According to Al Jazeera, the astonishing decision by Yevgeny Prigozhin, commander of the Russian mercenary army, The Wagner Group, to withdraw forces from the Ukraine frontline and advance them on Moscow was in retaliation to Kremlin moves to rein in his power.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, reported to be a convicted criminal who, upon release from prison, in the 1990s, reinvented himself as a chef and caterer who went on to cater events in the Kremlin, which earned him the nickname “Putin’s Chef.” Fast forward and Prigozhin emerges as, somehow, having established the 50,000 strong Wagner private army, a sort of “Russian foreign legion”, many of whom, like the legion, are former convicts offered clemency in return for enlisting.
With his Wagner Group, having established its credentials in helping defeat US attempts to topple Syria’s elected government and then in opposing Ukraine’s US-sponsored forces in the Donbass, its leader, the former Kremlin chef now appears to have “cooked his own goose.”
Making himself a rebellious irritant, as Patton was to Eisenhower and as MacArthur was to Truman, only this against Russia’s military hierarchy and, by extension, so also against President Putin himself, this was never going to end well for Yevgeny Prigozhin.
And so it has proved; In a deal brokered by Belarus, the rebellious Russian mercenary commander has, in return for being allowed to move to sanctuary in neighbouring Belarus, abruptly reversed the order to march on Moscow. Nor will the troops who joined his mutiny be prosecuted, a Kremlin spokesman has announced, and Wagner Group fighters who did not take part in the mutiny will be offered contracts by the defence ministry.
President Putin called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason”. But, in allowing Prigozhin and his forces to go free, the Kremlin said Putin’s “highest goal” was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results”.
But of course, and “predictably” there will be “results” and with the very survival of the Russian Federation on the line, they may not be pretty either.
‘Ukraine’s US sponsored forces’ how ridiculous Malcolm Evans. You make it sound like Russian propaganda. Can’t you actually be objective for once! It is not only the US supporting Ukraine. It is a coalition of 50 countries including New Zealand!
Ovod good observation and comment.
Objectivity is beyond many who contribute here.
Then fuck off and don’t come back, mainly because you’re as boring as a church on Monday.
Oh,that cannot possibly be true,you read all my comments.
I support you and Ovod’s comments. Long live Ukraine.
Settle down countryboy old chap
Ovod: the citizens of the Donbass have never done anything to this country, yet our government is giving aid to the regime which has been persecuting them since 2014.
The Russian military operation didn’t come out of thin air. Take the time to acquaint yourself with what’s been going on there.
Maybe government shares the sentiment that Putin invaded Ukraine and that Wagner units were established to fight a proxy war on behalf of the Russians in the Donbas.
“…..the citizens of the Donbass have never done anything to this country, yet our government is giving aid to the regime which has been persecuting them since 2014. D’ESTERRE
What an ignorant statement.
The ones persecuting the citizens of the Donbas since 2014 are the Russian imperialist invaders and their proxy mercenary forces.
Disappearances of civilian activists and leaders were a feature of the pro-Putin Yanukovych regime. Since 2014, the policy of disappearing civil society activists and leaders was continued during Russia’s “Dirty War” in the Donbas by the Russian backed separatists and mercenary forces, and since February 24, 2022 by the Russian state forces directly.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/amid-the-dirty-war-in-ukraine-hundreds-have-disappeared/
June 26, 2014
Amid the ‘Dirty War’ in Ukraine, Hundreds Have Disappeared – and a Few Volunteers Search for Them
By Irena Chalupa
Exerpt:
Kateryna Serhatskova, a 26-year-old Russian reporter for the Ukrainian news website Ukrainska Pravda, is becoming one of the main documenters of the “dirty war” for control of the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine…..
….In the town of Horlivka, 26 miles northeast of Donetsk, rebels hold about 100 local residents, according to Viktor Maystrenko, a Russian journalist who has done research for the Open Dialog Foundation, a Warsaw-based pro-democracy and human rights group. Maystrenko is one of the volunteers working to free rebel-held captives and recently obtained the release of three of them. Horlivka has been a center of violence and intimidation, including the rebels’ abduction, killing and mutilation in April of Volodymyr Rybak, a city council member who had tried to remove the rebels’ flag from the city offices and replace it with the Ukrainian national flag.
Abductions and disappearances have been used by the forces and allies of the former president, Viktor Yanukovych, almost since the beginning of the mass protests last fall that led to his ouster in February. At one point, more than 660 people went missing amid the Kyiv protests,…..
I think it is notable that the reporter detailing these atrocities is Russian,
I challenge you D’Estere of providing a similar detailed account with the names and faces of the people and places in the Donbas where civilians were persecuted.
You won’t because you can’t. It’s total bullshit, pro-war lies and propaganda.
One of the perpetrators of these atrocities, Yegeny Prigozhin, has just admitted this fact .
OSCE report 16th March 2023.
There Pat fixed it for you.
The data that has been accumulated since the first report by the Foundation for
Democracy Studies provides ground to conclude that torture and inhumane treatment
inflicted by the Security Forces of Ukraine (SBU), by the Ukrainian armed forces, the
National Guard and other formations within the Interior Ministry of Ukraine have not
only continued but are gaining in scale and are becoming systematic.
The prisoners were electrocuted, beaten cruelly and for multiple days in a row with
different objects (iron bars, baseball bats, sticks, rifle butts, bayonet knives, rubber
batons). Techniques widely used by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces
include waterboarding, strangling with a ‘Banderist garrotte’ and other types of
strangling. In some cases prisoners, for the purposes of intimidation, were sent to
minefields and run over with military vehicles, which led to their death. Other torture
methods used by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces include bone-
crashing, stabbing and cutting with a knife, branding with red-hot objects, shooting
different body parts with small arms. The prisoners taken captive by the Ukrainian
armed forces and security forces are kept for days at freezing temperatures, with no
access to food or medical assistance, and are often forced to take psychotropic
substances that cause agony. An absolute majority of prisoners are put through mock
firing squads and suffer death and rape threats to their families.
https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/b/2/540581.pdf
With video Testimony, ALL FROM A WESTERN SOURCE.
Ir’s been widely reported, in pretty much every media outlet, that the US has spent billions of dollars on the war in Ukraine so the phrase “US sponsored forces” is entirely factually accurate.
The level of paranoia that has occurred around this war is starting to rival the Red Scare in the US in the 50s and 60s. Something we spent our lives laughing about is now repeating itself and I’m stunned how easily people are falling for it.
Doesn’t anyone remember the lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction that led to the invasion of Iraq?
I’m just astonised.
Prigozhin had sounded unhinged for some weeks. Did staying on the front lines give him shell-shock? Or had he even been bought off? How else to explain such a silly, rash decision?
The details of the “peace” agreement will become clear over weeks and perhaps months. Some say years.
Everything is not hunky dory in the Kremlin.
Let’s hope that Putin withdraws his troops form Ukraine. However, I guess that is to much to hope for.
Expect to see more unrest in the Russian Federation.
And Prigozhin will drink a radioactive cup of tea or take a fall out a window while relaxing in Belarus.
Why would Putin leave the Russian speaking people of the Donbass undefended from your Nazi buddies?
Ah let’s see…because he doesn’t give a shit about them? You can’t seriously believe Putin is some sort of saviour.
Have you actually taken the time to inform yourself on these issues?
Yep. Eugene was told by Luschenko in a call in the last 12 hours. “If you stay in Russia. You will not live for another 24hrs. Come to Belarus and have a cup of tea. I promise you it won’t be loaded with plutonium.” click!
He’s obviously not very bright. He was cut off financially because he bit the hand that fed him. Duh!
I reckon he’s dead within 6 months.
Or may be Lukeshenko feels having a bit of private army added protection for himself and or his country wouldn’t go amiss.
Short-lived but very damaging incident nonetheless. Cooked his own goose for sure.
Putin has been embarrassed by this turn of events.He couldn’t risk what may have turned into a civil war.
He’s by no means out of the swamp.
Prigozhin is not finished he has an inexhaustible flow of money from China protecting their diamond mines in Africa.
Putin beware.
Being offered sanctuary in Belarus. What could go wrong….Is the TAB offering odds on the long term plans of Mr Prigozhin. There has been a spate of unfortunate accidents in Russia and Belarus, non political we are told , where some unfortunate people have car accidents , or , their cars blow up , or they some how end up in hospital and while perhaps getting some fresh air at the window, seem to fall from the window onto the ground many floors below. That’s if they survive the radio active cup of tea . Some have no accidents at all. We are told they commit suicide…..Bugger….He should be fine…Perhaps he could cook for the Belarus President…Enjoy your amnesty Mr Prigozhin…
Perhaps he will invest in a pocket geiger counter.
Russia invades itself.
An aggressive imperialist land grab rationalised with outrageous lies with no basis in fact or relation to reality couldn’t hold, and almost guarantees such an outcome. .
Yeah those outrageous lies about the Azov battalion being Nazis as reported by BBC, CNN, TIME,Vice. You just can’t trust mainstream media today.
I’m not going to speculate on internal Russian politics as I know little and care less. What I have perceived is that whatever the outcome the war will be prosecuted and concluded on Russia’s terms. Reports from the front show no change, Russian arms hold the initiative.
Many people in Russia now know they have been lied to!
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s ridiculous palace coup attempt has petered out, likely never to be reignited.
But Prigozhin’s revelations that the Kremlin’s reasons for the war have no basis in fact, will have lasting effect on the popular support for the war inside Russia and on the Russian Federation’s ability to prosecute the war.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2023/jun/25/ben-jennings-on-vladimir-putin-and-the-wagner-uprising-in-russia-cartoon
You do certainly know little about Russia NJ! Would a postage stamp suffice?
This whole Wagner Coup thing is a misdirection, a Staged event, cooked up by Putin & Prigozhin, they are both laughing at the West! The Goal was to move Russian troops, using the Wagner PMC Coup attempt as cover to move thousands of troops to shore up their Border flanks without raising NATO scrutiny which has happened! And where’s Wagner, being incorporated into the Russian MIC! That’s why no one was killed, no PMC Militiamen punished & Prigozhin granted sanctuary in Belarus escaping punishment for Treason! I wouldn’t be surprised if Prigozhin ripped off the CIA & US Govt for millions for faking this Coup attempt! Putin’s a genius!
“Putin’s Chef Cooks His Own Goose” MALCOLM EVANS
…. for… wait for it…. telling the truth.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2023/06/russia-ukraine-war-based-on-lies-wagner-mercenary-chief-says.html
“There was nothing out of the ordinary happening on February 24… the Defence Ministry is trying to deceive society and the President and tell us a story about how there was crazy aggression from Ukraine, and that they were planning to attack us with the whole of NATO,” Prigozhin said, calling the official version “a beautiful story”.
“….The war wasn’t needed to demilitarise or denazify Ukraine.”
Sitting on a chair with a giant black Wagner flag behind him, Prigozhin said the war had also been needed to enrich the ruling elite who, he said, was not satisfied with the commercial potential of part of Ukraine’s Donbas region Moscow seized control of in 2014 via a proxy separatist force.
“The task was to divide material assets [in Ukraine],” he said. “There was massive theft in the Donbas, but they wanted more.”
No doubt some pro-war diehards will still keep flogging the Kremlin’s false narratives, in their continuing effort to justify Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine, denying all the atrocities committed committed to achieve this imperialist aim
Prigozhin has been caught out telling so many lies that he might even be worse than Pat o Dea,,, or Propaganda Pat as he’s accurately known around here
“some examples are, he claimed that the Russian MOD is lying and the AFU have in fact broken through the Russian defenses and reached up to Tokmak. The problem is, the very next day (today) upwards of three separate Russian troop units in different cities of Sadove and Urazhnoe released videos proving that, not only do they control those cities which Prigozhin claimed the AFU had already swept through, but that the front was calm and there wasn’t even any fighting anywhere near them, let alone any fantasy breakthroughs of which he speaks.”
“Keep in mind, this is after already being caught in such lies multiple times which I’ve reported on recently. For instance, when Prigozhin said that Russian troops had lost Berkhovka at the NW corner of Bakhmut, only to be refuted the very next day by Russian 200th brigade troops inside Berkhovka proving they have not gone anywhere.”
“The other big one not listed above, was that he said the “real reason” for the SMO was that Russian oligarchs need this war. This is so contrary to the truth that even Strelkov had to refute it with a post where he said it’s the opposite. The liberal regime and oligarchs in Russia would do anything to end the SMO and continue their merry deals with their favored “partners” of the West. To suggest that the SMO started because “the oligarchs” wanted it is simply preposterous. ”
Pat o Dea ,,,, Hates the Russian People
hates the Russian People
hates the Russian people
When it comes to Azov, Aidar, Right Sector, Kracken etc ,,,, Pat see’s neither Nazis,,, or their crimes against Donbass Russian people.
I think this is how he does it ,,, https://youtu.be/OsXrpxo4uC0?t=17
B Awakesky * June 26, 2023 at 12:31 pm
“Prigozhin has been caught out telling so many lies that he might even be worse than Pat o Dea,,, or Propaganda Pat as he’s accurately known around here” AWAKESKY
By ‘around here’ do you mean around the water cooler at your troll factory?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxSRXBf1OOM&ab_channel=NBCNews
And I think it is worth repeating that Prigozhin is not in trouble with the Kremlin for telling lies, the Kremlin has no problem with liars, they actively hire them. What the Kremlin has a problem with, is one of their own telling the truth.
Belarus has come up twice in recent days – firstly with Russian nukes and now with the Wagner head (and maybe some of his troops and/or military hardware).
I’m not sure what to make of this – are they related or just co-incidental? If it’s a planned move, then is it defensive to stop an attack on Belarus or an offensive move to set up another front in the war, perhaps Kyiv even. I’m sure many armchair generals will “know” the answer (spoiler alert – they don’t) but I’ll just wait to see how this plays out.
Odds on Prigozhin falling out a Minsk window?
You seriously think Prigozhin will actually travel to Minsk? He may well be safer sleeping in a tent in Bakhmut.
Already arrived Johan
Your propaganda sources take longer to catch up with reality
Source. Lukashenko?
Yeah, we can trust him…..
It makes a lot of sense for Prigozhin to hide in plain sight. He clearly is that stupid!?
To put it in usa terms ,,,, Prigozhin seemed to be ‘Going Postal’,,,,, but doing it as the CEO of a friggin Private Military Company!!.,,,
In Bakhmut the Russian MoD/regular armed forces suffered the barest minimum of losses and degradation to it’s forces in this extended heavy conflict…. Could the Russian MoD have strangled supplys to Wagner at the end ,,, weakening them and encouraging Ukraine to keep feeding men and resources into a lost cause meat-grinder ,,, Who knows, but Ukraine did keep fighting well past the point of it being hopeless ,,, The concentration of fire upon them in the last couple of square kilometers they held must have been horrendous.
I’ve heard figures of 30,000 casualties for Wagner, when for the first time in modern history they as a Private Military Company defeated a large powerful, de-facto-NATO, National army in a bitter protracted battle ,,, his deep involvement in that obviously made Prigozhin a dangerous man to sack…
It literally was ‘going postal’ madness from a soon to be demoted CEO,,,and doomed to failure ,, and so it was but luckily without bloodshed between the wagner renegades and the Akhmat forces sent to sort them out,,,, both forces are proven battle winners and they have not given Ukraine a victory by fighting each other.
I also have my doubts about the proportion of Wagner fighters backing their non-military man and side-lined Boss … over the Supreme commander.
They Have a Contract ….. with the company,, with the motherland. …. 3min10sec in https://www.bitchute.com/video/eKUPd7Eetlyg/
I strongly suspect the majority would follow/obey Papa Pu (Putin) ,,,, which had me originally suspecting it was a psyop/false flag meant to project weakness and encourage more futile doomed offensive attacks to be ordered by Ukraine/NATO leaders wasting more men and weapons
But now I think the CEO has had a GP level mental break ,,,, and having a patriotic PMC is a built in semi-protection from the whole organisation going rouge against the nation/motherland, should the head go bad.
***********************************************
If a civil war had started in Russia ,,, This would be a Hail Mary event for the ‘pro-Ukrainers’,,, and the Ukraine/NATO Neocons are gutted this did not eventuate….
….. every escalation and failure of the western neocons nudges the hands of the nuclear war clock ever closer to midnight … now being a mere 90 seconds away from a MAD cessation to our world,, a couple of ‘success’ from these warmongering chicken-hawk neocon idiots could bring that ashy type of victory John Kennedy warned us about before the C.I.A killed him.
Filling us with propaganda and getting it wrong in all the bogus ‘bringing democracy’ wars to the middle east has a total different level of consequences when warmongers are gambling to ‘defeat Russia’.
These are dangerous, dishonest and incompetent people we are following https://rumble.com/v2v7jny-system-update-show-102.html
The present antics of our media is dirty Politics on war steroids ,,, some people still believe the propaganda news headlines that “Key pledges PM’s salary to charity”… the bullshit is 10 X worse now
Russians are not our enemy .. https://youtu.be/kPPtux1Ib2k?t=404
Good links, good stuff, B A. I think he’s been turned myself, as this recent Mr Ritter interview suggests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5D5MNYiWJQ. Ritter points out that Prigozhin is echoing too many Western talking points for this to be a wholly natural affair.
As for Wagner, think they are a private army in name only, more of a state construct created to give government a bit of ‘plausible deniability’ type political hi jinx should things go pear shaped, albeit on the international stage more so than this local one, bearing in mind that Prigozhin was always moaning about not getting enough supplies as well. A typically private entity would source/buy their own supplies after all.
“Yevgeny Prigozhin, reported to be a convicted criminal who, upon release from prison, in the 1990s, reinvented himself as a chef and caterer who went on to cater events in the Kremlin, which earned him the nickname “Putin’s Chef.” Fast forward and Prigozhin emerges as,, having established the 50,000 strong Wagner private army, a sort of “Russian foreign legion”, many of whom, like the legion, are former convicts offered clemency in return for enlisting.“
This makes me wonder if any western journalists have the slightest clue.
Perhaps Mr Evans is being facetious?
Prigozhin didn’t somehow just knock up a 50,000 strong private army of mercenaries, any more than the average Russian Oligarch bought an oil company with a few rubles they found in a shoebox.
Read books like Red Notice or Putin’s People, then you’ll understand how he’s got the army, and what their purpose is.
I would say odds are Putin is behind this. If he isn’t and Prigozhin has genuinely gone rogue, as previous callers have stated, his days are numbered. Odds of seeing in 2024 are extremely thin.
I called my tarot card reader, she said she see’s him falling from the 8th floor of a hotel in Vienna.
We are at war with Wagner Group
Oops! We are not at war with Wagner Group
George Orwell on the nature of totalitarian states’ propaganda. Where Big Brother can say one day we are at war with this enemy and the next day say we are not at war with this enemy.
O’Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.
‘There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?’
‘Yes.’
And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment — he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps — of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O’Brien’s had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth,
I guess this is how it must be for the Russian media propagandists and their Western lickspittles. Truly believing one thing one day and then struggling to try and believe the exact opposite thing the next day
Shades of Big Brother
https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/russian-state-tv-anchors-aghast-191309608.html
Exerpts:
….Solovyov seemed caught between a rock and a hard place, having to justify Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to let Prigozhin and Wagner walk free, despite having advocated for the death penalty for less grievous offenses.
During the first post-mutiny broadcast of Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, propagandists focused on praising Putin’s infinite wisdom for ending the revolt in a speedy manner…..
….“On this day, we found out a lot about our own country. We turned out to be much wiser than anyone might have thought… Yesterday, our leadership demonstrated strength and wisdom. Most importantly, it demonstrated strength without a bloodlust.”
But State Duma member Andrey Gurulyov, retired deputy Commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District, was too flabbergasted about Prigozhin’s exploits to go along with the propaganda narrative. After letting out a long, exasperated sigh, Gurulyov said: “I am firmly convinced that during wartime, traitors have to be destroyed! Today, no matter who says what, whatever fairy tales they are telling, a bullet to the forehead is the sole salvation for Prigozhin and [Dmitry] Utkin…..
….Lieutenant-General Evgeny Buzhinsky added: “For me, what happened yesterday was completely surreal.” Like Gurulyov, he was bothered by the promise of impunity. Referring to reports that Wagner fighters shot down several military helicopters and a plane, Buzhinsky stressed: “Someone has to be held accountable for the deaths of pilots who have perished.”
A this point a thinking man might conclude, if anybody had an interest in Mr. Prigozhin meeting with an untimely and nasty death, for the great “evil-Putin evil-Russia” propaganda opportunity it provides, it would the US/NATO/NAZI-Ukraine triumvirate that’s losing this war,
“…Mr. Prigozhin meeting with an untimely and nasty death, for the great “evil-Putin evil-Russia” propaganda opportunity it provides. MALCOLM EVANS
Putin spares the life of a brutal war criminal is not evidence of Putin’s decency, no matter how much you claim it is.
A thinking man might conclude that firing a missile into a pizza restaurant might be better indication of Putin’s evil than letting a brutal war criminal walk free
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/27/deadly-russian-missile-strike-on-busy-pizza-restaurant-in-kramatorsk
Four children among 11 killed in missile strike on Ukraine pizza restaurant
At least 56 people injured when Russian rocket hit packed restaurant in eastern city of Kramatorsk
I was in a bar with a marine and a retired NZDF member and the Kiwi soilder was explaining Rugby union to the marine. Some people you look into there eyes and when you look into the eyes of a U.S marine you can tell they know how to fuck shit up but when the marine looked into the Kiwi soldiers eyes there was that recognition like oh fuck this guy really knows how to fuck shit up.
War Is A Racket – YouTube Book Reading
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https://bit.ly/War-Is-A-Racket-Chapter3
https://bit.ly/War-Is-A-Racket-Chapter4
https://bit.ly/War-Is-A-Racket-Chapter5
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War Is A Racket
https://bit.ly/War-Is-A-Racket-Gen-Smedley-Butler
Is it just me, or has no one noticed that Belarus just let an entire mercenary army across their border like it wouldn’t have the potential to become a coup de etat problem later?
I liked Putin’s former speechwriter’s breakdown of it and a guy on National Radio, I think, this morning. Russians like truth and rightness as much as us.
The elite are all bandits and they’ve been exposed, and like anyone, Putin doesn’t like his miniscular parts flapping in the wind.
There was a doco on Windsor Palace 20 years ago where Putin came to stay with the Queen. It disgusted me even then knowing the way he probably came to power — a probable KGB bombing of apartments killing 200 or so which they blamed on the Chechens. Like allowing Idi Amin to room with our Queen.
There’s a lot going on behind the scenes in Russia that we’re not seeing. It is now apparent that at least one Army General was backing him and has subsequently been ‘disappeared’.
One wonders how many others were behind this. In essence this war is bad for business if you’re a Russian oligarch; and that’s all the oligarchs care about – the cashflow.