Hacker News Reader

Comment by snake_plissken | Hacker News Reader

I had been floating around this theory that the original Wagner "mutiny" was actually a maskirovka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception) and was being coordinated together by Putin and Prigozhin.

This complete speculation and mostly goes against the traditional narrative (i.e. Putin's legacy is now staked on the Ukraine invasion) but it would have accomplished the following, basically giving them more options and room to maneuver (both on the battlefield and in the political sphere):

a) Allow Russia to disengage/extricate itself from Ukraine with a plausible/save face reason ("internal security reasons") b) Let them re-position Wagner forces to Belarus or along other boarders c) Lull Ukraine/the world into a false sense of security d) Purge/re-organize their military high command

I wonder if this plane crash is part of it?

View on HN

Or it is exactly what it looks like. War was going like shit, Prigozhin got very angry and went off half cocked with no exit strategy, Putin did what Putin does and eliminated him (and what literally everyone who isn't using motivated reasoning to manufacture 4D chess situations expected). Putin blundered into a shitty war, Prigozhin blundered into a shitty aborted coup. Even if you think they're both somehow hyper-intelligent individuals, situationally there's nothing preventing smart people from fucking up and miscalculating badly, that isn't a paradox needing resolving. People do dumb shit. All of them.

Musk bought twitter, Lee Sukbae and Kim Ji-Hoon didn't know half as much about superconductivity as they thought, Stockton Rush made a submersible out of composite, Putin declared war on Ukraine, Prigozhin tried a coup.

a) Russia has not disengaged

b) While some Wagner troops relocated to Belarus, Russia has been visibly neutering them and discrediting them. Coupled with apparent conflicts of Lukashenko not wanting to fund them

c) Ukraine is at war

d) they did not purge or reorganize their high command. They doubled down on the same dumbasses

So… no

Stop buying into the "Putin is a master planner" bullshit. Putin is an average human who got high off his own supply and started believing his own rumors.

Wagner mutinied because Putin barely has control over anything anymore, and Prigozhin was getting a little fame, and had a legitimate army at a time where Russia couldn't even defend it's own territory from a raving band of humvees, real mad max shit.

The Wagner mutiny was not some plan. At least not for Putin.

>Stop buying into the "Putin is a master planner" bullshit.

Getting up in the morning and following dictatorship 101 rules like the day before is not being a "master planner".

Authoritarian rulers fear coups. They use paramilitary entities to keep the regular military under control. When they fear an imminent coup, they continue to use such entities, because it is the real military which could have enough popular support to succeed.

The simplest possible explanation for the publicized events is that Prigozhin never stopped doing his job, never changed his role, nor failed to follow orders. A not-so-public, but not completely hidden purge occurred. And when Prigozhin was done, he exited stage left.

That seems to me the correct application of Occam's razor in this case. Everything else, in my opinion, is the wild speculation without evidence.

Just the text length of the parent post is shorter, so their explanation is better by definition according to Occam's razor (only joking).

This plane crash would put the lie to that theory.

Not necessarily, he may have outlived his usefulness. Assuming Putin and Prigozhin knew; now only Putin knows.

Yes, because Prigozhin would be so incredibly stupid as to not have foreseen that possibility and taken out some insurance because of that.

Well, he was stupid enough to take a "deal" from Putin and then not disappear from the face of the earth. What he was doing hanging out still in Russia after his coup attempt is just... insane.

He was also stupid enough to get in a private plane and fly over territory that has Russian SAMs. With the crap going on in Moscow from those drones, and the absolute inability for Russian air defense to de-conflict an airspace, pretty much nobody should feel safe in a plane in the air in Russia.

I don't think he had a whole lot of options on that. But on the insurance bit he did and if there was any kind of pre-arrangement I would expect it to come out. And if it doesn't we can put that conspiracy to bed.

Completely hearsay at this point, but a telegram channel linked above is saying that wagner has a contingency plan that will be "activated" following confirmation of prigozhyn and other leader's death. Maybe another move towards Rostov. Again, hearsay, but last time it was pretty spot on

I would be surprised if that weren't the case, but then again, it may have been arranged but it won't be acted upon. It will be an interesting time in Russia in the next couple of months, but this sort of domino stone kicking could well have unintended consequences.

I don't think that would matter. The truth is so muddied that it's hard to know what to believe. Which, in war and propaganda, is usually the point.

It is unbelievable to me that he would've betrayed Putin and not expected something bad to happen.

But it is not so unbelievable that he never betrayed Putin and his expectations were irrelevant, because he was following a path with no forks or alternatives.

> I had been floating around this theory that the original Wagner "mutiny" was actually a maskirovka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception) and was being coordinated together by Putin and Prigozhin.

Considering how many planes, helicopters and other various bits of equipment were destroyed I doubt it.

Those couple days represent some of the worst days in the Russian air forces history for loses.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com