What In The Hell Is Going On With Russia?

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Reports that the Wagner Group has abandoned Bakhmut and is entering the Russian Rostov region in open rebellion attacking any Russian soldiers that stand in the way? I'm sure William Schryver is wailing and gnashing his teeth. Should be an interesting next few days.

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ru ... index.html

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I dunno why they’re wasting time there. They have a straight shot to the capital. Maybe they’re picking up equipment along the way? God, I hope this gets nasty for the Muscovites, and they’re forced to pull out of all of Ukraine.

Edit: Wagner is on the M4, which leads straight to Moscow. I guess they’re fighting some Russian National Guard right now.

- Doc

[Jersey Girl]

Yeah, I pointed to this happening back on 5 May.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=154865&p=2833791#p2833791

There's also something online about an attempted coup. Haven't read the report yet.

[Gadianton]

Will has been denying any of this is real and like usual, as reality starts setting in, starts trying to find a way to keep Putin as 5-d chess master.

I adamantly do NOT believe there is "a real power struggle inside Russia".

The modest parade was escorted by Rosgvardia into Rostov; Prigozhin pretended to "occupy" the city, then he had a chat with a couple generals, after which he and his motley group of "insurrectionists" drove away again.

Now Putin says they're all in VERY big trouble and will be dealt with promptly and harshly.

That's it, folks.

Show's over.

Now he's pulling a DCP and quoting Shakespeare:

In any case, here in the first half of 2023 we will have witnessed both the meteoric rise to fame and glory, and the ignominious fall of the "Wagner PMC" and Yevgeny Prigozhin.

And on that note, I'll give Shakespeare the final word again:

I have touched the highest point of all my greatness; And, from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting ..."

[Res Ipsa]

Lots of fog of war on this one. I keep a salt shaker handy when I read reports.

[Jersey Girl]

Yeah so now stupid Wagner is standing down because they made a stupid deal with stupid Putin to go to stupid Belarus. Best not to bother trying to follow the blow by blow. It's all b to the s.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

A post on Reddit as to why the Russians are getting smoked - a response to a Russian milblogger:

How? Ok…I’ll accept.

Your military’s most effective unit, Wagner, just attempted to overthrow your defense minister and undermined your entire war effort. Maybe he was correct…maybe Prigozhin is “correct” and a purge was necessary. But the takeaway for you should be that your military is crumbling and is a husk of what it was on February 21st 2022.

Your military fled from Kiev, Izyum, Kharkiv and Kherson. The Russian winter drone/missile offensive failed to bring the West into abandoning Ukraine…in fact, Ukraine is rapidly incorporating the best equipment the West can offer: Storm Shadow, JDAM-ER, Abrams tanks, CV-90, Patriot, F-16s….the list grows weekly as your military rushes t-55’s to the front without night vision, armor, or even stabilized turrets.

How’d a Company go from ~100 swinging dicks to 24…it’s because team Russia has already lost.

This isn’t sustainable, at least in this era of globalization and modernity <- kids don’t want to grow up to die in a pointless war and they know it. The only way out of this now is to to sue for peace, but no one is going to give up their claimed territory at this point. Man, this is wild. I have no idea how this whole ordeal is going to go.

- Doc

[Moksha]

America would have remained stuck in the quagmire of Vietnam if Congress had not cut off the funding. I am wondering if something similar might ultimately be the solution for Russia.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Pigozhin finally got yeeted

[honorentheos]

So it seems. Or he's being cut into pieces slowly in a basement somewhere and a corpse with his teeth stuffed in it is in a body bag recovered from the crash site. Putin seems like the type who would like to take would-be usurpers on a tour of other would-bes not getting a quick death and no one looking for them...or this was just a fun, public way of disposing of the body after he had been doing that the last couple of months already.