Quote (ofthevoid @ Jun 24 2023 05:52pm)
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 whole ordeal makes Russia look ridiculous and Putin look weak. It simply invites more people in government to look at Putin and think that maybe he should be replaced. And Putin giving the leader of an armed rebellion a pass is even more weak. Also, this is a guy who was very close to Putin, and a guy who spoke on video and undermined the Russian rationale for invading Ukraine.
Prighozin appears to have planned this out for months but I don't know why people aren't considering that he just has a bit of a screw loose. People who lead cult of personalities become detached from reality... do I really need to cite examples? I'm not that knowledgeable about Russia but the Wagner group is kind of a nationalist cult of personality around Prighozin, they have suffered serious losses fighting a war Putin started, so I think it's possible the guy just became unhinged, and perhaps realized recently he overstepped and took an off-ramp that Putin offered him.
We're all just guessing here... this is an extremely weird situation.