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ISW's analysis of Wagner's (halted) advance on Moscow (www.understandingwar.org)

submitted 1 year ago by Woland@lemm.ee to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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Some key takeaways :

The Kremlin struggled to cohere an effective rapid response to Wagner’s advances, highlighting internal security weaknesses likely due to surprise and the impact of heavy losses in Ukraine.

Putin unsurprisingly elected to back the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and its ongoing efforts to centralize control of Russian irregular forces (including Wagner) over Prigozhin.

The Lukashenko-brokered agreement will very likely eliminate Wagner Group as a Prigozhin-led independent actor in its current form, although elements of the organization may endure under existing and new capacities.

Prigozhin likely gambled that his only avenue to retain Wagner Group as an independent force was to march against the Russian MoD, likely intending to secure defections in the Russian military but overestimating his own prospects.

The optics of Belarusian President Lukashenko playing a direct role in halting a military advance on Moscow are humiliating to Putin and may have secured Lukashenko other benefits.

The Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable equilibrium. The Lukashenko-negotiated deal is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution, and Prigozhin’s rebellion exposed severe weaknesses in the Kremlin and Russian MoD.

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[-] SirMrR4M@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago

The whole thing was so weird

[-] stridemat@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

Agreed. Seems so strange how they just withdrew.

[-] kiwifoxtrot@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

It's almost like the dog that caught the car and had no idea what to do. I assume they expected resistance and didn't actually want to coup d'etat, just make a point. Crazy.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago

They had no option but to withdraw. The gamble was that the military would support them and that didn't happen. At that point there really weren't any options left.

[+] cwagner@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

[deleted]

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

It's hard to say what he was thinking to be honest. I can't imagine why he'd think Putin would support him, or what he was really aiming to achieve. The whole thing seems incoherent.

[-] Phantom_Engineer@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

The whole operation does have an air of incompetence around it. Either coup or don't coup, don't half-ass it. The guy seems like a loose cannon, and I'm surprised that they're essentially going to let him go. Maybe they're just happy to have him out of the way.

I'd argue that's how you know the CIA wasn't involved. They're better at coups than this.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

It would be surprising if they didn't have an idea that this would happen given that even US agencies now claim to have been expecting it. One possibility is that it was allowed to happen in order to ferret out people who would support the coup. Prigozhin was likely let go in order to get the wagner troops to stand down, they figured they'd rather avoid bloodshed than go after him right now.

Meanwhile, CIA has bungled plenty of coups in its time. They couldn't even get a coup in Belarus going, what chance would they have in Russia.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago

The West doesn't actually want a destabilized Russian Federation. Could you imagine a rabid dog like Prigozhin in possession of nuclear weapons?

In terms of US agencies expecting it, yeah anyone following exploits of Prigozhin could see there was a probability of something like this happening. It was only somewhat surprising, but a scenario that's been considered.

I think the stance on Putin and the Russian Federation is like Batman's stance on Ra's al Ghul. "I'm not going to kill you, but I don't have to save you either."

A coup on Putin may result in the collapse of the Russian Federation just as the coup on Gorbachev resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union. While a collapse of the Russian Federation isn't really in the best interests of the West (because keeping nukes under one roof is preferable) at this point Putin is proliferating nukes to Belarus, and it seems Russia is just behaving in a self destructive way in general. We're at a point where trying to prop up the Russian Federation for the sake of nuclear security may not be worth it anymore. It may not even be possible.

At any rate It's very doubtful the CIA or any other Western intelligence agency had a hand in this. Ukrainian intelligence is possible. Given Ukraine is under threat of nuclear attack anyway, the'ye more willing to gamble. If this were the case Western intelligence probably were aware and just let it happen.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

It's obviously would be an insane idea to try and destabilize Russia, but it was an equally insane idea to try to goad Russia into a war and continue escalating to the point where we are at now. Once the war started, the explicit stated goal from the west was to try and destabilize Russia economically to cause regime change. This is still the hope a lot of people in the west cling on to. Most people don't seem to be asking the question of who would take power if regime change actually happened. It's pretty clear that somebody like Medvedev or Kadirov would end up in charge, and Putin is a moderate compared to these people. It's pretty clear that the west is not acting in a rational way here.

The one thing we've learned from the whole wagner fiasco is that conditions for any sort of a coup simply don't exist in Russia. All of the military and politicians quickly lined up behind the government. If anything, I'm sure that this created an opportunity to purge people who might've been sympathetic to a coup.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca -1 points 1 year ago

but it was an equally insane idea to try to goad Russia into a war

Who goaded Russia into a war? Do you consider Ukraine existing as a sovereign democracy to be a provocation?

The one thing we’ve learned from the whole wagner fiasco is that conditions for any sort of a coup simply don’t exist in Russia.

Haha please tell me you're joking. The only reason Russia avoided a coup is because they gave into the demands of the rebels.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Plenty of western experts have been saying this for many decades. This only became controversial to mention after the war started. Here's what Chomsky has to say on the issue recently:

https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/

https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-military-escalation-against-russia-would-have-no-victors/

50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:

George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.

Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"

Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.

Haha please tell me you’re joking. The only reason Russia avoided a coup is because they gave into the demands of the rebels.

What demands did they give in to, be specific. 🤡

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago

Chomsky LOL. An old communist that doesn't know what decade it is anymore.

Why not give me Henry Kissinger's take on it too?

Here's a fun fact: Anyone less than 32 years old wasn't even alive when the Soviet Union existed. How time flies, huh?

Only people middle-aged or older actually care about all this cold war spheres of influence bullshit. And this is extremely relevant when you consider the age group that actually fights the wars. In fact many of the people fighting this war were either children or not born when most of this stuff you quoted were said.

In the world of today, Ukraine is a sovereign democracy. Ukraine has the right to determine whether it wants to be part of the EU, NATO, or any other organization, alliance, or treaty it wants to be a part of. Ukraine has the right to self-determination, and doesn't need to ask Russia's permission for anything it wants to do. And as a democracy they enjoy the support of other democracies in the world.

I grant you Putin was probably going under the decades old and obsolete logic you are. In the world of today, Putin is sending young men to die to restore a map that hasn't existed in their lifetimes. Meanwhile Ukrainians are fighting to defend their country from foreign invasion. They're fighting for their independence and freedom.

This is why Russia can't win. It's why Putin was stupid to even attempt this. Too much time has passed and the world of the Chomsky and Kissinger just doesn't exist for the people that are actually fighting this war.

The "you kids don't understand!" doesn't really work when there's a war on. Because in a war, the kids that "don't understand" are the people with weapons in their hands.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Whatever you say.

[-] michaelgraaf@campaign.openworlds.info -1 points 1 year ago

@SpaceCowboy @yogthos What some call cold war spheres of influence bullshit, others call pre-emptive missile strike range. An empirically measurable radius derived from the time-to-target of the specific weapons under consideration.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago

And others understand what SSBNs are and their relevance in deterence theory.

And there's also people that understand that not all NATO countries host nuclear weapons and it's possible to achieve any goal of keeping a distance to nuclear weapons via negotiation.

Sorry, the spheres of influence thing is some Napoleonic imperialistic bullshit. Only relevant because senile old fools like Putin cling onto it.

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I haven't been following closely but the Kremlin obviously thought the physical threat was credible enough to effectively move the capital. He stopped because a deal was struck, and we know some of the terms of that deal.

[-] Kinga@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 year ago

What if the coup was actually successful and there will be a power transfer? Nobody half asses a coup and lives to tell the tale

[-] Casallas@programming.dev 10 points 1 year ago

That's the real question, people going to be vanishing

[-] Kinga@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago

Prigozhin isn't stupid - I doubt he would have stopped without a good reason. They would have taken moscow if they went for it. My personal theory is that there was a palace revolution that we're not privvy to.

Nothing about this, with the information that we have makes sense tbh. Only reason he'd stop is if he was certain he wouldn't have been suicided. That certainly indicates a shift of power in Kremlin but as to what actually happened we can only speculate. I think it's telling we didn't hear Putin have an adress yet.

[-] smartwater0897@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

People who are paid mercenaries with black hearts... Yeah I don't think the world will be a worse place without them. :)

Only in movies these people are made to be heroes.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Well they will be moved to Africa and so they'll still be making the world a worse place. Just not in this particular theater.

[-] tldrbot@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

tl;dr:

ISW will cover subsequent reports in the June 25 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. Russian sources widely voiced concerns that the rebellion could disrupt Russian forces' ability to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensives, but many milbloggers asserted that Russian forces are continuing to repel Ukrainian attacks. Prigozhin attempted to justify his armed rebellion by accusing the Russian MoD - namely Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov - of causing irreversible Russian losses on the battlefield and for striking a Wagner base, but notably did not criticize Putin. Russian milbloggers claimed that intensified Ukrainian assaults and decreased Russian artillery fire contributed to Ukrainian advances south of Orikhiv during the night of June 23 and on June 24. Russian forces continued ground attacks near Kreminna amid Russian claims of continued Ukrainian assaults in the area on June 24.

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[-] faltuuser@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Good Bot.

[-] Dave_r@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

Good Bot.

[-] mookulator@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Why is everyone concluding that this weakens Putin?

If anything could overthrow him, a Wagner coup tops the list, but it ended as quickly as it began. Now there’s fewer looming threats and he proved he can squash such a serious one with ease. Didn’t he become more secure?

The only harm I can see is that Wagner is no longer in Ukraine.

[-] zik@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

It makes Putin look weak since he can't even control his own military forces and had to be saved by a foreign leader.

It makes the Russian military look weak since they had no answer to a coup attempt against their own headquarters and against their capital, even with forewarning.

[-] cyanarchy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A private military of 25,000 was permitted to occupy the southern military district headquarters, down military helicopters, and march through the streets most of the way to the capitol.

They did so with zero apparent or meaningful resistance.

It's not about nebulous power moves that raise or lower Putin's perceived strength. It's about the very real and very poor state of Russia's available internal security forces.

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