Russian paramilitary chief says his forces will turn around
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: I know that (as of this moment) the story may have passed its sensational peak - if so, that's a good thing on HN. We're trying for reflective, not reflexive, conversation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
Second observation was that the regime did not exist in the moment: with few notable exceptions, we have not even seen faces of anyone from national security council. Some local actions of the governors, fortification of Moscow, pathetic speech of Putin in the morning and that’s it. The weakness of it in the face of a violent force was exposed.
Third observation was unexpectedly high visible support of Wagner by people. Many laughing at situation or agreeing with Prigozhin‘s demands, some bringing food and water to mercenaries in Rostov. All despite that PMC Wagner is a criminal organization famous for extra-judicial executions, war crimes etc. An organization led by an open nazi (Utkin) and assembled from prisoners, many of which were convicted for violent crimes. It is crazy how people can even think of collaborating with them.
And the outcome, a deal that says Putin is no longer in control without saying it. Could it be some conspiracy to purge elites while keeping the supreme leader in power? It does not look so. It looks like he for the first time in history was forced to eat the pill. Yet he is still a president and business is as usual. It is a very dangerous moment if we remember that Russia still has nuclear weapons and it is big enough that even without using them by falling apart it can destabilize the entire world.
It is not crazy, if you take into account that the genocidal war is very popular among Russians, and the only complain they have is that it is not going according to their expectations. They blame the top military officials for that and think that wagner will be more efficient in killing Ukrainians.
Not everyone is on top of who's part of the mercenary company and some people could just see this as "a change", so they would offer some support.
Not making a statement of "how things really are" here, just saying that sometimes an explanation might be "jeez, finally there's some change, maybe something will happen out of this" and not "let me go support these genocidal mercenaries".
He knows the regime is weak and pulled all the levers he could to make it look weaker and get himself more support. He's not tricking anyone, others know what he is but by suddenly speaking against the war he's signalled clearly they have the same immediate goals. I'd imagine that also went through some conscripted or otherwise unenthusiastic soldiers heads when they decided not to confront his mercenaries.
I think Putin expected Russian soldiers to resist when he gave a tough speech last night. They all watched except the air force.
Think about how many videos exist of generic Russian troops and tanks moving on the M4 and around the Ministry of Defense building in Rostov just on Twitter alone. Most of the time the only way to differentiate Wagner from regular troops is a little patch on their arms.
It’s very hard to verify the date a video was taken, even when there’s several of them online. Deception is always a concern and it takes time to gather enough experts to cross verify facts and find trustworthy sources on the ground.
This whole incident was actually quite accessible this time around - a lot less fog of war than usual. Google Maps showed blockages on the M4 and Prigozhin sent out audio messages via official channels.
There was a lot of work on professionalizing the essentially greenfield Ukrainian Army by NATO members like Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Türkiye, etc.
That said, a number of the unsavory militias from the 2014-15 period (such as the Azov Brigade and the Dudayev Battalion) still exist in a limited form, but largely neutered due to the efforts out to professionalize the Ukrainian Army.
Because (US) foreign correspondence is a hollow shell of itself.
https://twitter.com/ChrisBuryNews/status/1672410476364300288...
> At @abc we had foreign bureaus in Beijing, Beirut, Berlin, Cairo, Frankfort, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, London, Moscow, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv and Tokyo.
> Only London is left.
During that era (last quarter of the 20th century), every one of those papers (not just the NYT) had a significant foreign presence. That list above of ABC bureaus - the foreign bureaus for a national broadcast network - is not that much more longer than the list of foreign bureaus for an average newspaper with a circulation of 300k-500k. I recall one of my dad’s papers in the ‘80s having bureaus in Moscow, Bombay, Karachi, London, Jerusalem… surely also places like Rome, Paris and Tokyo. I think those are all gone now.
That’s a lot of news gathering that’s just gone.
Yeah, but now we can cut and paste tweets as independent sources so it's ok
Most news in general has been financialized because margins are very low, leading to everyone depending on wire services for 80-90% of all reporting. Take a look at articles on both CNN and Fox, both will source 80-90% of their articles from the same wire services and add a sprinkle of commentary+opinion.
1. Russia does not have journalists.
2. When people see a military putsch, they don't normally stop to film it. They run for their lives instead.
> with few notable exceptions, we have not even seen faces of anyone from national security council. Some local actions of the governors, fortification of Moscow, pathetic speech of Putin in the morning and that’s it.
3. Everybody was waiting to see who will win, and join the winning side
> All despite that PMC Wagner is a criminal organization famous for extra-judicial executions, war crimes etc. An organization led by an open nazi (Utkin) and assembled from prisoners, many of which were convicted for violent crimes. It is crazy how people can even think of collaborating with them.
4. I'm surprised this coming as a surprise to anybody. They would've gotten the same treatment in much of the world.
> Russia still has nuclear weapons and it is big enough that even without using them by falling apart it can destabilize the entire world.
Russia will be 100 times less of a treat to the world, if it crashes, and breaks apart.
This is factually incorrect and probably ideologically charged statement. Freedom of press in Russia is significantly restricted but good journalism is far from being dead. Sometimes you have to read between the lines or understand the affiliations to filter the content, but it still can provide you a lot of valuable information.
Why do you think it’s not this?
While I don’t know how truly “weakened” Putin has become, this seems like it could have easily been a trap to find any who would side with them.
This raises an interesting question for me.
The invasion of Ukraine enjoys popular support inside Russia - around 70%. The justification continuously put forward regarding why such a large proportion of the Russian population supports the invasion is that they've been brain-washed by state media into believing that Ukraine requires "de-Nazification".
That the Wagner group enjoys such popular support, while their Nazi sympathies are also common knowledge^ makes this justification questionable.
My best, admittedly totally speculative, guess right now is that the Russian populace has a far better/non-brainwashed understanding of the geopolitical situation than what is commonly suggested, and that while everyone is happy to go along with the de-Nazification pretence, in reality the populace harbours the same ambitions for a return of Russian imperial power that the Russian leadership does, and also holds similar moralistic perspective.
^I believe this to be the case, but I'm not certain. At the very least there doesn't seem a state sponsored campaign to hide it
I remember reading somewhere, that "Nazism" means something rather different in Russian culture than in Western culture. In the West, you say "Nazi" and the first thing most people think of is the Nazi mass murder of Jews, the Holocaust–that's what the school curriculum focuses on. But in Russia, you say "Nazi" and the first thing most people think of is the Nazi mass murder of Russians–that's what the Russian school curriculum focuses on. In the West, "Nazi=homicidal anti-semitism"; in Russia, "Nazi=homicidal Russophobia".
But, given that, what sense do they make of a group of Russian "Nazis" who support the Kremlin and fight its wars? It is a bit like if you met a group of neo-Nazis, and discovered they were all openly and proudly Jewish. If something doesn't make sense, people often just choose to pay no attention to it.
Similarly, the Russian accusations that Ukraine is a "neo-Nazi regime" seem ludicrous to Western ears – "Zelenskyy is of Jewish descent, his great grandparents died in the Holocaust, how can he be a Nazi?" But to most Russians, for whom the primary meaning of "Nazi" is not "antisemite" but "Russophobe", the idea that "Ukrainian nationalism=Nazism" makes more sense, and Zelenskyy's Jewishness appears irrelevant.
In Canada there is a monument to a Nazi SS division [1], because it was made up of Ukrainian volunteers fighting the Soviets, post-Holodomor that was seen as the lesser of two evils.
So with that small bit of trivia in mind, your explanation really does make sense and I'm surprised I haven't seen it put or thought of it that way. I reckon that context is probably also relevant to the "nazi-ism" of Ukrainian paramilitary (and now formal military) units like Azov Brigade? (although being close to totally ignorant on the subject, for all I know said groups are equally antisemitic).
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorials_in_Canada_to_Nazis...
Whether we are talking about Ukrainian nationalists, or Croatian nationalists, or Finns, or whoever else – if the Nazis are the only people willing to be your allies, what do you do?
And in India: Subhas Chandra Bose, one of the leaders of the Indian independence movement, chose to ally himself with Hitler and Imperial Japan. Many Indians today still view him as a hero, and do not think his willingness to fight with the Axis condemns him. At the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, where Japan's war criminals are deified, there is a statute honouring the Indian judge Radhabinod Pal, who was the only judge at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial to acquit all the defendants. Through the memories of Bose and Pal, the governments of India and Japan have found something to bond over–their shared sympathy for the losing side in the Second World War.
Hmm, I wonder why. Maybe because of this [0]:
"An UVO brochure from 1929 stated: "Terror will be not only a means of self-defense, but also a form of agitation, which will affect friend and foe alike, regardless of whether they desire it or not."
The UVO organized a number of assassination attempts on some of the most renowned Polish and Ukrainian politicians, some of which were successful."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Military_Organizatio...
That's not the only thing they were doing. [0]
"like Azov Brigade"
I'd recommend a book by a Canadian journalist collaborating with Bellingcat on the subject of Azov and other Ukrainian nationalists. [1]
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Divisi...
[1] http://cup.columbia.edu/book/from-the-fires-of-war/978383821...
Of course, the optics of being seen as a Nazi are very bad, so even Nazis are constantly pointing fingers and saying "no, THAT person is the true Nazi." But the facts aren't on their side, so we have no obligation to humor them when they say absurd things like "Zelenskyy is the true Nazi", when the man, aside from being Jewish, also isn't espousing Nazi ideology.
This level of kindergarten logic from a grown ass men never cease to amaze me.
>> In March 2015, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that the Azov Regiment would be among the first units to be trained by United States Army troops in the Operation Fearless Guardian training mission.[282][283] US training however was withdrawn on 12 June 2015, as the US House of Representatives passed an amendment blocking any aid (including arms and training) to the regiment due to its neo-Nazi background.[284][285] *However, the amendment was later removed in November 2015,[284]*
I am deeply suspicious of these kinds of numbers. I just don't see any practical way of getting an honest sample.
Or people are terrified that if they appear to not be supporting the war they would end up in the gulags or, ironically, get sent to the frontlines with a gun pointed at their back.
I think this is probably true in a very limited, bone-deep way. They sense the power dynamics, feel the desire to be on top. What's needed is a rationalization for the conscious mind, to ease the path for it to come to the same conclusion, to endorse the actions you already wanted to take. Propaganda does just fine with that.
With that said, I think there are pretty large areas of detailed fact re: the state of the invasion, the economy, etc, where they are in fact deceived. All we can say about that is that it's extremely difficult to stand up under a constant barrage of one perspective when that one comes to your door and the other is restricted enough that you at least have to go out of your way for it. Especially if it's been that way your whole life.
How can you get this number? Today in Russia any question by a pollster sounds like "Do you support the war or do you want to get fined for "discreditation of the army"?". I remember quite different reaction to the Western polls in Crimea showing that huge majority support reunification with Russia -- "No, no, you can't believe any polls conducted in a non-free country, people there are just afraid to say they hate Russia and want back to the Ukraine".
"while their Nazi sympathies are also common knowledge"
I don't know anyone who knows that and supports Wagner.
You should not take this number seriously. It has been greatly exaggerated by russian propaganda. At the same time there is no independent reliable polling in russia at this time. Also, Russians are reluctant to share their real views due to harsh criminal+administrative penalties for "spreading fakes about the army". The war vividly exposed all the corruption, grift, lawlessness, inefficiencies in russia on a huge scale. But people are anemic and resined to their fate. 20 years of putin took the wind out of their sails.
This is, in my experience, actually a good indication that the event was truly a surprise to the Russian government. Their media apparatus is very good at having a cohesive narrative and lots of talking points in place before planned information operations, and they're not typically great at responding to events on the ground as they unfold, usually needing a couple of days to assemble a media campaign in response to unexpected events. The lack of any coordinated information response is a tell that the Russian government didn't anticipate this whole shebang.
1. Bad production quality and a clear message
2. Intense media coverage in Russia
3. Positive message about the Russian state
Literally none of these points were apparent here. It shows a weak Russian state, was covered only as so far as necessary and what the message would be was completely unclear. Don't hire mercenaries?
This existed, it just didn't exist in the traditional media. Look in the right discord servers and there were new videos being posted every 5 minutes as the convoy was moving around.
I'd long ago realised that this was a significant indicator of a crisis situation in many contexts. These range from military attack to natural disaster to political or business unrest.
The first indications of the atom bomb attack on Hiroshima were a) scattered reports of a "large explosion" and b) instant loss of all telegraph communications from a point some distance from the city centre inwards. Though the bomb struck early in day, it wasn't until that afternoon that an Imperial Japanese Army observation plane was able to fly over the city and surveil the damage, and the next day that the cause was known, after the United States informed Japan through diplomatic channels.
Similarly, when the HMS Sheffield was struck by Argentinian Exocet missiles during the Falklands War, the immediate effects were a loss of communications with the ship, and the first accurate information arrived, via heliocopter, along with the first casualties transported off the Sheffield.
In widespread natural disasters, particularly earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes, there is often some communications from major urban centres, but even those are limited and often outlying regions are entirely cut off. I recall when following a major Chilean earthquake, the US immediately offered satellite telephones, which could be used to report on conditions from remote communities.
In business or personal relationship usually characterised by open channels, "no news is bad news" is a useful heuristic.
For start-ups and business, there's an almost ridiculously predictable progression of blog (and more recently: social media) updates, initially exuberant, enthusiastic, and often technical, shifting to highly-managed public relations releases focusing on business and social factors, to ... silence. The latter often ends with a "next stage in our story" post, i.e., "we're shutting down".
And in political and military situations, what used to be a fat channel of communications (though not necessarily useful or accurate) is cut off as chains of command become unclear, leadership and spokespersons scramble for safety, and rumour and gossip spew forth. That last is its own interesting mix: the genuinely confused or misinformed, often, but also those trying to influence or exploit circumstances.
That "official channels" bit has been the case, and a major failing of news organisations for over a century. Walter Lippmann and Charles Merz pointed this out in a 1920 New Republic article, "A Test of the News", commenting in large part on the New York Times's coverage (and failings) of the Russian Revolution. In particular was the issue of ideologically-tinged coverage, here anti-Communist principally. (Later the bias would run the other direction, particularly in the 1930s during the Holodomor.)
Lippmann and Merz note:
The analysis shows how seriously misled was the Times by its reliance upon the official purveyors of information. It indicates that statements of fact emanating from governments and the circles around governments as well as from the leaders of political movements cannot be taken as judgements of fact by an independent press. They indicate opinion, they are controlled by special purpose, and they are not trustworthy news. If, for example, the Russian Minister of War says that the armies of Russia were never stronger, that cannot be accepted by a newspaper as news that the armies of Russia are stronger than ever. The only news in the statement is that the Minister says they are stronger.
<https://archive.org/details/LippmannMerzATestoftheNews/page/...>
They continue to note the especially insidious nature of the anonymous source. The whole article is interesting reading, and bears strong parallels to events occurring today.
As do the practices Lippmann and criticise. Over a century later, news organisations still rely overwhelmingly on official (and unofficial) government spokespersons, and in the majority of cases treat such pronouncements as statements of fact, even where severe credibility issues are well known. Much of this is a result of availability heuristics (government mouthpieces are easy to find, and generally want to talk), reputation, and relationships established between journalists and sources. It is much more work to find truly independent, credible, and unmotivated witnesses.
And so, when things go pear-shaped, the official sources tend to become scarce.
Related to the disaster / comms failure dynamic I mentioned above: one rough proxy for determining how bad a widespread disaster in fact is is to look at where casualty reports have not yet been received. Again: capital and major cities typically preserve some communications capacity. Outlying regions are far more likely to be cut off, and by looking at the relative size and significance of locations that are making reports, as well as patterns of communications cessation, it's possible to make some inferences about total magnitude. Note that offical tallies of morbidity and mortality are based on received, credible, verified reports, which is to say, official statistics will almost always understate actual impacts, possibly for hours, days, or weeks, depending on overall severity. The 2004 Boxing Day Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami comes to mind, with full official counts taking months or years to finally settle.
I "ran" a bot/crawler hobby project that takes a russian-speaking telegram channel as an input and outputs the messages in a translated form, including text, images and video. During this situation I realized this became really relevant so I improved during the coup it to support multiple input channels and to keep a queue as post processing takes long for videos, and to provide audio transcriptions (Prigozhin himself likes to post audio clips)
I don't think its true that there was not much information. There actually was minute-by-minute updates by citizens, Wagner itself, establishment-oriented channels etc. You can read the backlog if you want: https://t.me/translatedrussianpropaganda
At the peak there was some real queue and I had to switch from running it on an ARM VM to my 12-core local system just to keep up. Whisper takes the longest to run, and given it translates spoken russian really well, I claim it was the first source of information in several occasions for people that don't speak Russian, for the few people that actually joined the channel (I didn't advertise it but on a small forum because I knew it might become a maintenance/fixing burden).
I'm inclined to believe that this entire drama was manufactured by the MSM working with US Intelligence to spread the fallacy that there is chaos on the Russian side. Prigozhin may have been upset that he wasn't getting the support his men needed and may have retreated in protest. And even that is pure speculation.
Prigozhin isn't an idiot and if he purportedly did what the MSM is parroting then he failed spectacularly and sending Putin a j/k, bff? SMS isn't going to cut it. If Prigozhin is alive a week from now, then this was just more manufactured bullshit from the MSM.
Why would people not support Wagner over the regular army, and specifically over Shoigu and Gerasimov that he alleges to target? I can explain. None of the reasoning below is meant to excuse or praise Wagner or the rest of Russian actors in the region, but nevertheless, it's valuable to understand people's perspective.
This stuff about Utkin's Nazism, with Prigozhin himself son of a Jewish man, is completely peripheral and not in any way more salient than fringe National Socialist elements and Azov symbolic on the Ukrainian side that Russians make much hay of (in spite of Zelensky, too, being Jewish). The accusation just doesn't bite when there's a Slav on Slav war going on, it's only good for propaganda and twitter point-scoring, neither side there is seriously making decisions with relation to WWII political compass.
War crimes? This whole – unrecognized – war is a crime if we're serious about it, and regular Russian military is neck deep in war crimes, and it wasn't (far as anyone knows) Wagner that had terrorized Bucha, obliterated Mariupol or blew up the Kahovka dam, to name just three high-profile atrocities. Executions? The most recent case was them executing a defector (and a repeat criminal offender, from Ukraine, who had been serving a term for aggravated murder prior to his recruitment and defection). I don't think it's surprising when people in a rather harsh society shrug about such things (not to whatabout, but how many Americans would approve or at least not object to Snowden's execution?).
On the other hand, there are very salient reasons Russians support Wagner.
1. They just have a compelling, powerful image. It is known that they've succeeded in a few areas where regular forces have failed; Prigozhin is somewhat good at moving speeches; and they've been effective at exaggerating the difference and appropriating credit. Reminder that Prigozhin is a man of many talents and careers, one among those being management of the so-called Internet Research Agency [1]; catering business, paramilitary operations and illustration of children's books [2] aside, he's been in charge of propaganda for a long time now.
2. Adding to that, they just have an outsized presence in people's minds, there are catchy edgy music videos [3] and decently made movies [4] of their production (with military history buffs praising that movie), many affiliated Telegram channels, they're just very online, including Prigozhin personally – unlike Russian Ministry of Defense that's infamously behind the times, secretive, prone to embarrassing transparent lies, "boomer-like". It's another Russian self-own, in a sense, because the MoD grasped at Wagnerite meme magic to rescue the perception of the campaign, and became overshadowed as a result.
3. The war is not genuinely popular, especially now that it's clearly close to being lost. Surveys to the effect that 70% of Russians support the war omit details that this support is often in the form "we'll be exterminated if we surrender" [5], it's not driven by some positive expectation of Imperial greatness but by fear, very much like 1945 Germany but exacerbated by connectivity [6]; there was an awful lot of chauvinistic smugness early on, but not now. Prigozhin articulates criticism of the status quo (Ukraine never planned to attack, the operation was a mistake, it needlessly made Ukraine into a real threat, eroded Russian prestige, brought NATO closer to the heart of Russia than it'd have been otherwise etc.) [7] that resonates with people vastly more than coping output of the official organs.
4. People really, truly hate and look down on Shoigu, even people in the regular army. Thus they did not open fire at Wagner forces, and there's such a volatile situation that soldiers at the frontline are often not given arms, due to fear of mutiny. It is known at this point, in large part thanks to Wagner propaganda, that Shoigu is a corrupt bureaucratic oaf not qualified for his job, who appopriates vast sums and even diverts military resources for his pampered daughter, who only became a Minister due to his ties within Russian elite (he's one of the most powerful members of the gang, jumping between top-level posts for three decades). He's a lightning rod for all aspects of dissatisfaction with the way the war has gone for Russia (which might be part of why Putin keeps him around). And he's specifically hated by the unorganized but powerful undercurrent of ethnic Russian nationalism, due to being perceived as a strongly identifying Tuvan Buddhist [8] feudal lord with a private army [9] who is completely beyond any reproach and glibly sends tens of thousands of Russians (plus of course other peoples) to the meatgrinder, in meat waves, for zero benefit. Shoigu is understood as "noviop" [10], a member of semi-artificial Soviet post-ethnic people, and the deeper one's ethno-nationalism, the less support he gets, with people really concerned about Slavic race and so on charging him with slaughter of Slavs on both sides. In contrast, Prigozhin plays up his Russophilic and Slavophilic attitude, has his son serving in Wagner, cries crocodile tears about the loss of lives, and very pointedly, repeatedly drives the connection, in very simple language: "the "Tuvan degenerate" Shoigu denies us materiel – thousands of our Russian boys are getting killed by the enemy". With Ukrainians apparently unbeatable and, frankly, acting in their right, the conclusion about ways to stop boys from being killed becomes obvious enough. Like Kadyrov, his fellow warlord, he conspicuously does not accuse the Supreme Leader of any wrongdoing, but the implication about actions he believes are legitimate for Putin to take are clear.
In short, it's best to understand the situation not so much as Wagner group being popular with Russians on its own merits, but as Russia having arrived at the metastable condition where any cohesive military unit that seems competent and starts a mutiny against the Ministry of Defense can expect nontrivial cooperation from the masses and other forces. This is, I believe, is exactly why Prigozhin is acting in such a bizarre manner: he is making clear to Putin that he could easily move around and destabilize the war effort, all to secure his own survival – in the way that popular field commanders of "Novorossiya" failed to do, and got eliminated on Kremlin orders as potential competitors for control.
Wagner is theoretically easy to destroy, but has enough momentum to topple the Army and potentially send the whole regime into tailspin, with how unpopular Shoigu is; yet Putin is too invested in his little mafia family to throw Shoigu to the dogs; and if he keeps covering for Shoigu, the whole "good Czar, bad boyars" scheme implodes. So the equilibrium is letting Prigozhin go, with his force. At least for now.
I wonder when Prigozhin has started working on this.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
2. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/06/01/wagner-head-prigoz...
3. https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/xn4ky5/mc_wagner_rel...
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1EXVrACxnk
5. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/06/03/the-only-thing-worse...
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan#Wartime_conseq...
7. https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat/3790
8. https://nationalpost.com/news/world/the-pounds-12m-polite-pa...
He's letting him go but not with his force. They will try to take advantage and integrate Utkin's PMC into the MoD forces where this is possible.
Just as an example: Currently in our media Russians blew up the Kahovka dam. At no time anyone asks why they'd do that. It is detrimental to Russias strategy in the same way Russia does not profit from blowing up Nord Stream. The only reason for blowing up the dam would be to stop Ukraine forces at that flank, however the Russians were in control of the dam and they could have just opened it. Again this is similar to Nord Stream.
Could Russians have done it still? Sure, not all actions need to make sense, but it wouldn't be my first guess.
> With Ukrainians apparently unbeatable [...]
Not sure as meant as quote or not, but this does not hold water at all. Even Ukrainian officials say that the offensive isn't up to par currently. And by now we saw enough broken Leopards to say that the deliveries didn't have their desired effect either. Why are we in this war again?
So what is your first guess. Because I think it makes plenty of sense that Russia would blow up the dam, but even if we accepted your premise that it doesn’t, then for what actor does it make more sense to blow up the dam than Russia?
You may be the one who needs to take a step back and question if you’ve been consuming propaganda.
Russia had the means to block the flank at will. It does block that part for a week, sure, but after that Russia has no control over it anymore.
> [...] and question if you’ve been consuming propaganda.
That is beside the point. We all only/mostly consume propaganda. It's when you think that one side tells the truth, that you're being manipulated.
My personal hypothesis about the dam is that it was negligence and perhaps a misguided attempt to "partially demolish it". The main piece of evidence against Ukrainian/Western action is the resolution of Russian Government "On the specifics of application in the territories of the Donetsk People's Republic, Luhansk People's Republic, Zaporizhzhia region and Kherson region of the provisions of the legislation of the Russian Federation in the field of industrial safety of hazardous production facilities and safety of hydraulic structures", issued a week prior to the catastrophe[1], that says among many other similar things:
> d) technical investigation of the causes of accidents at hazardous production facilities and accidents at hydraulic structures shall be carried out by commissions headed by representatives of the authorized bodies.
> a) The provisions of Part Six of Article 10 of the Federal Law "On Safety of Hydraulic Structures" shall not apply until 1 September, 2023;
> 8. Until March 1, 2024 the information on hydraulic structures, located in the territories of the Donetsk People's Republic, Lugansk People's Republic, Zaporozhye Region and Kherson Region and put into operation until June 1, 2023, may be submitted for their inclusion in the Russian register of hydraulic structures without submission of the declaration of safety of hydraulic structures.
> *10. Until January 1, 2028 the technical investigation of accidents at hazardous production facilities and accidents at hydraulic structures, which occurred as a result of military actions, sabotage and terrorist acts, shall not be carried out.*
I'm way past trying to reason about qui bono. Sometimes it works (Nord Stream), sometimes Russia is just a magical place where stuff happens.
Source 4. and 7. are Russian. It also wasn't about the language, but affiliation.
> My personal hypothesis about the dam is that it was negligence and perhaps a misguided attempt to "partially demolish it".
Why?
> The main piece of evidence against Ukrainian/Western action is the resolution of Russian Government "On the specifics of application in the territories of the Donetsk People's Republic, Luhansk People's Republic, Zaporizhzhia region and Kherson region of the provisions of the legislation of the Russian Federation in the field of industrial safety of hazardous production facilities and safety of hydraulic structures", issued a week prior to the catastrophe[1], that says among many other similar things: [...]
This proves exactly nothing, except that Russians knew about this attack vector. Especially because according to them it was attacked weeks prior. Could be a lie, but they indeed reported it weeks prior.
> I'm way past trying to reason about qui bono. Sometimes it works (Nord Stream), sometimes Russia is just a magical place where stuff happens.
Did you forget that Russia was behind Nord Stream as well for weeks? Past cui bono is la-la-land.
>Why?
I would agree with that, because it is consistent with the general state of affairs in Russian army and government structures responsible for Ukraine. They lack intellectual capacity to evaluate all the consequences of their actions or inaction. Even if they had it, the responsible people may have not communicated it to the peers - only to the command vertical, where the message could have been lost or did not reach decision makers in time.
During Soviet times, many Russians learned to be _incredibly_ supportive of large gangs of people with guns and tanks standing in their front yard. There can be a horde of Romulans invading and they’ll be lining the road with water bottles and flower garlands.
People there still remember family members being carted away in box trucks for asking when they can expect the next food shipment. Russia is, and mostly has always been, ruled by violent thugs that believe their monopoly on violence should be exercised swiftly, frequently, and harshly.
Look how any kind of perceived criticism (or perceived lack of jubilant support) has been treated at any time in their past. Any public display of loyalty, any vox-pop interview - completely meaningless.
I find this to be a universal fact of the war in Ukraine.
I speak Russian natively and most of my family (dad and both in-laws) grew up in Ukraine.
So you'd think that compared to an average Westerner I could be well I formed about what's happening.
Yet I find it completely impossible. An amalgam of Russian sources will present a totally different tactical and historical picture than that of Western and Ukrainian sources.
I can chose to believe the later based on emotion and prevalent sentiment of where I live but objectively I don't feel confident going in either direction.
It's crazy to me that someone can feel certainty here with access to only one of the sides' information.
Perhaps and even likely this has been the case in every war but it's the first one where I am so accutely aware of it.
On the verge of the second Iraq invasion, on European TV, there was doubt about claims of WMD but a hint of oil and USA agenda. American TV at my friends house was rallying that Saddam and his regime must be ended immediately.
The two were not mutually exclusive.
If you're honestly interested on the topic, I welcome you to Google the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Putin.
It is a little funny to see you question international law and then without missing a beat pivot to “check out the icc warrants.”
Just know that at a non-negligible portion of the us is waking up to the utter nonsense.
There's quite a few heads of state who should be hauled out for trial at the Hague for doing just that. None of them will be.
[1] Unless, of course, you're a permanent UNSC member. /s
The Russians have not conquered Kyiv, their invasion has stalled but they have caused enormous damage. Ukraine has not managed to expel the invading army, though they seem determined to do so.
It seems like Russian sources have largely taken the mask off. They are there to weaken the West and strengthen themselves and are fine with that coming at the expense of Ukraine. They continue to call Ukrainians bad names, but it feels less like a serious critique of Ukrainian nationhood and more of a rallying cry for their own benefit.
The two sides do disagree on specific issues like who dropped which bomb where and who controls a given village but we seem to have moved on from the days when Russia was claiming total victory. Some of Ukraine's messages about the future are very optimistic, but it's always important to take forward looking statements with a grain of salt.
I don't understand what you tried to say. All statements about the future are statements of intent, not statements of fact. Grains of salt are not required when someone says something like "I'm going to join a gym and lose a couple of pounds." Ukraine puts out statements that are very optimistic about their future because that's their intention, and that's just it.
If you really want to stay objective, ground yourself in hard facts like
1. russia invaded Ukraine
2. russia bombed various cities to the ground
3. russia lost its originally invaded territories around Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson regions which amounts about half since 2022 invasion
4. russian military losses as reported by Ukraine are close enough to media confirmed by OSINT like oryx etc.
5. maps are hard truth which is mostly converge to the same from both sides
That said, nobody can convince anyone who wants to stay delusional. And ru propaganda machine (including online bots) is largely directed at constantly generating multiple conflicting lies to muddy the waters.
Maybe because Prigoshin was saying that the war was started for no real reason and people liked to listen to truth for a change [0]?
On the face of it, you might say "pick your poison" when choosing between Russian and Ukrainian social media sources, but the pro-Russian sources hae been consistently counter factual, stating things like the number of Patriot systems destroyed as much higher than the number of systems in theater. There are some quality pro-Ukraine sources that I've found provide consistently good info.
If you want neutral, the Austrian MOD comes out with an english language analysis once in a while which is good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvJgRrpkaaU
If this is the case, then this isn't going to be the Russian Civil War/Coup that people had hoped to end the war. Russia is certainly a mess though, and this might cause other political forces in Russia to act.
In other words: APCs on a highway are not that different from intercity buses, and highways are designed to let you cross the country quickly.
Highways let you move fast only as long as they're intact and no one is shooting at you; otherwise, they make you an easy target. Russian army experienced that first-hand in the first two months of their invasion of Ukraine.
my point was that they tried and they failed. wagner has a bunch of manpads and few pantsir sam systems. they tried to bomb them on highway from planes but missed and kill civilians in track. they also tried to shoot at them missles at voronezh but blew up some petrol refinary. they also tried to bomb some bridge to block road to moscow - but also missed
No, I believe the oil refinery got blown up by a Wagner surface to air missile. The Wagners were trying to shoot down a federal Ka-52, the helicopter successfully deployed countermeasures, and the missile flew off target into the backstop - which happened to be a refinery.
There are two videos of the event from different angles circulating on telegram, it's pretty clear.
It surely was considered. I can imagine in the state of panic even tactical nukes were considered, but sure, not reasonable.
But if Wagner forces would have actually pushed through, then they definitely would have blown up bridges, if the alternative would have been Moscow under siege or house to house fighting.
Edit: here's a link but this is not on the main highway. Unsure of the scale of this "operation" and if this was ordered from top brass or local initiative.
https://meduza.io/news/2023/06/24/v-lipetskoy-oblasti-gde-na...
Especially if there's been reports it's seriously been considered in Ukraine.
NATO is not what it was before 1989, and will take decades to come back up to a minimally acceptable level.
And some things do take decades, even in perfect conditions. Building up a navy takes time due to the long construction timelines for ships. Developing coordination for combined arms operations requires both good officers and non-coms. These take time to develop as well, and need to be continually sustained.
If you focus efforts, it doesn’t take long at all.
And surely you understand that the US economy and state of industry in 1943 (when the Liberty ships were being launched daily) is quite different than today? Only one country currently has the shipbuilding capacity to even think of something like that. The US (and Europe) have closed down a huge number of shipyards since the end of the Cold War, and it would take decades to create new ones, with trained workforces. All the US shipyards are short workers in almost all categories.
This one statement means you don’t know what you’re talking about. Non commissioned officers are E4 rank, you can leave bootcamp at E3 rank. 6 months later get E4. NCO only requires experience at the E7 or above level, which don’t fight only lead.
The name Kriegsmarine, when used to describe the German Navy, has extremly strong WW2 connotations, on a similar level as "Wehrmacht". :)
NATO simply has neither the stockpiles nor the production capacity to enter this war.
Can you?
That's the amusing part. The sad part is that the people behind the troll farms still think they're fooling anybody in the West.
And of course marching towards Moscow only staying hundrends of kilometers away from it (while being let to march), and "taking Moscow in a matter of hours" is a totally different thing.
i think you overestimate russian military might. russian military is second strongest military in russia those days
prior to this, last month, some RDK and Russian Legion performed ~10km deep incursions into russia, pretty much unopposed and stayed there for a days.
so no, it's not only onliners. it's just state of russian state. where everything is fake and for show
Reality is ground forces let wagner pass out of fear/solidarity. Only aviation tried, and failed hard to stop the convoy.
What would it take for the US president to leave Washington DC though? Obviously a real possibility of nuclear war. What else though?
Also President Madison evacuated Washington, DC during the War of 1812.
Where would he go? Australia ?
There's the Pentagon, Raven Rock Mountain Complex, Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, Cheyenne Mountain Complex, the Greenbrier bunker, the Peters Mountain facility, 33 Thomas Street, nearly a dozen aircraft carriers, Camp David, and god knows how many military bases.
Or he could just board the doomsday fleet of E-4Bs and stay in the air
Government Continuity of Operations:
Continuity of Operations (COOP) is a United States federal government initiative, required by U.S. Presidential Policy Directive 40 (PPD-40), to ensure that agencies are able to continue performance of essential functions under a broad range of circumstances. PPD-40 specifies certain requirements for continuity plan development, including the requirement that all federal executive branch departments and agencies develop an integrated, overlapping continuity capability, that supports the eight National Essential Functions (NEFs) described in the document.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_governme...>
See also:
Post Attack Command and Control System: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_Attack_Command_and_Contro...>
United States Continuity of Operations Facilities: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Continuity_of_Op...>
Nowhere. AF1 can be refueled in the air indefinitely, and carries enough food and water for several days. You ground civilian traffic and shoot down anything non-military in the air; nothing's getting to you.
Note: I support Ukraine, Russia is absolutely in the wrong
That’s an absolute win, for Prigozhin, since that was the original goal
this internal issue has nothing to do with anyone outside of that region
thats a pretty big shakeup. “I dont like this guy and there is no political process to remove him so I brought in my private army, the President fleed and he resigned in 10 hours”
Seems like a terrible outcome for Putin. He looks really weak and presumably just lost most if not all of Wagner, who were his most effective troops. He might have Prigozhin poisoned, but that would probably cause further instability internally as it causes more of his leadership to realize he'll clearly betray anybody and his word isn't worth anything.
That remains to be seen? Might be that some of their warriors will take the offer to join the military, and others... might select (or be given) new leadership, and go back to Ukraine to resume their regular business there.
If this really was Prigozhin vs. MoD, then that particular issue might be a closed case. Mercenaries are what they are - they're loyal to themselves and money, not state policy. Prigozhin got them to march at Moscow, so they did; then got them to march back, safe and sound, so they did. Russian government can just say "okay, no shots fired, no hard feelings" and leave it at that; it's not like they trusted them in the first place.
Putin angle though, that's a new thing. One way of spinning today's events is that Prigozhin took a swing at the Tsar, missed, and still lived to talk about it. Leaving it at that is not safe for the Tsar.
As of right this second. I hope his affairs are in order because the writing is on the wall.
I’m not saying that was the original plan, but even just moving 20K Wagner troop as part of the deal, even with no intention of attack, would draw a significant chunk of ukraines attention.
And if the Ukrainians don’t move additional defense, then an opportunistic attack might be on the table for some exchange that would be mutually beneficial to the Russian factions.
Let me be clear, this was not meant to be a grand ruse, but that doesn’t it can’t be turned in to one after the fact in order for the opposing Russian sides to salvage their situation.
Maybe he thought more parts of the army would back him?
Cannot be - on this level it's basic/simple strategy, if he's as good as he says he is then he would have forseen such situation => I don't believe in a "sudden realization/enlightenment" by Prigozhin.
I think it's also possible that it was never a legitimate attempt on his part. He may never have expected it to succeed, but it would cause enough problems that it forced Russian leadership to back away and be willing to cut a deal that lets Prigozhin keep his life (for now) in exile. He'd been incrementally pushing things for months for a variety of reasons (real anger over lack of material support? Pure power play? Who knows). But unlike critical journalists, oligarchs and political enemies that have been assassinated over the years, Prigozhin had an army to use as leverage. Though I still won't be surprised if he's the next person to fall out a window or die from a novel poisoning method.
I am reminded of the story:
Chen Sheng was an officer serving the Qin Dynasty, famous for their draconian punishments. He was supposed to lead his army to a rendezvous point, but he got delayed by heavy rains and it became clear he was going to arrive late.
Chen turns to his friend Wu Guang and asks “What’s the penalty for being late?”
“Death,” says Wu.
“And what’s the penalty for rebellion?”
“Death,” says Wu.
“Well then…” says Chen Sheng.
And thus began the famous Dazexiang Uprising, which caused thousands of deaths and helped usher in a period of instability and chaos that resulted in the fall of the Qin Dynasty three years later.
Really. It's a threshold problem. If the penalty for shoplifting is death, and the penalty for a massacre is death, a good number of sociopathic shoplifters will gamble for freedom via massacre. (It's rational.)
It's why dictatorships consistently flame out. If there is no peaceful transition of power, losing power means death. That incentivises a dictator on the edge to take risks that otherwise make no sense because even a minute chance of success is worth it.
In the context of a Russian revolution, this animates concerns around our species' first nuclear civil war.
To repeat myself from another comment: haven't we hadn't enough examples of smart people being stupid lately?
I think this coupled with the military didn’t seem to come over to his side in large enough numbers quickly enough indicated it was going to be a real fight, and not a one or two day affair. Otherwise, yes, Progozhin is a dead man walking.
Prigozhin has been repeatedly casting doubt on the decision of attacking Ukraine for the past couple of weeks. He went as far as rejecting Russian propaganda on how Ukraine provoked it and stating that Ukraine only reacted to Russian's military presence. He even proceeded to pin the blame of this Russian quagmire on Putin and the Russian MoD.
Before starting the military coup, Prigozhin laid the groundwork to pin Russia's invasion of Ukraine as betraying Russia by weakening it. Keeping Russia's armed forces in Ukraine was also critical for the success of his military coup.
I don't think your scenario is plausible. There's something else in play.
Peter Zeihan stated the obvious in a video on this that Wagner would have been decimated from the air on their way to Moscow too. I don't think you need to attend an Army war college to figure that out.
Ultimately, someone crazy enough to build a giant private army is going to do crazy things.
None of this seems good to me unless one is cheering for the doomsday clock to strike midnight.
Maybe trying to force flip some Aces - and when they didn’t come up he retreated
> It was very likely just a rash miscalculation by Prigozhin
Situation became untenable with MoD trying to enlist Private troops - reaction must have been anticipated
How are things in regular army that they have to ingest Wagner contractors ?
Prigozhin's rationale for this episode seems to be intense annoyance that he wasn't getting respect.
And now - as he believes - he's got that after a show of strength, everyone can go home and pretend it never happened.
It's insanity. Just bonkers. All of it.
Some Ukrainians I know tell me there's local suspicion that was a feint or a ruse to see where Ukraine would attack. It's an interesting idea, but that seems a lot of effort and drama for a very small reward.
I’ve worked with various Australian federal government agencies for ten years now. Three years ago we moved to the capital, Canberra.
It turns out ‘the government’ is just a bunch of people who happen to live in this one city. They’re as average as the rest of us. They were born here because their parents live here and these are the jobs here so that’s what they do.
In fact few outsiders come here because the city is famously boring. [0]
The mystery is why we would think that this group of people were any different from the rest of us.
[0]: Actually it’s a charming little town. Don’t tell anybody.
The agencies were like daycare for adults. No secret cabals of 5D chess planning. Those people couldn’t plan their way out of a wet paper bag.
Also, Canberra itself is rather lovely! It’s quiet, clean, and the food is good.
All those politicians have to eat their “it’s totally not bribery” $500 lunches somewhere.
i think his intense annoyance might be result of some assassination attempt. he claimed yesterday that wagner bases were bombed. on one of the yesterdays videos he has rather deep and long fresh looking cut on his face
I'm credulous of this. It's a lot of effort and drama but the stakes are extremely high too. If it lured Ukraine into a death trap it would pay for itself.
The fact that very little fighting occurred and nobody even went to prison is suspicious.
The fact that Prigozhin demonstrated extreme personal loyalty to Putin in the past and vice versa on a level few others have matched is also suggestive. Who else would you ask to run a fake coup?
I'm not even sure if the MOD confirmed them. The details might have just "appeared" on telegram.
I saw a photo of the dead pilots. Their faces were blurred. Weird huh?
I presume they mean stuff like not enough ammunition, no air support, and so on.
I've just read a Russian telegram channel post (https://t.me/volyamedia/703) theorizing and referring to anonymous sources in higher ranks, that this was a push from the president administration and FSB against MoD, with Prigozhin being just the public side. This is of course based on anonymous sources and must be taken with caution, but it is a good explanation of what could have happened.
If we assume just 2 sides, Kremlin+MoD vs Wagner, this agreement looks impossible or a fake move.
From Kremlin position, leaving Prigozhin go away peacefully means this kind of uprisings with big demands are going to repeat. From Prigozhin's position, this means to step back after becoming an existential threat and try to co-live peacefully. Very implausible.
So I had only 2 explanations: 1) he lied and was preparing more offensive, or 2) he actually got some undeclineable offer: get some money, go abroad, or to say Afrika with another mission. But still, for Kremlin, (2) looks a very short-sighted decision and undermining of own position.
Thus, the version of an internal fight seems plausible. If we assume that the PA & FSB were ready to let the state lose this much reputation, or put their frontlines at risk of collapse during the counteroffensive, then things seem to agree with each other. (And collapsing front lines are a liability of MoD, not FSB anyway.)
> From Kremlin position, leaving Prigozhin go away peacefully means this kind of uprisings with big demands are going to repeat. From Prigozhin's position, this means to step back after becoming an existential threat and try to co-live peacefully. Very implausible.
Yes, he's probably a dead man walking, that doesn't mean that the Kremlin can't agree to allow him to walk away peacefully while they come up with a way to assassinate him. The Kremlin will better understand that trope about diplomacy being the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
As for why he withdraw, I don't think it was because he got a sweet deal, but rather that his backers wavered in their support and giving him an offer of exile was the only favor they were capable of granting him.
Prigozhin agreed to a fake stand-down; his troops have been in action for 18 hours, this allows them to regroup and rest for a night and commence again in the morning, with some drummed up excuse.
Prigozhin didn't get the support he expected from the military, so he was was motivated to settle, but had enough support to threaten Moscow, so Putin was motivated to settle. Outcomes - a hardliner in charge of the Russian military, Putin quietly retires in a year or two, hands over reigns without the violence.
Prigozhin was threatened with a tactical nuke, decided it wasn't worth it.
One of Prigozhin's desired outcomes - a change of the guard in Russia's MoD was inevitable given the incompetence shown in the defense of this mutiny. Even if things got truly violent and Wagner was destroyed by force, Shoigu and Gerasimov were out.
Prigozhin's communications are a mix of brutal honesty and subtle manipulation. His allies are a mix of the competent and the fanatical. Overall, the whole thing is bizarre. I'm not convinced it's over.
I'm not sure your second is realistic. I don't think there's any scenario where at least one of Putin and Prigozhin don't die. If Prigozhin "settles", he will be shortly assassinated. (Watch out for windows!) Putin might be able to quietly retire, but I think the odds are against that one, too.
What could he possibly trade to the next ruler to maintain leverage over them and indefinitely guarantee his safety? From the West, the ICC, the Islamists, the Chechens, the Ukrainians, the Syrians? All the mafia bosses and oligarchs that he's subjugated inside of Russia? He literally has to stay in power simply to be able to sleep at night.
And it's not just him: his family, his friends, his legacy is all at risk. To give up power is to give up all his leverage to ever control the safety of anyone or anything he has ever cared about. There's no safe retirement plan for a person who has lived the life he has.
I've read an article and they've identified somewhere after April 2008 when the Bucharest NATO Summit (Putin was also present) took place and before August 2008, when the Russian invasion of Georgia began as the moment Putin ultimately decided to invade a nearby state in order to prevent NATO expansion into post-Soviet states. That's his red line, that's why he also invaded Ukraine. He still views these countries as part of the USSR/Russian world, just like Belarus where he currently tries a Crimean-style Anschluss. The reality is quite a bit different.
Mostly agree, except to the conclusion. I do not think Putin is ready to hand over the power and he rather rules till he dies (one way or the other).
And of course it is far from over, because whoever wins, it ain't people who have much respect for human rights or lifes.
But I cannot imagine both being alive in russia.
I have trouble believing there was a credible threat of nukes. Nuking your own territory is an unambiguous way to signal you've completely lost control of everything.
Only in the movies though. No country would risk a tactical nuke in their own territory, that's self-defeating.
No one had done that, but that's the general theory as to why South Africa developed nukes.
> Mr. de Klerk told Parliament that the program, one of the nuclear era's most closely guarded secrets, was begun in 1974 because of the apartheid Government's sense of isolation and its fear of Communist designs in the region.
Of course, that doesn't preclude internal use.
No, it was for external use; that’s why when there was a clear internal existential threat, instead of using the weapons, they dismantled them and the program to prevent the successor regime from having them.
It should be a pretty clear signal that they've lost control, as the damage the dam causes is larger than that of a small tactical nuke.
It's pretty damn clear who blew up the dam, yet lots of people still claim that Russia didn't do it.
Wouldn't be hard to make the same people believe someone else nuked Russian territory.
The dam also has a pretty clear motive. While the only clear motive for the pipeline are the Americans. But there is a sever lack of evidence to back up any narrative indicating them.
Russia has already admitted to blowing the dam, it was likely blown from the inside as the dam itself is super strong.
Russia did it to try and hinder the progress of the counter offensive.
Yes?. Your sources are clearly terrible if that’s the case.
We have Russians on video saying they blew up the damn and Russian propagandist threatening to blow up the Kyiv dam.
Here are two Russians saying they mined are going to blow up the dam.
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/16660615320803614...
>> "We mined everything on Kakhovka HPP. So, they'll f*king blow it up and will wash away Ukrainian Armed Forces on the other side" - a Russian says. The video was published on 10 December, 2022.
https://twitter.com/den_kazansky/status/1666003021925347328
>> Russian soldier Yegor Guzenko, who is fighting in the Kherson region, admitted that Russia blew up the dam in Nova Kakhovka to stop Ukrainian army He also said that the Russian army should also blow up other dams on the Dnieper
>Not to be blunt, but this is an egregiously bad bit of trickery and it’s difficult to believe that people are falling for it. To begin with, this is an interview with a Ukrainian blogger and youtuber who goes by the screen name “Edgar Myrotvorets” - interestingly naming himself after the infamous Ukrainian kill list. The “Russian soldier” who he is interviewing is allegedly a gentleman named Yegor Guzenko. Yegor seems to be an interesting fellow - he pops up on social media periodically largely to confess to stereotyped Russian war crimes, like kidnapping civilians and executing Ukrainian prisoners, and of course blowing up dams.
>Essentially, we are being asked to believe that there is a Russian soldier out there who is giving interviews to Ukrainian media in which he confesses to all of Russia’s nefarious activities, and then goes about his duties without being stopped or punished. It should be pretty obvious that Yegor is actually Yehor, and is not a Russian soldier at all but a Ukrainian impersonator - funnily enough, Yegor also has a beard even though the Russian MOD has been cracking down on facial hair.
So the errors in your reply are numerous. First: The person on the right side is a UKRAINIAN blogger, who's channel can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/@edgar_ua
The rest are left as an exercise to the reader.
Your sources are non existent why don’t you link to these people writing these opinions if they are so strong?.
> The rest are left as an exercise to the reader.
And by the rest you mean all of it right cause you don’t have a single source or evidence of anything.
Here’s another source.
>https://amp.smh.com.au/world/europe/images-emerge-of-car-lad...
Your biggest mistake is to think that the Russians don’t want to appear as monsters.
They are more than happy to, so much so that when they commit war crimes like blowing up the dam.
They cheer it on and want their military to blow up even more dams.
Just like when they downed MH17 Russians were cheering on this destruction until they learnt about the disgust from the international community.
Then the switch flipped and people like yourself went into overdrive to try and deny more Russian war crimes.
Oh, and here’s another question. The blogger says “our guys” - as in, the Russians. Why would a Ukrainian blogger be calling Russian soldiers “our guys”?
Was he trying to represent himself as a Russian news source? This would be rather bizarre, as he posted this on his YouTube site that professes to be Ukrainian.
The point being, the whole thing is a blatant fake, and people like you double down on their jingoistic rhetoric because they can’t imaging being fooled by such half-witted propaganda.
Speaking of propaganda.
Who's your source?, the words that you quote are useless without an actual person to put them too.
Theres also now plenty of news articles that have multiple bits of evidence that you have conveniently just left out.
You have a lot to type for someone without a single source.
Whereas covering a country in Agent Orange or depleted uranium, or radiactive crap from an entombed reactor is, like, a Tuesday when it comes to industrialized warfare.
Apart from that it's entirely built on anonymous sources, this gives some plausible explanation, because if we consider just 2 sides (Prigozhin/Wagner vs Government), a genuine stand-down seems impossible. Leaving Prigozhin go away undermines the authority of Putin among those in top power.
But with 3 or 4 sides (Wagner, MoD & Rostech, PA & FSB, Putin & closest people) this explains their moves much better.
Although, if PA & FSB really did this, it's very reckless, putting the entire campaign at risk -- like quick frontline collapse.
So I admit the case with inner fight possible, though prorably the fake stand-down is more probable.
(I do not mean to dismiss your post, only the strangeness of the situation).
The cyberpunks were a bit ahead of reality in these situations...
Woah there. This just doesn't parse.
I think that depends on how we got here. One theory could be that another country or set of countries paid him to turn against Russia and promised he could live wherever he wants with a nice stash of cash should he accomplish some specific tasks. The reason I think this could be the case is that mercs are generally only faithful to money and anything that gives them more power. I'm sure he realized he did not have a future of money or power in Russia so it might not have taken that much to turn him.
But the far cheaper and easier version is that he was threatened with the fates of his Russian wife and children.
I'm starting to see what they meant.
Absolutely everyone looks ridiculous, Putin somehow manages to survive another day and the roulette wheel begins to spin again.
The other factor is Prigozhin is popular with the rank and file in the russian army, and so has a chance to effectively control the army if he decapitated the leadership. Putin's underlings would probably fall in behind him if they believed he did.
Putin, for all his personal power, is only one guy, he depends on the loyalty of the people around him, and this being russia, I imagine they're very much looking out for themselves, rather than some higher calling, so they can be convinced of what's good for them in the current situation.
"Learn from the past" doesn't mean "look at this one example where things went wrong and then never do anything even remotely like that ever again".
That's right, in the west people on government tend to be more ideologically driven than in Russia.
To me this looked like an “all in”, but apparently, they think it wasn’t. What could have convinced him and his troops that any promises made would be held?
Are there historical precedents for this kind of action where the revolter stopped their advance, and lived happily ever after?
My guess is that he was counting on support from within the Russian power structure that was promised but then didn't materialize, and now he knows that following through would be suicide, and giving up at least offers a non-zero chance of survival.
Another possible explanation: it was a setup, planned by Putin from beginning to end in order to improve his strongman image and eliminate Wagner as a threat. Prigozhin was given the offer to play along and end up powerless but rich - and alive. That offer could be credible because if Prigozhin gives up control of Wagner, he helped Putin and is not a threat to him anymore.
One thing that doesn't make sense to me is that Prigozhin used an alleged Russian missile attack on a wagner base as justification to start this charade. If the Russian government really wanted to neutralize Wagner, one can only think they would have taken more effective and quick measures to do so, rather than a half-hassed missile attack. There's no logic behind it, some piece of the puzzle is missing.
You can't assemble those forces in a moments notice.
You can't expect no resistance on the way to the capital.
In some way he succeeded into putting as much distance as possible between himself and the Ukraine counterattack (even if this means selling Wagner to the Russian army in exchange for a golden ticket for himself and the Wagner leaders). All without looking like a treason towards the rest of mercenaries.
Would not surprise me if the other wagnerites will be forced to enter in the Russian army and used routinely as cannon fodder, as they did before with the Russian soldiers.
So Prigozhin:
- marched unopposed until he was 200 km from Moscow
- military scrambled to build defenses around Moscow
- Prigozhin's forces downed at least two military aircraft
- Prigozhin's forces had an unopposed military presence in Rostov, population 1.1 mln people
In the end:
- deal was supposrdly negotiated by a widely disrespected Lukashenko, not by Putin.
- all charges dropped
How's that strongman image coming along?
Lukashenko is Putin's puppet; Putin couldn't negotiate in first person without appearing as weak. It's possible that both Prigozhin and Putin tested their own strength and concluded that they both can be hurt badly. I believe that we'll know more by looking at what will happen to Shoigu and Gerasimov in the next days.
Ah yes, instead it was negotiated by the unpopular ridiculed Lukashenko everyone views as a clown. This makes Putin seem strong.
Also strong:
Putin in the morning: these traitors will be brought to justice, I authorize Ministry of Defence to use any means possible. I give you my word.
Putin in the evening: we drop all charges against this military coup (who also killed at least 12 soldiers furing their march on Moscow), and I give my word the Prigozhin can just go to Belarus.
So strong.
It's funny how putinophiles will try to contort reality to a ridiculous degree to find an angle to prove Putin is a superhuman playing 12-dimensional chess.
Now imagine any Western leader doing the same, and how you would ridicule them.
Moreover, note that the two Russian officials shown talking with Prigozhin in Rostov are Shoigu's #2 and Gerasimov #2. They didn't seem entirely comfortable in that video, but that sends a message nonetheless. Also, Prigozhin never addressed Putin directly. There's a lot of stuff going on there, probably too much to draw conclusions, but I'm sure we'll see some people "disappear" or die of "natural causes" quite soon.
You literally wrote "Putin couldn't negotiate in first person without appearing as weak."
And you started with "it was a setup, planned by Putin from beginning to end in order to improve his strongman image".
I've listed most of the things that actually happened. How does any of this improve his strongman image?
I never wrote that. It was a quote from a post 2 levels up.
Thats not how russia works. In russia you show up with a gun, say "Im Tzar now" and everyone obeys out of fear. Occupying main centers of power in Moscow (MoD, TV, Kremlin) would be enough for Prigozhin to claim being the new ruler. That one brigade "defending" Moscow didnt even have heavy weapons. Wagner tanks would cut thru them like hot knife.
That makes sense, yes. It may have been real world Diplomacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)): “if you attack Moscow, I’ll support you” with a backstab.
This is the kind of event you need to look at on maps. There's a freeway all the way from Rostov to Moscow. It's flat country in good weather. The first big natural obstacle is the bridges at the Oka River, and Russian Federation armored units are reportedly already in position at those bridges. So that's where the major battle would have been.
Re: "absolute torrent of information". No. A small amount of information relayed through different paths and amplified. Be aware of that.
My cynical suspicion is that this whole affair was really about Prigozhin finding a way to keep the buckets of money that he has been making from smuggling African gold; by moving to Belarus he keeps the majority of the spoils, with Lukashenko probably taking a cut.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-wagner-group-ukraine-war...
I have seen a similar analysis by Ukrainian intelligence and it seems what fits bizarre events well
So this was his way of saying "I'm powerful, I'm in control, I matter". It was always about him and feeling tossed aside by powerful officials like Shoigu and Gerasimov, who need his army but don't care about Prigozhin. It had nothing to do with policy difference, it was just a pure demonstration of raw power.
I would be surprised if Shoigu or Gerasimov get pushed out as a result, I think it is more likely that Prigozhin got guarantees about his own future within the military establishment, something of an "honorary general".
I guess it's too hard to tell signals from noises.
Oddly enough on some more of the hypothetical and conspiratorial parts of the net possibilities like this have been discussed for weeks. It's just so odd to see this happen in real life.
The rest of the planet really didn’t see this coming on Friday. It was borderline late 1990s military-espionage-themed Hollywood action movie stuff.
There’s likely a couple of intelligence orgs that aren’t happy they ended up flat-footed, and didn’t see this coming when it did.
I don’t think he was cornered at all, just impatient. He’s 70 years old and the conflict had frozen for 8 years. Barely anyone even cared in western europe/US. That’s perfect for Russia! But can he really live for much longer? He may not think he has many more years to dedicate to the task.
Now the invasion has completely backfired and he is in a political corner he backed himself into. If your theory of Russian machismo is correct, he can’t back down from trying to beat up a smaller weaker country - and he simply can’t beat them.
So he has to lose in Ukraine, beat the first coup, and consolidate power simultaneously. I believe Putin will be just like Erdogan who used the 2016 “coup” to eliminate political enemies.
People died in Turkey in 2016, there was damage- but Erdogan emerged stronger and won subsequent elections. Maybe there will be Russian proscription lists and purges now.
This is not how it was seen by Russian conservatives like Putin. The threat of NATO in Ukraine was not eliminated by those actions.
Now everyone realizes that they are a weak successor state who has completely squandered their military inheritance from the USSR. Russian conservatives may not realize it, which is fine, as they are willing to rapidly expend away their soviet inventory. Their modern weak economy can’t afford to rearm. They have eliminated themselves from the great game.
Not only did they fail to stop NATO - it expanded and added 1,340 km of direct border contact.
That he was a risk of starting a coup was obvious to any but the most blinded observer of Russia.
- Prigozhin is entirely aligned with Putin.
- However, there's some ambiguity regarding the army's leadership complete allegiance to Putin.
Thus, the crux of the matter appears to be the strategy to displace specific factions within the army and replace them with supporters of Putin.
That is 100% against every major decision of Putin and a direct attack to his authority, even though he softened it up by stating he was wrongly informed by the military.
In other words, he is saying that poor Putin was deceived but these evil people from Ministry of Defence.
It's always his trustees that fail the tsar.
The check was going to be if military leadership changed and it all resolved peacefully.
Guess what happened.
- current military leaders are being removed
- new contract cancelled
Makes Putin look rather weak.
That's the problem for these kinds of strongmen dictators - any sign of weakness is a major political problem and one which he may not outlive. And in fairness to Stalin (and you won't hear me complementing Stalin too much usually), he didn't flee Moscow in 1941 when other armies were approaching.
At this point, I think Prigozhin is more likely trying to get a deal to leave russia and keep his billions & life.
Highly doubt Wagner will be kept around and likely the defense minister will be kept. That said, the defense minister ran away in the fighting, probably justification to sack him
Everyone knows, even in russia, that the war is a desaster.
And now Prigoshin and his Wagner forces, who stood for the only few victories in the last time, turned against Putin. (Even stating, that the war was wrong in the first place and that there never was a threat from Ukraine towards russia.)
And Wagner has the reputation of being ruthless and efficient.
The common national guards really don't want to fight them. They could surely bomb them all to death, but then who will fight and win for russia?
There is currently a ukraine offensive going on. And Wagner occupied an important military HQ in rostov. They will never forgive Prigoshin for that, that is sure, but he plays the only card he has - brute force.
And they came already within 250 km of moscow with little resistance. But that is also, because they don't want to actually fight.
Lukashenko is not an independent agent, he is Putin’s slave. Zero chances Prigozin just retires in Belaruss.
I don't think anyone's getting near Kyiv again in this war.
That seems to be a low bar; they spent nine months taking a town of 70k in a separatist province. Kyiv is a... different target, and I fully expect the Belarussian border is well fortified now.
I do not think this can be a measure of anything. Just a reminder: Verdun was smaller in 1914-1916.
Against an army of tanks large enough to take Kyiv? Only a few options. Recall that the first attempt stalled in a giant traffic jam because they couldn’t leave the road.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/26/1164586980/ukraine-russia-war...
Ukraine has blown up a bunch of bridges since that attempt, too.
Churchill’s quote seems apt. Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
The end result is a bit unclear, i still think that Prigozhin will fall from a window ( or however they want to get rid of him).
But I can't believe it's only Shiogu he was after, who wanted him dead ( revenge), that's a huge risk to take.
I first thought he just wanted to boost his political ambition, but he did attack Putin ( the tsar can never be at fault in Russian culture). This action has portrayed Putin as weak internally and history wise, weak leaders were killed. I don't think it's forgivable.
All in all, this wasn't a coup.
This was putting military pressure for political reasons.
The main advantage was speed and showing how incompetent the current Russian generals are.
If Shiogu will be replaced, that's not good news. He's a incompetent loyalist without any military experience and a pure politician, it benefited Ukraine a lot from my POV.
No blood shed is a lie too if reports of downed choppers and planes are to be believed.
He didn't have the guts or the support to go through, and even announcing of trying to reach Moscow was stupid.
Amongst all this, where the heck is the Russian Air Force? They were planning to reach Moscow via usual roads, would have been very easy for a couple of MIGs to smoke them like the US Air Force did in 1991 in Iraq's Highway to Hell.
This whole war in Ukraine is very bizarre, no Navy, no Air Force, just ground war and drones, it's like the really expensive pieces of equipment are too costly to be risked for Ukraine.
"Where is the Russian Air Force," is a common question in the Ukrainian conflict. They've mostly been lobbing standoff weapons from inside Russia to avoid losses to AA, as they lack the SEAD capability to operate safely closer. Given the supposed shoot downs of helicopters, I can see not wanting to risk getting closer. Plus all they're probably down to dumb bombs, making it quite hard to hit much accurately at a distance.
There were videos on Twitter of the Wagner columns using pretty serious short & medium range air defences.
It’s hard to infer exactly how much air defence Wagner has, but even a couple of Pantsirs would make air strikes very dangerous for non stealth aircraft.
Russia's air force is supposedly a major problem for the Ukrainians during the current offensive, that's why Zelensky is so adamant about getting fighter jets ASAP.
What has happened today is hard to explain. Probably lack of command and coordination between FSB and military.
"Russian TV airs Wagner rebellion briefly, then switches to documentary on caviar" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/24/russian-tv-air...
I see this as a continuation of what this whole debacle is all about: regime change.
A large part of the official motivation behind this invasion is preventing civil war in Russia. That's why Ukraine was supposed to be "stabilized".
Putin presents himself as a source of stability and that's how he's perceived for the most part.
To attempt to upend this order is to be either foolish, or very certain of one's position with hard data to back that up. Prigozhin still hasn't been defenestrated, so I suppose it's more the latter than the former.
There may be some serious internal power struggle that an outside observer cannot see, but it's far more likely that the invasion was not a desperation move, but just one of the many steps that Putin makes to increase his internal perception of legitimacy.
There's no reason, besides our domestic propaganda and wishful/magical thinking to believe that it was a desperation move from him. His internal-to-Russia legitimacy was quite high prior to the war.
(And it's hard to tell what it is now, because of the crackdown on speech and dissent. So you get political pundits who are talking out their ass four fifths of the time assuring is that no, this time, he's totally on the brink of being out, pinky swear...)
----
Bonus points: If most of your military command is staffed by spineless bootlickers, who were promoted for their loyalty, as opposed to competence, they are very unlikely to join any rebellion against you. There's a good reason for a nation that is secure from outside invasion to have an incompetent military...
This past day was weird, but seems to be the exception that... Proves the rule?
I feel like he got paid a large enough amount of money and got enough security guarantees to walk away. He is a mercenary after all.
Either this is part of the plan of how Prigozhin is managed by Kreml -- and as such, a part of how the subdivisions of power are managed and constantly reorganised -- or Prigozhin had acquired some valuable piece of power but he needed to march towards Moscow in order to be taken seriously.
You don't try something like this unless you know you're going to get out of it.
It looks like he's not getting killed for now.
Perhaps the reason was surprisingly simple: He didn't want to die
Big questions:
1. What was Prigozhin's attack plan? He was an experienced military commander who had fought against tough opposition and won. He and his staff would have had a plan with some chance of working. Zooming up the freeway to Moscow was going to run into opposition at some point. Probably at a major bridge, which is where armored assaults traditionally get stuck. Then what? What was the plan? A deal with the other side to get out of the way? Some advance forces to seize key bridges and choke points?
Forcing an opposed river crossing is difficult, and more importantly here, slow. A coup has to be fast, winning before the other side gets fully mobilized. Slow coups either fail or turn into civil wars.
2. After reaching Moscow, then what? 5000 troops could not take Moscow. But they might be enough to take out Putin. Was that the commander's intent?
In the aftermath of this, look to see which mid-level Russian commanders get purged. This had a chance if it had some support, or at least lack of opposition, on the Russian military side. Without that, it was going nowhere. Prigozhin must have some indications of support from somebody.
Will have to wait and see.
Wagner head was getting replaced because he was getting too much power
Putin doesn't like someone else with power, that's why the military has weak leaders ( loyalty > Battlefield success).
Wagner head became aware that he's going to die, he misled his soldiers to get out of their Russian MOD contract so they would join his minor rebellion.
As soon as he got the assurance he's going to survive after his bold move ( his only move, since he got ignored by Russian military leaders), he jumped ship to Belarus.
My 2 cents for now
I suspect that's because you, and the rest of us here, don't have all the information.
Looking from the outside, I suspect we overestimated his chances of success because of how surprising the action was and quite frankly, we wanted that to be true. If this were true, this deal would make no sense at all.
Ukrainian army not reacting hastily to manbearprig's display was also a wise move.
2) The event showed how fragile are both (Kremlin and Wagner) currently.
Prigozhin has declined his unique chance to recycle from War criminal into a top respected politician in the PostPutinism. Making a lot of noise bragging about taking the Kremlin in hours, just to end exiled in Belarus has no sense. Is too risky unless the only point was a desperate attempt to escape from a certain death in the war front while saving face.
3) The recent visit of African leaders had some influence in the decision, probably
Wagner has been spoon-feed with African gold and diamonds since 2014, often taken by assassination and force. This can happen only with the complicity of several African governments and with Putin receiving a part of the loot. But the current lack of grain hits directly against the political survival of those people in power. Now everybody knows who is behind Wagner, so the African politicians must choose between either supporting Wagner (while praying not to be dethroned by them in the future), or not aggravating the man who holds the key of the grain in Kremlin (and, with luck, avoiding a situation of famine and rebellion by their own citizens). Goldmine's access could close for Wagner tomorrow, and Putin would still be receiving his part by a different channel.
4) Wagner's future is bleak and Prigozhin future is uncertain.
In the best of cases Wagner will be put in a icebox and let alone to lick its wounds but without a new sponsor the private army can't sustain themselves and will disintegrate in several gangs. Putin was Cesar once, but now is looking more and more like a new Nero, so Prigozhin could just wait the opportunity to return to PostPutin Russia, keep a low profile and have a future as oligarch even if Wagner don't survive. In any case Belarus could be a complicated retire, where a rogue tactical nuke could "malfunction" at any time, creating a plausible deniability situation for Putin. Lukashenko and Prighozin could be beheaded in one single movement, assimilating Belarus into Russia and giving Putin something to show and a sort of "victory".
“Russian Paramilitary Chef.”
"You met my demands, okay, crisis over. :)"
So was it all an opportunistic ploy by Prigozhin to get a lifestyle upgrade in Belarus and more catering contracts and PMC prison recruits?
That guy is a billionaire. He chose to own and run a private milita after he was already rich.
I don't buy that his motivations for all this was to get a "lifestyle upgrade". What upgrade is there to be had? Bigger jacuzzi in Minsk?
Are there indications that his businesses are in trouble? Did he burn his fortune by financing Wagner too much?
Edit: ok, I've changed the title from "Putin vows to put down rebellion by Wagner chief Prigozhin".
It might be domestic political theatre, but Russia is not going to stage a coup attempt for Macron’s benefit. But more likely this is just one of many cases of power struggles with mercenaries over the past few millennia.
The point is not for me and you to scratch our heads; the point is for the guys in the White House to scratch their heads.
> It might be domestic political theatre
It's not domestic; it's international political theatre.
> for Macron’s benefit
It's for Putin's benefit; it sends a "negotiate with me as others might be worse" signal to the West. Macron is not a beneficiary; he's a target audience.
Having said all that to explain my point, the whole point might be wrong.
Russians are clowns.
There need not be complex political chess boards behind this move. Putin could simply have told his former friend that his choices were (1) leave, or (2) bye-bye family.
But we're talking about brinkmanship in a decades-old personal relationship between two individuals (Prig. & Put.) whose senses of context and honour patently are warped by ordinary standards, as evidenced by their past and ongoing actions.
It seems not at all far fetched to me that, in such a strange relationship, each others personal family would be seen as sacrosanct... up to a point.
This sort of thing plays out in the corporate world too. That is, a fairly senior OG person who isn't the actual boss has a breakdown or burnout, and takes it out by sending long scathing emails-to-all-staff, complaints to directors, etc, "secure" in the assumption that they're just playing out some long standing internal issues and that things will be put right. Sometimes it doesn't quite work out as hoped, and that person finds to their surprise that their removal is the outcome.
Russia will have no choice after their current weak performance ( Wagner could proceed a whopping 1000 km. Near Moscow - that's huge) to retreat some Russian troops from Ukraine.
And that should make it easier for Ukraine for their counter offensive.
The problem is that many OSINT guys and journalists are informationally illiterate and blindly spread fakes from random Telegram and Twitter accounts.
I'm looking especially for IT stuff, computer science and startup related content, but I'm also happy for all other kind of technological or scientifically interesting content.
I'm not looking for politics, religion or daily news.
The tragic part is that Ukrainians are the victims in all this.
A shame really, because east europe needs a powerful, but civilised and democratic, russia. It’s the only way to counter continental west european colonialism.
Instead what we have is a russia thats poorer than the poorest eu member states, frankly, pathetic in every way and simply unforgivable.
edit: I originally posted this as a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460954 but that was a dumb idea (sorry pmarreck). I don't want to single out a particular user and didn't mean to shame anyone.
I feel it's kinda insulting the tone here. I see this trend in hacker news that we use the guidelines as a way to insult or belittle other people's comments. It's agressive but in a cunny way.
(but I shouldn't have used a moderation reply as a place to ask "everyone" something, since that could inadvertently generate a mob reaction and that's the last thing we want here)
Moderation comments are never intended as an insult or aggressive, but of course it's all too easy to come across that way without meaning to. If you or anyone wants to suggest ways to be more neutral about bringing up the guidelines, I'd be happy to take advice about it. However, that's different from changing the moderation standard, which is well established on HN.
Moderation isn't about assessing who's right or wrong on a topic. That's the community's job, and I'm pretty sure the bulk of the community would not at all appreciate it if we tried to take that role.
Still, I think posters need to accept some expressive/emotive language in discourse. 'Good luck with that' may be a trope as a way to sarcastically express skepticism, but it's hardly offensive or conversation-terminating.I like to know how people are feeling in regard to a contentious topic, whether or not I find them or their argument agreeable. draining away all emotion/idiom introduces its own problems; callous or cruel remarks may be couched in pseudo-objectivity and the language of necessity/inevitability.
The comment in question didn't add anything to the discussion, it was just a snarky remark. Hence no actual exchange of views could be derived from it, only insults between factions.
I can't agree that I missed the mark on that comment - what I said seems well within standard mod practice on HN. But it's fine that you disagree - there's always going to be disagreement on specific cases, since we all have different backgrounds and therefore different perceptions. It's the principles that matter.
The denominator is necessarily small as we're talking about a breaking news story obscured by the fog of war. If this is the bar that comments still have to reach in this context, then I wonder if the story should just remain flagged.
I'm not sure I'm ready to let go of that phrase though. Probably it includes more than I managed to capture in my attempted definition upthread.
you just described a majority of discussions around AI/Chat GPT here. Or around twitter/facebook/etc. using this criteria they should be outright banned from here.
Our debates on Twitter, Facebook, crypto, and AI are pithy because we all know the topics well, and have mostly made up our minds about them. Often there’s not a lot to add not included in the article.
they are pithy yet shallow. full of "grandiose rhetoric". "made up our minds" doesn't equal "sufficiently knowledgeable"
Positional without explicit or evident basis.
That was the most intense war played out over cyber channels I've seen.
Telegram, Twitter, some idiot on LinkedIn. OSINT everywhere. Lots of blocked sites in Russia. Possible attacks on Google maps. A shame HN opted out. You get this sort of thing once a decade. I guess with the internet exploding it might happen again sooner.
It doesn't matter which side we're talking about. This kind of thing is insane and dehumanized.
(Obviously, I am being sarcastic.)
That's why dang initially let the flagging persist. Wait and see what's real and what's not, then we can have a proper discussion.
The US (and the West) reacted to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. I think they've done an amazing job given the horrible starting premise. Still, they're trying to achieve balance and many things can go wrong.
Do you believe letting Russia take over Ukraine (or half of it) was a better option? Or getting NATO directly involved?
With your logic would you surrender the entire US to Putin ? After one nuke ? two nukes ?
Why don’t you protest the military industrial complex Dwight Eisenhower warned us about? Why not protest the fact that we have about 700 military bases? That’s not national defense, that’s offense. I can go on, but you have two radio shows where you can discuss politics. Why put it in the magazine too? Maybe start a political podcast and keep the magazine for unbiased hacker information that hackers of all countries can read.
Why keep writing editorials about fighting something you’ll never change or win? You wrote yourself, the system is broken. I can agree with that. Emmanuel Goldstein is a character in 1984. In that book, George Orwell teaches us about an evil, all-controlling government. By writing so adamantly about a few government topics, and taking a side on this or that trendy cause, you’re missing the bigger picture. You’re missing the forest for a few trees.
Economically, if the federal government dismantled itself to the bare essentials (national defense, not offense), those people and resources will move to the private sector, allowing more innovation without the burden of the cost of big government. Studies and history have proven that increased surveillance and loss of freedom have not stopped terrorists, as shown in Boston, Paris, and all the beheading videos on the Dark Web.
Americans should fix things at home before we go running around the world spreading our agenda. Instead of fixing a broken system, we have to start over. We should read history and remember the values the country was founded on, which are individual freedom and liberty, not satisfying groups of people at the expense of that individual freedom and liberty."
(2600 recent volume, page 22)
My pacifist nature wanted to leave in peace, and now I don't know who to blame: east, west, Putin, Zelensky, US, Russia. My family has been affected, and you're telling me my comment doesn't make sense...
My comment makes sense, because now I personally can understand what happened to those millions civilians in the Middle East.
I hope you understand that I am not asking you to _change_ your point of view, and I do not insist that my comment is correct, and your comment doesn't make any sense. All I recommend is to think critically, try to understand one small little person online, real one, regardless of what western/eastern propaganda says, regardless of what you read in mainstream media.
I am American myself (naturalized), but if you're American thinking you need to help somebody - I don't need your ambitions, because it's me paying for that, not you.
I just fail to see how that's the US fault
You'd prefer that the "west" close their eyes and let your country be absorbed by Russia ? To save your retirement flat ? Would you go back there to retire under Putin's regime or whatever will come next ? I frankly don't get it
I understand that it's war and it's hell, but regardless of the US intervention Ukrainians were going to pay a very high price.
It's probably the only US intervention since ww2 that can be explained without too much mental gymnastic. They're far from being angels but they didn't invade you country, regardless of what they did in the middle east.
Of course, it's not the US fault, because you're so helpful. Thanks for your help, buddy. But you better solve your own problems. Is it familiar narrative? Pretty much the entire non-western world is thinking like that, except yourself, of course. Because you are so helpful.
> I understand that it's war and it's hell, but regardless of the US intervention Ukrainians were going to pay a very high price.
There were many-many ways to avoid the war, or at least make the conflict less impactful for small little people. I can't believe people in 2023 are so pro-war.
> You'd prefer that the "west" close their eyes and let your country be absorbed by Russia ?
I'd prefer to stop people killing each other. It is so easy to do that, the only thing that is needed is the political will. However, some folks in the US/EU/RU/UA government spread lots of propaganda on why we need to "help". The West only wants to "help" because they will get political benefits, and they don't care about people dying, it's not the number one priority.
Another possible explanation: he got the backing of some faction inside the Kremlin, but they did not really back him when push came to shove.
Putin got where he was through reality-TV-level ostentatious displays of strength. Prigozhin likely figured he was the only one who could boast measurable gains in the war, and the same tactics would work for him.
My guess is his miscalculation was assuming he was more popular among the rank-and-file Russian military and police than he is, and it's too early to tell if that's actually a miscalculation.
2. His aims/agenda probably doesn't match ours.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36452875
Why would they change their mind this quick, the narrative doesn't make sense at all, it's very hard to get proper source, so we'll have to compose with what we have
My suspicion is that Prigozhin got recruited by a Western agency (CIA?) with the intent to destabilize Russia from the inside.
Key here is to discredit the Kremlin, by e.g. exposing or at least making them seem incompetent. Later a coup/revolution is staged to cause internal conflict and make Russia unable to continue the war in Ukraine.
Given how short this "coup" was and how easy Wagner seemed to get off with this stunt I suspect Prigozhin instead informed the Kremlin (or Putin directly) and played along. He would likely get supported during the coup by whoever recruited him. If this is the case those assets are probably arrested by now.