Literally everyone of any importance in Russia basically told the Wagnerites to listen to Putin and stand down. Even people in the street went up to them and asked them to come to their senses. The fact that this didn’t get violent is a testament to both the maturity of the Russian society in general, and the confidence of the Russian government in being in complete control as well as their ability to remain calm and not react emotionally or rashly in a crisis.
This was literally the best possible outcome. It would have only played into the hands of Russia’s enemies for anyone to try and stop the Wagnerites using force. That would have escalated into a total shitshow and would have cost Russia valuable equipment and manpower. It was vital for everyone to remain calm and do nothing that could escalate into real violence. The fry cook got nothing except for being allowed to go into exile and not be imprisoned or killed…for now.
The unity that this little temper tantrum showed exists in Russia really pours cold water on any hopes the West may have had for a real coup. The West will of course try to salvage whatever they can out of it, they will try to twist the narrative to claim that this supposedly shows that Putin is weak because he didn’t crush the mutineers with force, because he showed leniency and restraint. But that little PR win will be short lived and is ultimately a poor consolation prize considering this basically confirmed that whatever hopes they may have had for their strategy of drawing out the war until just maybe some black swan event happens in Russia that will lead to the collapse of the war effort are essentially dead.
This was their best chance of trying to precipitate an internal fracture by exploiting a crisis created by what can only be described as the mental breakdown of a degenerate lowlife with an overinflated ego, all while Ukie psyops were working overtime playing up grievances and disseminating fakes inflating the appearance of serious internal conflicts, and they failed. It turned out that the overwhelming majority of Russians - including all government and military power structures, and even the majority of Wagner - didn’t take the bait and the whole gambit fizzled out.
The fact that the Kremlin prevailed so quickly and decisively, and most importantly without loss of life, and minimal property damage and disruption to civilian life, has just massively increased the stability of the state. Another beneficial side effect is that a number of western assets will also have been burned and many fifth columnists have exposed themselves. The FSB will be busy for the next few weeks looking very closely into anyone who was a bit too enthusiastic about supporting the mutiny. There will be purges that much is sure.
And finally, this whole episode will lead to the general enthusiasm for the concept of PMCs being somewhat lessened which is always a good thing. Mercenaries are yet again proven to be unreliable scum. Russia will almost certainly incorporate them much more tightly and with much greater oversight and control into the official armed forces now to prevent other similar episodes occurring in the future, which is good for discipline and general morale.
Do you seriously believe that Lukashenko is just some random third party here? This was a way to provide a way out for Prigozhin and diffuse the situation.
I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make here to be honest. Kremlin found a way to resolve the situation without bloodshed, and where Prigozhin was removed from wagner while preserving wagner as an effective organization. Wagner is in fact now signing contracts with the MoD, so yes it is directly under the control of the MoD going forward. Basically, Russia managed to resolve the situation in the best way possible.
If that’s what you genuinely believe then what else is there to tell you. I also love how you just made up a whole bunch of stuff like Prigozhin’s troops going to Belarus. You could totally get a job at one of US propaganda rags writing nonsense all day.
Luka was almost certainly acting on behalf of the Kremlin because for image purposes the Kremlin could not be seen to be the ones making the offer of leniency to traitors, they needed to be the bad cop to Lukashenko’s good cop. In the interest of avoiding a dangerous escalation Luka was used as an ostensible (but not really) “third party” to give the leaders of the mutiny who had backed themselves into a corner a way to still get out of this with their lives so that they wouldn’t fight to the death and take valuable rank and file soldiers with them.
We don’t know what the terms were exactly, we’ll have to wait and see, but from what has been openly stated at least there is no indication that any of the demands of the mutineers were conceded to, personnel changes were not even discussed (imo there was never a snowball’s chance in hell of the government agreeing to that, can you imagine how bad it would be for discipline to allow some uppity mercs to dictate who the commanders of the armed forces are? it would be an enormous violation of the chain of command!), and the integration of Wagner into the official armed forces has only accelerated.
On the whole i think this was unavoidable at some point because the contradiction of giving so much power and prominence to a mercenary group was always going to create conflict, but the way it was handled was just about the optimal way to do it and Russia will come out of this stronger. There will be some who will say that Russia should have foreseen this and not allowed it to come this far in the first place, and maybe that is true, but maybe it was also good it happened the way it did because it offers an opportunity for a more thorough cleanse and a more decisive break with previous policy toward PMCs.
More consolidation under the official state power structures is a good thing for when communists take over again. Mercenaries with too much influence and autonomy would be a nasty problem to deal with. And at the very least the image of Wagner and especially that of certain personalities involved with it is irreversibly tarnished in the eyes of the Russian public, and again i can’t say that that is bad, they were getting too full of themselves and starting to have a negative morale impact by denigrating the performance of the regular armed forces without whom they could never have even operated the way they did to begin with.
You make some good points but I don’t think a lack of an attack signals a lack of support. Wagner doesn’t seem like a junior to be trifled with, even if it was only a portion of the unit that headed to Moscow.
It doesn’t make much sense to me for e.g. police to go vigilante and try to stop Wagner on the way up. It would make sense for an order to organise a defence to be coordinated beyond ‘everyone between Ukraine and Moscow needs to individually try to stop Wagner’. If this had turned really bloody within Russia, I imagine the plan would be to ensure a quick victory and to plan for a defense where that was possible.
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Literally everyone of any importance in Russia basically told the Wagnerites to listen to Putin and stand down. Even people in the street went up to them and asked them to come to their senses. The fact that this didn’t get violent is a testament to both the maturity of the Russian society in general, and the confidence of the Russian government in being in complete control as well as their ability to remain calm and not react emotionally or rashly in a crisis.
This was literally the best possible outcome. It would have only played into the hands of Russia’s enemies for anyone to try and stop the Wagnerites using force. That would have escalated into a total shitshow and would have cost Russia valuable equipment and manpower. It was vital for everyone to remain calm and do nothing that could escalate into real violence. The fry cook got nothing except for being allowed to go into exile and not be imprisoned or killed…for now.
The unity that this little temper tantrum showed exists in Russia really pours cold water on any hopes the West may have had for a real coup. The West will of course try to salvage whatever they can out of it, they will try to twist the narrative to claim that this supposedly shows that Putin is weak because he didn’t crush the mutineers with force, because he showed leniency and restraint. But that little PR win will be short lived and is ultimately a poor consolation prize considering this basically confirmed that whatever hopes they may have had for their strategy of drawing out the war until just maybe some black swan event happens in Russia that will lead to the collapse of the war effort are essentially dead.
This was their best chance of trying to precipitate an internal fracture by exploiting a crisis created by what can only be described as the mental breakdown of a degenerate lowlife with an overinflated ego, all while Ukie psyops were working overtime playing up grievances and disseminating fakes inflating the appearance of serious internal conflicts, and they failed. It turned out that the overwhelming majority of Russians - including all government and military power structures, and even the majority of Wagner - didn’t take the bait and the whole gambit fizzled out.
The fact that the Kremlin prevailed so quickly and decisively, and most importantly without loss of life, and minimal property damage and disruption to civilian life, has just massively increased the stability of the state. Another beneficial side effect is that a number of western assets will also have been burned and many fifth columnists have exposed themselves. The FSB will be busy for the next few weeks looking very closely into anyone who was a bit too enthusiastic about supporting the mutiny. There will be purges that much is sure.
And finally, this whole episode will lead to the general enthusiasm for the concept of PMCs being somewhat lessened which is always a good thing. Mercenaries are yet again proven to be unreliable scum. Russia will almost certainly incorporate them much more tightly and with much greater oversight and control into the official armed forces now to prevent other similar episodes occurring in the future, which is good for discipline and general morale.
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Do you seriously believe that Lukashenko is just some random third party here? This was a way to provide a way out for Prigozhin and diffuse the situation.
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I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make here to be honest. Kremlin found a way to resolve the situation without bloodshed, and where Prigozhin was removed from wagner while preserving wagner as an effective organization. Wagner is in fact now signing contracts with the MoD, so yes it is directly under the control of the MoD going forward. Basically, Russia managed to resolve the situation in the best way possible.
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If that’s what you genuinely believe then what else is there to tell you. I also love how you just made up a whole bunch of stuff like Prigozhin’s troops going to Belarus. You could totally get a job at one of US propaganda rags writing nonsense all day.
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Luka was almost certainly acting on behalf of the Kremlin because for image purposes the Kremlin could not be seen to be the ones making the offer of leniency to traitors, they needed to be the bad cop to Lukashenko’s good cop. In the interest of avoiding a dangerous escalation Luka was used as an ostensible (but not really) “third party” to give the leaders of the mutiny who had backed themselves into a corner a way to still get out of this with their lives so that they wouldn’t fight to the death and take valuable rank and file soldiers with them.
We don’t know what the terms were exactly, we’ll have to wait and see, but from what has been openly stated at least there is no indication that any of the demands of the mutineers were conceded to, personnel changes were not even discussed (imo there was never a snowball’s chance in hell of the government agreeing to that, can you imagine how bad it would be for discipline to allow some uppity mercs to dictate who the commanders of the armed forces are? it would be an enormous violation of the chain of command!), and the integration of Wagner into the official armed forces has only accelerated.
On the whole i think this was unavoidable at some point because the contradiction of giving so much power and prominence to a mercenary group was always going to create conflict, but the way it was handled was just about the optimal way to do it and Russia will come out of this stronger. There will be some who will say that Russia should have foreseen this and not allowed it to come this far in the first place, and maybe that is true, but maybe it was also good it happened the way it did because it offers an opportunity for a more thorough cleanse and a more decisive break with previous policy toward PMCs.
More consolidation under the official state power structures is a good thing for when communists take over again. Mercenaries with too much influence and autonomy would be a nasty problem to deal with. And at the very least the image of Wagner and especially that of certain personalities involved with it is irreversibly tarnished in the eyes of the Russian public, and again i can’t say that that is bad, they were getting too full of themselves and starting to have a negative morale impact by denigrating the performance of the regular armed forces without whom they could never have even operated the way they did to begin with.
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You make some good points but I don’t think a lack of an attack signals a lack of support. Wagner doesn’t seem like a junior to be trifled with, even if it was only a portion of the unit that headed to Moscow.
It doesn’t make much sense to me for e.g. police to go vigilante and try to stop Wagner on the way up. It would make sense for an order to organise a defence to be coordinated beyond ‘everyone between Ukraine and Moscow needs to individually try to stop Wagner’. If this had turned really bloody within Russia, I imagine the plan would be to ensure a quick victory and to plan for a defense where that was possible.