51–60 of 177 posts
This is off the hook. @mysaigin says the AN-24 shoot down is old... oh well. If nothing else Putin's prerogatives just experienced a sudden realignment. Going to be hard to continue prosecuting the Ukraine invasion.
Is that actually confirmed? As in, is there a reason to believe it happened and that it is not some old video from elsewhere resurfacing? (People always post old videos on twitter claiming they relate to current situation.)
Will current regime resort to use of nuclear weapons against Wagner formations as they approach Moscow? After all, the state and the power regime are facing an existential risk.
I am seeing a lot of conjecture and not a lot of substance. Is this whole thing based on a couple telegram videos? Is there anything to suggest they aren’t just propaganda deepfakes?
This is off the hook. @mysaigin says the AN-24 shoot down is old... oh well. If nothing else Putin's prerogatives just experienced a sudden realignment. Going to be hard to continue prosecuting the Ukraine invasion.
I wonder why they added quotation marks around "coup" in the headline? Is there anything nonstandardly-coupish about a military commander engaging in armed rebellion to overthrow the standing government? Seems to perfectly fit the textbook/dictionary definition of "coup".
Didn't the head of Wagner have close ties to Putin? I guess those are pretty much severed now?
I wonder why they added quotation marks around "coup" in the headline? Is there anything nonstandardly-coupish about a military commander engaging in armed rebellion to overthrow the standing government? Seems to perfectly fit the textbook/dictionary definition of "coup".
If January 6th disorganized mob breaching into government building can be considered a coup, then organized military force taking control over 2 major cities in Russia is definitely a coup.
But let's be clear, the crowd breaking into the Capitol wasn't the entirety of the coup attempt, and even to write that part down as just a disorganised mob is incorrect.
What was going on is better understood as an autogolpe -- a self-coup. It had several prongs -- violent, parliamentary (in the congressional sense of the word) and judicial. So, fake electors, lawsuits, attempt to persuade Pence not to count, interfering with results in several states, and the physical insurrection.
The aim was to create a scenario where the handover just didn't happen, through all these interlocking parts.
But the crowd could only ever have created the circumstances that delayed certification (and might have pulled that off, had Pence got in the car).
It was much more co-ordinated than we have yet seen documented in courts, but that time is coming.
Can someone tell me why Putin let it get this far? It seems pretty foreseeable that when you have two independent militaries in constant conflict with each other, and when the heads of both are publicly insulting and threatening each other that eventually this will boil over. Did he just need Wagner that badly that he tolerated the open insults to his military as long as they were winning battles in Ukraine? Didn't t…
I wonder why they added quotation marks around "coup" in the headline? Is there anything nonstandardly-coupish about a military commander engaging in armed rebellion to overthrow the standing government? Seems to perfectly fit the textbook/dictionary definition of "coup".
He explicitly claimed he is not against Putin, but against military leadership. So, it is totally not a coup per Prigozhin. It is kind of elementary school level of logic if you ask me, but it is the logic/argument Prigozhin is using.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If January 6th disorganized mob breaching into government building can be considered a coup, then organized military force taking control over 2 major cities in Russia is definitely a coup.
One of them attacked a governmental body of a country. The other one still has not. That is why it is in quotation marks.
My uninformed read is that what he's enraged about (a Russian strike on a Wagner encampment) actually took place, and he knows he's now a dead man walking anyway, so he's going to see what he can do with the time he has left.