he saved most of his guys from jail/gulag, they owe him big time

Exactly. We've learned in America how dangerous a cult of personality can become, which is why I'm not giddy over Putin's chef overtaking Putin.

Is the martial law still intact even after the situation was resolved? And how come Lukoshenko, Putin's lapdog, has got more of a say than Putin himself when it comes to Wagner?

He doesn't, it was all nonsense in my opinion. This whole ordeal played out like a Hollywood production action flick. It had the setup, the climax and the happy ending. There were carefully released videos to build up the suspense, there were various soldiers posing in gun nest positions for the right shots. Barricades, etc, but in the end i'm very skeptical of the whole thing.

People tend to forget that Putin has always played 4D chess and is ex-KGB, who i'm genuinely convinced had ordered the apartment bombings to gain public support for Chechen war. Prighozin has also played up Russian incompetence back in Bakhmut, when he was saying they weren't getting any weapons and would collapse any second, which was just trap for Ukraine to continue to funnel in reinforcements.

It's impossible for us internet sleuths to know what really happened but a theory I heard is this was way a stress test for loyalty to Putin. Basically the spies, the factions that would 'turn' would oust themselves by buying into this. Maybe this is BS, maybe it was all real but reality is Putin has strong support in Russia and they have a very strong intelligence within the SVR/GRU etc. I would say there's probably only a handful of countries probably US/Israel/China/UK that might have better intelligence services.

So with all this in mind, for 25k paid contractors to be able to somehow outsmart these intel agencies just seemed too farfetched imo.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Jun 24 2023 03:53pm

tbh I am just going to take everything over the last 24/48 hours at face value. maybe we will get more information in a few years time as to what really happened. very unusual that no-one died ?

I guess this theory is as valid as Ukrainian commander in chief announced dead for weeks. Putin's authority is irreversibly damaged by this, it's not stagged, it's just a big mess and Russia's "reputation" only got worse.

No one died because everyone on all sides was told to stand down before hand. There was a helicopter crash reported but idk if that has actually been validated.

Now the rumor mill is that Prigozhin did what he did for Putin to root out domestic Russian enemies and traitors.

So what we know so far, and ill be strictly honest, too much bullshit in thread:

1. This was a real attempted coup, anyone saying otherwise is lying.
2. Prigozhin expected support/backing but instead was denounced by all political parties, MOD/military seniors, governors and relevant think tankers/media (slavyangrad/rybar etc)
3. MOD was very hesitant in fighting, trying to deter the situation without casualties to either side, which explains basically zero confrontation.
4. Wagner will be dissolved and absorbed into MOD and Prigoznin will be exiled (and probably assassinated at some point). This is a significant hit to Russian activities in Africa and to an lesser extent in Ukraine because Wagner was main-stormer troops.
5. Progoznin had already made statements in preparation - such as the one where he states that Russian forces are rapidly losing ground in south Ukraine (which he expected to happen during the attempted coup, but didn´t)
6. Overall this will have a small impact on the Ukraine war. Wagner was more functional as a standalone, rather than be absorbed into MOD
7. One of the main reason this didn´t spiral out of control is because the guys at the front did incredibly well

thoughts?

This post was edited by ownyaah on Jun 24 2023 04:57pm

"Russian police has returned to Rostov & people aren’t happy to see them"
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1672716909463195649
No idea what they say.

Beyond this: