercenaries are literally guns for hire, and thus have no genuine allegiance to anyone. It wouldn’t surprise me if the CIA/NATO just bought them off by paying them more than Russia. I gather the Roman Empire had a similar problem when they ran out of Romans to recruit for their ever growing army – once the money ran out to pay them, they turned on their employer.
First.
Seriously though, as “interesting” as this is, I would love to have a few years of “boring”.
Jolly good, Dr Strange–Bradbury…
It does not sound good which ever way you slice the salted fish and pickles. Oligarchs duking it out, and none of them really supporting the Russian working class. US Imperialism will be lapping it up.
This is amusing, but what is really interesting is the lack of censorship Russia has displayed around the entire “mercenary warlord” affair. That chap mouths off to his hearts content and anyone that is interested, gets to hear all about it. In this age of heavy handed State censorship, you would think that the State known for its iron fist control of one and all, would be the one clamping down on dissent the most. Funny ole world,
It’s just madness. Knowing people in Kyiv and having Russian friends and colleagues here in NZ the situation is just such beyond belief. There are no winners here.
Agreed Vlad!
How are you going to blame National for this? I cannot wait to hear your reasoning.
It was Seymore!
Nah, it’s just a PMC hikoi.
FFS the rugby is about to start.
Seriously though, if the missile strike story is true, the Russian army made a big mistake in not killing Prigozhin, now it’s all go.
Russian Military infighting was prophesied here by Ben Morgan the resident military blogger/son of NZs biggest cat hater to give credit where it’s due.
Let’s hope it means a quicker end to the war.
My neck is out on the “very advanced Psy-op” option. Putin and Pregozhin are supposed to be close friends. The idea that the regular Russian military opened fire deliberately on Vagner is too much to swallow. And there isn’t any violence going on around this so called takeover of Rostov .
I suspect it is a ploy to encourage Ukraine to re-energise their counteroffensive a instead of reverting to a defensive stance which would be more costly for the Russian forces and prolong the butchery.
D J S
Prigozhin is a nationalist. He’s off the chain. He’s gunna get taken out.
He’s delusional and thinking of the 1917 Russian Revolution because he’s lost his place at the table.
It all started to fall apart when he started to attack the Russian Military bosses for not doing what he said. They starved him of ammo and new recruits because they saw this coming.
They removed him from Bakmuht and cut him loose.
Now he’s having a hissy and pretty much has signed his own death warrant.
Note that Prighozin hasn’t criticised Putin, just Shoigu. He is claiming that the war was started because Putin was fed incorrect information by the military.
So my take on this is that he is setting up an excuse for his mate Putin and heaping all the blame on the military. This gives Putin political cover for a withdrawal from Ukraine.
Andrew I think you are spot on.
It is a case of watch this space in my opinion.
If you go for the king…..DONT MISS!!!!
Only silly people are getting excited over this. I hope this is a Putin plan to eliminate some of the pro-zionist oligarch factions, but it’s probably largely irrelevant. Russia is going to be just as successful in exterminating the filthy zionist dictator Zelensky’s unfortunate conscripts as they were a month ago.
I am afraid your conspiracy driven hopes will be dashed. It has given Ukraine much more chance of winning
“Unity is power”.
There is an undercurrent in the Kremlin.
Thinking this lot will be welcomed back by parts of the Russian army with open arms… (by many reports they were received with open arms by parts of the Russian army) …. they were only ever a tool and soon the Chechnya military group will also get the message.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Putin and everyone else in and around the Kremlin will be looking over their shoulders nervously. Expect to hear more about people falling out of windows. Warning: Clear all pavements, falling objects.
This cannot be good for morale.
Still living in lalaland, Mo.
What’s the world coming to, when we can no longer trust the integrity of russian mercenaries. Vlad may have a case, he could put to Fair Go. If he’s paying them, and they arn’t doing what he wants, this maybe a tort issue.
Putin did refer the matter to Fair Go and they arranged for a summer house in Belarus for Putin’s Chef.
And everyone lived happily ever after……
Well that was a fizzer.
As predicted, it was a hikoi.
When you are having terms dictated to you around what your PMC can do, and you have parent company finances involved, and you’re in the middle of a war with mercs your main card, you can only play your main card to get what you want. Which was a sweet retirement deal. Loud fuss, golden handshake.