I'm guessing Prigozhen is already dead as of 6"45 PM EST, Saturday. The Belarus "deal" is a sham, Wagner groupies will not be safe in Belarus because 20K Russian troops are there to deal with them while they are leaderless. Apparently the Wagners couldn't amass any real support from Russian citizens along their way to Moscow and saw the …
I'm guessing Prigozhen is already dead as of 6"45 PM EST, Saturday. The Belarus "deal" is a sham, Wagner groupies will not be safe in Belarus because 20K Russian troops are there to deal with them while they are leaderless. Apparently the Wagners couldn't amass any real support from Russian citizens along their way to Moscow and saw the hopelessness of it. After all, Russians have long been conditioned to live without hope.
This is a very dangerous time with a humiliated megalomaniac with his sweaty finger on the nuke buttons. Americans need to pay close attention. And thank Joe Biden for maintaining a low profile throughout this episode so Putin can't blame the Wagner revolt on the West. Joe has been the right man for these times.
Many of the photos and videos of Prigozhen's forces marching toward Moscow showed citizens standing in a garden with a hoe or on a corner with shopping bags barely bothering to turn around to look. I expect they figure their lives will be little affected by which murdering thug is actually in the Kremlin.
It's like that cartoon where the Russian standing in a long line to shop becomes angry at conditions and storms off "to shoot Putin" but shortly returns. "Why?" asks someone else. "The other line was even longer" he replies. The Russian citizen has little hope for change, little training in genuine participation in their government, and thus little interest in the storms that rage back and forth across the mountain tops, expecting there will be some fallout but no big change in climate. I remember Gorbachev with the sad regret of lost opportunity and would find it hard to trust the Russian people not to "vote" in their next autocrat.
Foreign Affairs has a very interesting article a few days old (I assume prompted by Prigozhin's messages challenging upper level military officials even before they may or may not have responded with missiles) titled "The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia" which says "Since the end of the Cold War, authoritarian regimes have outlasted 89 percent of the longtime leaders who died in office. And in every instance in which an authoritarian leader’s death led to the collapse of his regime, its replacement was also authoritarian. Even in personalist autocracies, where the question of succession is considerably fraught, the same regime has survived the leader’s death 83 percent of the time." One would generally then expect Putin to retain power even if Prigozhin had continued on the march and demanded removal of some of the military leadership... to better support dear Leader.
Prigozhen is not dead yet, although his time may be coming, he is not done. People in the streets were calling 'Wagner' as his troops were headed to Moscow. Prigozchen's relationship to Putin is for the books. Can Putin maintain control of it? Putin has come out the weakest, next to Russia, which is below its knees. Yes, a very dangerous time indeed. The regime may be collapsing as Yehawes suggested in his comment.
The purge starts when something of highest value to the purported leader of the opposition is found. What would make General P stop, turn around, and go to Belarus on the thinnest of promises of immunity? His children or family or empire is in the hands of the FSB or Putin? Names are already taken. The "disappeared" will start. His followers, at best, will go to the front lines as fodder in Putin's war on the Ukrain, you think? Will we ever hear from Private P?
If Putin presides over the dissolution of Wagner, he will lose the only really effective fighting force he has in Ukraine..... Long-term, this could be an advantage to Ukraine.
I'm guessing Prigozhen is already dead as of 6"45 PM EST, Saturday. The Belarus "deal" is a sham, Wagner groupies will not be safe in Belarus because 20K Russian troops are there to deal with them while they are leaderless. Apparently the Wagners couldn't amass any real support from Russian citizens along their way to Moscow and saw the hopelessness of it. After all, Russians have long been conditioned to live without hope.
This is a very dangerous time with a humiliated megalomaniac with his sweaty finger on the nuke buttons. Americans need to pay close attention. And thank Joe Biden for maintaining a low profile throughout this episode so Putin can't blame the Wagner revolt on the West. Joe has been the right man for these times.
A very interesting analysis. I think you may be right.
Many of the photos and videos of Prigozhen's forces marching toward Moscow showed citizens standing in a garden with a hoe or on a corner with shopping bags barely bothering to turn around to look. I expect they figure their lives will be little affected by which murdering thug is actually in the Kremlin.
It's like that cartoon where the Russian standing in a long line to shop becomes angry at conditions and storms off "to shoot Putin" but shortly returns. "Why?" asks someone else. "The other line was even longer" he replies. The Russian citizen has little hope for change, little training in genuine participation in their government, and thus little interest in the storms that rage back and forth across the mountain tops, expecting there will be some fallout but no big change in climate. I remember Gorbachev with the sad regret of lost opportunity and would find it hard to trust the Russian people not to "vote" in their next autocrat.
Foreign Affairs has a very interesting article a few days old (I assume prompted by Prigozhin's messages challenging upper level military officials even before they may or may not have responded with missiles) titled "The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia" which says "Since the end of the Cold War, authoritarian regimes have outlasted 89 percent of the longtime leaders who died in office. And in every instance in which an authoritarian leader’s death led to the collapse of his regime, its replacement was also authoritarian. Even in personalist autocracies, where the question of succession is considerably fraught, the same regime has survived the leader’s death 83 percent of the time." One would generally then expect Putin to retain power even if Prigozhin had continued on the march and demanded removal of some of the military leadership... to better support dear Leader.
Prigozhen is not dead yet, although his time may be coming, he is not done. People in the streets were calling 'Wagner' as his troops were headed to Moscow. Prigozchen's relationship to Putin is for the books. Can Putin maintain control of it? Putin has come out the weakest, next to Russia, which is below its knees. Yes, a very dangerous time indeed. The regime may be collapsing as Yehawes suggested in his comment.
The purge starts when something of highest value to the purported leader of the opposition is found. What would make General P stop, turn around, and go to Belarus on the thinnest of promises of immunity? His children or family or empire is in the hands of the FSB or Putin? Names are already taken. The "disappeared" will start. His followers, at best, will go to the front lines as fodder in Putin's war on the Ukrain, you think? Will we ever hear from Private P?
More questions we can't answer yet.
If Putin presides over the dissolution of Wagner, he will lose the only really effective fighting force he has in Ukraine..... Long-term, this could be an advantage to Ukraine.