Russia and Ukraine

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Who's pmc is gonna march on moscow next?  Shoigu's?  Maybe Gazprom's?  Gotta be something left in the kremlin they haven't already sold.

Some are calling this foofaraw a prelude to a civil war. It's possible, I suppose, but I don't see Russia as having a civil war in the usual sense. I suspect it would me more like a dozen petty warlords jockeying for control. I'm not a military genius, but I'm also not naive enough to think that Prigozhin was the only oligarch with a private army.

Boru

[Thumpalumpacus]

It's the Daily Beast, so take with caution:

On Saturday night, with his heavily armed mercenaries closing in on Moscow, Yevgeny Prigozhin abruptly announced that he was shutting down his insurrection after a negotiated settlement that would allow him to walk away peacefully.

Just two days later, the Russian authorities leaked word that the agreement was already toast.

[...]

The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported that the criminal case against Prigozhin had not—in fact—been dropped. The official state news agency, TASS, soon confirmed that the investigation into the mutiny that humiliated President Vladimir Putin was ongoing.

A Prosecutor General's Office source was quoted as saying: "The criminal case against Prigozhin did not stop. The investigation continues."

[...]

Prigozhin could face 20 years behind bars.

Even loyal Kremlin propagandists had been furious that Putin was apparently going to let Prigozhin get away with turning on his own military and exposing the weakness of the Kremlin. The Daily Beast reported that the flagship propaganda show Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov was brimming with disgust for such an act of presidential leniency.

"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," said State Duma deputy Andrey Gurulyov, a retired army officer. "Treason cannot be forgiven under any circumstances!"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/did-yevgen...ref=scroll

[The Grand Nudger]

Prigo has spoken. #No Regrets!

[Leonardo17]

It’s the 5th day after the insurrection. Yesterday there were rumors about wagner commanders being threatened with their families. + there were debates about what was really going on. I believe more in the Aleksandr Lukashenko version and this N-Y Times article seems to be backing my view:
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/glory-fading-...43817.html
 
Putin is not some sort of mercurial leader but a cold-blooded extremely rational person. He saw the threat posed by Wagner s step by step he started dismantling it. Prigozhin saw that. He dared not to attack Putin directly so he started using swearwords about the Russian military chiefs instead. That coup was his final attempt to maintain his financial and military power. Muscovites + Lukashenko made him back down. Now he will probably continue his activities in Africa etc.  with far less attention being directed on him.
 
N.B.: In middle-eastern cultures the Tsar or whoever is in charge would need “to decapitate” some people to reassert his authority. This doesn’t seem to be the case in post-Soviet Russian politics. I read Putin’s final discourses as “Go … yourself”. And I think this might be the end of the story. + I admire Lukashenko’s intelligence + survival skills as “the last dictator of Europe”. In fact I think that without him, Belarus might also have distanced from Russia. I suggest you listen to his discourse that was televised yesterday. It’s a rare fact for this kind of people but I think he is telling the truth

[Thumpalumpacus]

Once again, nothing solid, but here's this"

A Russian general who previously led the invasion force in Ukraine has not been seen in public since Saturday, with US intelligence reportedly claiming he had prior knowledge of the uprising led by the Wagner chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Gen Sergei Surovikin is the head of the Russian aerospace forces and formerly Moscow’s supreme commander in Ukraine. Prigozhin had welcomed his appointment to that post in 2022, calling him a “legendary figure” and “born to serve his motherland”.

The well-publicised links between Surovikin and Prigozhin have fuelled rumours that Surovikin may be purged or put under investigation for supporting the mutiny. When Prigozhin launched his uprising, Surovikin made an unambiguous statement against it and in support of the Russian government late on Friday.

“We fought together with you, took risks, we won together,” Surovikin said. “We are of the same blood, we are warriors. I urge you to stop. The enemy is just waiting for the internal political situation to escalate in our country.”

However, the New York Times, citing western intelligence sources, reported on Wednesday that Surovikin had prior knowledge of Prigozhin’s armed mutiny, in which his Wagner mercenaries captured the city of Rostov and moved on Moscow before cutting an amnesty deal.

US officials briefed on the intelligence said they did not know if Surovikin was actively involved in the plot, which culminated in an aborted march on Moscow of several Wagner convoys with heavy weapons. The other failed goal of the mutiny might have been to abduct the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the head of Russia’s armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/28/europe/ru...index.html

[The Grand Nudger]

Just got around to watching an interview/debate between a former putin advisor and a ukranian defense official. For the most part, it;s the usual stuff..but there's one moment right before and after 5mins in. While babbling about how ukranians google shit in russian, the host chimes in to say that this is clearly not a reason to invade another country, and putin advisor, as his purest self, says "why not?".

I think this could have some useful implications for us. Alot of people speak american.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXiQ4l21NOY

[Thumpalumpacus]

Just got around to watching an interview/debate between a former putin advisor and a ukranian defense official.  For the most part, it;s the usual stuff..but there's one moment right before and after 5mins in.  While babbling about how ukranians google shit in russian, the host chimes in to say that this is clearly not a reason to invade another country, and putin advisor, as his purest self, says "why not?".  

I think this could have some useful implications for us.  Alot of people speak american.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXiQ4l21NOY

Not to mention that he just lifted the German justification for the seizure of Sudentenland in 1938.

Now I ask: which nation is acting like Nazis here?

[The Grand Nudger]

The only thing they think the nazis did wrong was shoot at russians. That's what nazi means in rashist.

[Silver]

Putin is still alive?

There are some really crappy assassin spies in circulation.

[Leonardo17]

Mr. Prigozhin is lost. If I don’t know where he is than it is possible that nobody else does
 
Still, I found this article very interesting:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/wagner-coup-j...44991.html
 
Russia as a state may be on the path of disintegration with endless power struggles between the Mafia, the oligarchs, the state itself and the silenced / brainwashed population itself. I’ve also done some reading about the poor morale of troops, their 2 weeks training (how do you train a soldier in two weeks?) and their intoxicated commanders giving them completely irrational orders. They are recruiting people in prisons to join the war effort as “workers” than they send these people as meat toward the better equipped Ukrainian Army.
 
This “autocratic model” that seemed to have gained a lot of momentum in the previous decade seems to be disintegrating now. Western nations are taking action against China to decrease their dependence on Chinese products + they are blocking the export of semiconductors and other high-tech products toward China and China seems to be counter acting by blocking the export of raw materials like Gallium and Germanium (that are key ingredients for the production of batteries and solar panels etc). But the main issue with China is their absolutely horrible ecological situation. U.S. + European products are expensive because:
- Workers are paid more fairly
- They need to meet high (although not enough) ecological standards
- If their produce low emission cars and these car are found to not meet these ecological criteria they are put on trial and have to answer for their fraud (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen...ns_scandal)
- The supply chain of most western companies cannot include child labor, slave labor, environmentally unsustainable raw materials etc. (We are not there yet, but the E.U. is currently getting more and more serious about these issue).
 
   So as a whole this “autocratic model” is not even a model and the Reason why Xi Chi Ping is working so hard to strengthen his authority is because he is actually struggling to keep that ship floating somehow. But this cannot go on forever. One of the reasons for this is the catastrophic environmental impact of the Chinese industrialization on the environment. Their rivers, underground waters, seas, soils, etc are all contaminated and polluted and this pollution is increasing not decreasing. (in 2022 they were building a coal plant every second day). So while they are doing some greenwashing with their electrical vehicles and solar panels, they are absolutely uncaring about the environment and have next to zero environmental standards. SO they are likely to become a second version of the Soviet Union. Meaning a highly industrialized nation that lacks food / water / clean air etc.
 
So I think this is set to be their main challenge. Yes, they are set to catch up with the West in almost all areas, but No, with no standards to protect the climate, the soil, the waters, the soils, underground waters, rivers etc… they won’t be able to feed themselves or even live in that country. (I’ve also read that the temperature is Beijing is currently exceeding the 100 degree mark / exceeding the previous heat records).
 
And this is related to Ukraine because if there is a clash between two social models (as it is being claimed by the Russian disinformation etc.) than the second model of society is not really in a good position to win this confrontation.
 
So this war is meaningless. So if I was Zellensky I would tell the emperor of the eastern-orthodoxy to go and tell that to Mr. Putin. That’s my opinion that