please post any subsequent updates here unless they’re huge happenings. i just woke up and half our news front page is updates which is nice but also A Lot and most of these don’t have to be their own thread
Wagner troops taking over nuclear facility
A nuclear weapons storage facility. The prospect of Prigozhin and his prison-recruited mercenaries in charge of nuclear weapons is not reassuring.
While that’s true, those weapons are currently under the control of a fascist government and increasingly desperate despot, so I don’t see how them being in the hands of mercs is any worse. At least you know what mercs are motivated by.
I wonder how many of them are actually made of wood.
So reading twitter…
It seems much of the “Ammunition shortage” Prigozhin was loudly complaining about was stock pilling. Similarly much of Wagnar was pulled out of Ukraine to rebuild.
There have been suggestions Prigozhin was planning to launch an attack on Sunday but the Russian MoD attacked a Wagner site forcing him to launch a day early.
One tweet suggested Wagner soliders had been calling family all day (e.g. before a big operation).
Seizing Rostok Von Don was a clever initial play, since its a major logistics hub. This allowed him to arm his troops and provides a base if the coup fails.
It seems the South Military District gave up without a fight, with soliders surrendering.
Prigozhin has sent a shock force to Moscow, its bypassing major cities and trying to get there ASAP. There is a belief senior Kremlin officials will abandon ship.
Various helicopters are attacking the shock force but it seems Wagner are using air defence. Various MI-8, KA-52 and a ll-s2 have been shown destroyed.
The Tik Tok bigrade are trying to attack Rostok, considering they aren’t “true Russians” and were used as barrier troops, this doesn’t seem to be going down well. They are also stripping Donetsk of defenders to do this.
Seizing Rostok Von Don was a clever initial play, since its a major logistics hub.
This also means if the coup lasts for more than a few days, the Russian Army’s going to start running out of ammunition in significant portions of the front in Ukraine.
My pet hypothesis is that Putin and Prigozhin were engaging in a bit of play acting to stage Wagner troops for an action against Ukraine (Prigozhin benefits) and illustrate the legal and financial measures that Putin will take against powerful dissenters (Putin benefits).
With 25k troops, there’s simply no way Wagner could have succeeded in a coup. The regular army is better equipped and could have severed their supply lines with minimal effort, starving the coup with minimal bloodshed. They could have done this in their own interests, and not necessarily in defense of Putin.
Considering how swiftly Wagner’s offices were raided and their assets seized, this affair makes more sense as a morality tale to caution antsy oligarchs than as a military action.
You give too much credit to putin and prigozhin in terms of strategies thinking. Usually when things seem simple they are and in this case it’s just short term vision by both sides and signs of weakness in both as well. It’s really funny how some people try to spin this situation as “putin staged it all to draw Ukraine into a trap and to show his strength”
I haven’t been able to figure out from any of the arti Lea I’ve seen… What is it that Putin ended up giving to Prigozhin? What was Prigozhin asking for?
Putin hasn’t done anything yet except flee to safety yet, he doesn’t personally hold a gun in moscow to hold it as his own. A surrender would mean a civil war in wagner’s favor. Currently not at that point of desperation but we are getting there. An interesting situatiuon nevertheless.
Putin’s absolutely still in charge of Russia until someone else tries something. He still lost to Wagner though. Prigozhin got everything he wanted out of his little stunt. Putin caved because he was afraid.
Despite what a lot of people have said, this wasn’t about Prigozhin trying to pull off a coup. Wagner was supposed to be absorbed into the Russian army, and rumor had it that Prigozhin was going to be in serious trouble when that happened. Now he gets to take his still independent army to Belarus and got his enemies in the MoD fired. Prigozhin got what he wanted, and Putin couldn’t stop him.
Where does this information come from. All I’ve heard is the Wagner guys aren’t heading towards Moscow and some deal was made involving the president of Belarus. Are there specifics that have been made public?
Several news sites are reporting that part of the deal was for Prigozhin to go and live in Belarus. It’s not clear whether he’s supposed to take the Wagner troops with him, but there are questions about their loyalty to him now, since he may have set them up to be absorbed into the Russian army.
Ukraine has gotten back territory from the Russians they haven’t had since 2014!
tl;dr: A counter-terrorist operation has been launched in several Russian regions, as well as in Moscow as preparations are being made for the capital’s siege by the Wagner Group forces that rebelled against Russia’s top military command - Ukraine’s defense intelligence,
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3727239-prigozhins-mutiny-in-russia-intelligence-update.html
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408347/
Wagner Group’s veterans ordered to wait on high alert – Russian media
Without the Wagner group, Russia will have much lesser professional troops on their side. And this entire thing could also have a severe impact on the morale of the soldiers.
But Wagner boss said that the justification for the war is wrong and that Putin was tricked by the defense ministers to go into it in the first place. I highly doubt that they would continue a conflict they see no advantage to continuing. No, this won’t stop all wars but it might stop this one.
Exactly, this is the boss that was complaining to Kremlin and folks on telegram that they’re going to pull from Ukraine because Russian’s military isn’t supplying them with ammo.
They didn’t pull for months, still fought with “almost zero ammo”. They suddenly have ammo now? The same ammo they said they have zero of?
This is the “nothing” I was referring to, I didn’t say they didn’t do anything in general, I’m saying they said a lot of bullshit and did nothing of the sort. Thus, don’t believe what they say in public, because in the background, they’re doing something else.
I’ll clarify what I mean in the original post to “did nothing what they said they were going to do in public”.
If this goes on long enough it will most likely fuck up morale and put a considerable strain on the actual state army. That might give Ukraine time to at the very least recover. If the internal devastation is big enough whoever comes on as the next dictator might even have to technically end “the special operation” because there’s no resources to keep it going and they could do so while saving face, because it’s technically Putin and Shoigu’s fault for mismanaging everything. The totally best possible scenario is this happens, it takes them a few years to build the military back up and meanwhile Ukraine manages to get both in the EU and NATO, at which point attacking them again becomes a whole different deal.
That’s most likely a terribly unreasonably optimistic scenario. More likely whatever it is that’s happening right now takes a few days, either Putin or Prigozhin dies and things keep on going somewhat the same, regardless of who’s the de facto dictator. The country is mostly being ran by shady business interests that depend on the dictator, but if they agree on installing a new one could do it.
Sounds like the Russian army is in total disarray at the moment.
There’s no real “benefit” to Ukraine in this, is there?
Well, it appears that some of the baddies will be killing off each other, saving Ukraine the trouble.
I’d imagine there are benefits to them in that it weakens their enemy, because either Wagner loses, and therefore Russia loses the forces they represent, or they succeed, which would mean uncertainty and chaos among the regular army during the transition. There’s also potential for Russian forces to be weakened anywhere that Wagner was holding and removed troops from, or anywhere held by troops that get redirected to fight them, and off course that this will mean Russia takes losses and spends equipment fighting itself instead of Ukraine.
Actually, any new leader would likely leave Ukraine immediately. The war has been an overwhelming failure and embarrassment, and the new leader can blame the old leader for leading the country down that road.
Putin would leave too if he didn’t think that admitting defeat would get him killed.
The benefit is a distraction on the Russian military side, it may give the counteroffensive from Ukraine a tiny boost. The real impact is probably negligent, it’s not going to make any major changes.
Also, FYI: it’s not “Ukrainian invasion”, Ukraine isn’t invading anyone.
It’s full-on war between Ukraine and Russia.
The impact on this isn’t going to stop the war, only a surrender/peace agreement and full withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine’s 1991 borders will end the war.
Russians are used to swapping out regimes and leaderships all the time, so this may not change anything and the war against Ukraine can still continue under a different regime.
Well that was… weird.
I saw several alleged videos of russian frontline units pledging their support for Prigozhin. Combine that with how little resistance wagner faced and Putin might have realized how weak his position is and given in to replacing MOD staff. Not a good look the same day he declared Prigozhin a traitor and promised punishment.
Trading the long-term stability for the short-term. Because now every aspiring russian warlord know that if you don’t like something about the state, all you need is just a big enough private army to bully the kremlin, lol.
I mean, what would Wagner do once they reach Moscow? Sit at Putins desk and start giving orders? No one would listen, they’d all still take orders from Putin sitting in St Petersburg or just quit an go home and wait it out.
I imagine they would take over the city, and completely destabilize Russia.
It doesn’t matter if nobody wants to listen to you if you become the local law enforcement.
Probably just re-enact Jan 6 but Russian for the propaganda points, then skedaddling before the hammer comes down.
What a weird outcome. Putin now looks weak and Prigozhin looks stupid for trusting any deal that Putin could make.
I wonder how many russians are actually happy with this outcome. Kremlin loyalist must be depressed, since their leader basically turned into a puppet. And the extreme wagner supporters wanted it to go all the way. So both sides hardcode supporters are now depressed. Some wagner members probably just wanted putin to concede even after his speech so they may be happy. Civilians that support none may be happy that their society didn’t collapse and cities turned to war zones.
Ukrainians are disappointed that the distraction didn’t last a little longer, but none the less content with a weakened Russia.
“Opportunity to return to Africa.”
Yeah, I suppose massacring badly equipped CAR “rebels” (while also guarding their diamond mines) and civilians is a lot more fun than having to fight someone being equipped by the military-industrial complex of the combined West.
Edit: oh and related to how many Russians are happy with this, this Mastodon post had some numbers from a Russian political blogger:
A popular Russian political blogger Tatiana Stanovaya ran a poll on her Telegram earlier today, asking: “how do you feel about the current situation”
Votes:
- 12% supporting Prigozhin
- 48% “let them fight, there are no heroes here”
- 29% “this is a catastrophe, I’m scared”
- 8% against the coup
- 3% “give power to the people”
The numbers will be skewed due to the audience, but still interesting>
Those figures can’t be at all reassuring to Putin.
This is nothing new. Politics has long involved compromise. Hardliners rarely get what they want.
Just had a thought, what if Putin has taken Prigozhin’s family hostage and pretending to take the deal is just a play for time while they rescue them? It would be a great movie plot.
What if the Ukrainians paid Wagner to do this to cause a distraction? That would be pretty crazy too!
I don’t know why anyone is taking any of this seriously. For all we know, this was done to lure Ukraine into following them into Russia to fall into a set trap, or theater or withdraw and resupply without looking weak. It is odd that it looks like Putin had weakness, but they can always say that’s what it was later and the propaganda will work like it always does.
I think you watch to many movies real life isn’t that well planned most likely he got mad launched an ill planned invasion then made a deal with putin when both realized they could lose everything fighting each other
It would be weird to shoot down friendly helicopters and launch cruise missiles at friendly formations just to make a big feint.
Ukraine just needs to take the land bridge to Crimea, I don’t see they have any incentive to go inwards towards Russia.
Do we know for certain that any of that happened though? Because I haven’t seen any video of actual engagement between Wagner and Russia.
Well, here’s some footage with a shot down C&C plane. I mean it still could be not Wagner, but it would be an awful coincidence.
I mean we still don’t know shit beyond the fact that Ukraine is holding strong and slowly reclaiming territory. The thing about this story is that it shows that the Russians are divided, and that’s not a picture you want to show in a war, especially to your people. These events are costing the Russians dearly in one way or another.
Do you really think Ukraine has an interest in following them into Russia? If I was them I would just want to take back Ukraine and secure the borders.
They don’t. But Putin in his own disinformation bubble may think so.
They currently have an operation attacking into Russia’s boarder…
Only if you accept Russia’s description of where the border is. The border as defined by every other country in the entire world says Ukraine is still in their own territory.
There have been some Ukrainian sympathisers setting off bombs/shooting down aircraft/etc inside Russian territory - but those aren’t Ukranian soldiers and they’re pretty generally just a few random/nonconsequential attacks and don’t show any signs of being linked to any “Operation”. The front line of the battlefield is nowhere near the border.
No, it’s documented and reported by Ukraine and US as they counterattacked on Russian soil and it was an issue because of the US supplying weapons to them: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/05/29/an-increasing-number-of-ukrainian-attacks-on-russian-soil-are-upsetting-the-united-states-and-kyiv-s-allies_6028312_4.html
Civil war broke out, some dude close to Putin offended Putin and Putin bombed his friend, friend didn’t like and started a coupe, civil joined in and thus making it a civil war. Putin friends is a military dude that still want to invade Ukraina after the civil war.
This is what my understanding is, someone please correct me.
We need a remind me bot. I’ve no clue other than Putin fled Moscow and they guy controlling a bunch of mercenaries is coming for him. I’ll look back at this post later to see what the consensus is and if they supply links.
If Moscow stations start playing this, it’s a probable sign that the Coup is legitimate and the transition has started. Bonkers to think think that in our lifetime we’d see the collapse of a nuclear power. Even if Putin and his government survive this Coup, I don’t think he’ll have any political capital left to lead. By 8:00pm EDT, we’ll have a pretty good idea who’s left standing.
They’ve already taken Voronezh as well, some 500km from Moscow and have been reported to be advancing through the Lipetsk province, 350km south of Moscow.
There are reports of gunfire at half-way between Rostov and Moscow already. But yeah, I don’t think they will manage to reach close to Moscow within a day https://nitter.net/igorsushko/status/1672434377425551361#m
Nobody in their way to stop them, Russian’s army is in Ukraine. If they continue like this Moscow will be put under siege by tomorrow.
I see reports of them arriving at Lipetsk (430km from Moscow) just now, after conquering Voronezj (500km from Moscow) about 6 hours ago.
Without opposition, that’s a day of travel.
@muddybulldog
Yeah if they just pickup Russian soldiers on the way without any trouble, it’ll be very fast
@exscape
Hasn’t it been stated it’s not a coup?
Prigozhin says his aim is “not a military coup but a march for justice” and it comes after a long-running war of words with Russia’s military chiefs escalated dramatically.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60947877
I don’t know what the difference between that and a march for justice are though.
It’s all word play, total information control and fog of war; by not attacking Putin directly, they avoid upsetting the Russians that still have total confidence in Putin and maintain that possibility that Wagner could still end up in alliance with Putin anyway, like with Chechens.
Attacking the military talking-heads however, doesn’t risk anything, most Russians don’t really trust the entire regime anyway, just Putin.
Once Wagner have more and more control of Russia, they can just go after Putin.
This is all speculation on my part tho.
If it’s not a coup, it’s going to get Prigizhin killed and Wagner disbanded. So I can’t see it as much of anything else.
“This is not a coup” is roughly akin to “I’m not a Nazi” … you’ve brought up something outside daily norms to such an extent that you’re engaging in framing.
I get that. What I’m wondering if there have been any further developments or changes to that. Even hints to the contrary.
If things did escelate or spiral and there was no word as to directions or aspirations I feel like it could be a massive confusing fumble
Speculation is pointless; all one can do is keep up via nonsensationalized channels.
This is going to be one of those days I miss being in a newsroom.
It’s down to branding. Prigozhin is framing this as a fight against the military leaders who have deceived Putin and caused him to make mistakes, but he does not blame Putin himself and is leaving room for Putin to change sides.
That framing aside, this is still a coup with the goal of overthrowing gov’t leadership by force.
Also, if Prigozhin wins, Putin will probably end up being “killed by traitors”, but Prigozhin will vow to avenge him and bring all traitors to justice.
The other historical trend seems to be finding out who funded or influenced it after the attempt. I’m curious to see how it pans out
This ones different because we don’t have a “smooth” transition of power to another government. This is the total collapse of Putin’s autocratic government which he set up over 20 years of ruling. We had randos on twitter talk about how Wagner forces were talking over nukes. During the soviet collapse, Russia’s military had complete control of it’s nuclear arsenal. We get front row seats to the collapse, an analogy would be the train wreak in East Palestine whereas the World is the town and the train is Russia.
Except that with the USSR falling the transition of power for Russia was a bit more peaceful than this seems like it could go since in 1991 Russia didn’t have a complete power vacuum due to Boris Yeltsin was accepted as the legitimate leader of the succeeding Russian Federation. It’s looking like the shit going on in Russia now makes the August coup attempt look like a peaceful misunderstanding
Except that with the USSR falling the transition of power for Russia was a bit more peaceful
At the time that wasn’t a given. Gorbachev was under a lot of pressure from hardline communists within the party to crack down on the uprising and no-one really knew where the loyalties of the military lay. As it turned out Yeltsin won the day and the transition went peacefully but it could very easily have turned out differently.
What are you talking about? Yeltsin literally bombed congress and killed many congress people… the transition to capitalism from the USSR was and is still one the worst humanitarian crisis ever.
I usually read Tim Mak’s reporting on Ukraine, and he has his article out about it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/counteroffensive/p/newsflash-russia-wracked-by-rebellion
It lays out the general events well enough, I don’t know if he’ll keep updating that page specifically. But it was good as an intro to what’s happening.
I think I read Wagner forces number about 25,000? Can anyone contextualize how big a headache this will be for Russia?
There have been a bunch of mixed reports, I think it’s tough to say exactly what’s true. I saw one person suggesting that given Wagner’s numbers in Africa it’s likely there’s really only half that number there. But there have also been reports of Russian military and intelligence personnel switched to support Wagner.
As someone else said, I think for most people it’s just a matter of wait and see what shakes out.
Interesting. So sounds like this could land anywhere from fizzling out to full-on coup, depending on still-unknown variables like the true state of Putin’s support within his own ranks.
Hard to tell. What is abundantly clear is that they are meeting little to no resistance. Otherwise they would have never gotten this far. Whether troops really are joining them I can’t confirm. It’s all coming in very rapidly from sources I have no experience with.
I’m going to update my previous comment to add “allegedly.”
Considering that they needed Wagner to take over many areas in Ukraine and their military couldn’t do it, it’ll be a huge headache.
It also destroys Putin’s reputation of being in full charge. Think about the impact on the public, Putin has total informational control over Russia and this fucks him over.
Remember, they used to say that Wagner’s head would be cut off quickly if they ever “think” of going against Putin and there you go, it’s all BS.
I’m skeptical that this will affect his reputation, it’s just too easy to spin this for a propaganda-captive population so deep in the hole. But it would be great if it did.
The tactical impact seems more promising to me, but I’m also woefully uninformed so what do I know lol.
“CNN has tracked Wagner mercenaries in the Central African Republic, Sudan, Libya, Mozambique, Ukraine and Syria. Over the years they have developed a particularly gruesome reputation and have been linked to various human rights abuses.”
It sounds like Prigohzin could be a big headache for Putin.
If he deposes Putin he could be a big headache for us all. There are already reports of Wagner seizing nuclear weapons facilities in Russia.
@ConstableJelly @alyaza Well, considering how many tank(s?) were at Putin’s Victory Day parade, I think we have our answer. 😁
Kadyrov’s Chechens are being pulled out of Donbas to fortify Rostov.
source : https://twitter.com/Cen4infoRes/status/1672615799620612099
Whose side is Kadyrov on? Or is he his own side?
They’re on their own side, they’re mercs and loyal to money, just like Wagner. Right now, they’re taking Putin’s money.
However, as soon as Putin’s down or out of money, they’ll switch sides easily.
Keep in mind that Chechens were at some point at war with Putin as well and Putin won that one. Kadyrov’s an ally of Putin at this point.
Might be a good time for Ukraine to lob a few care packages his way /s
