Eugyppius -- Psyops, appearances, reality: On the recent Wagner putsch attempt

submitted by stickdog from eugyppius.com

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[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Will Schryver suggests that had Prigozhin actually committed an act of treason/mutiny against Russia in wartime, he would not have been "sent into exile" to Belarus with the Wagner mercenary army.

(A reminder that Progozhin is not the military commander of Wagner. He just owns the company.)

The internet is full of rumours that the CIA attempted to turn Progozhin, and instead he went straight to Putin who instructed him to play along so as to smoke out any traitors. Seems just as plausible as all the other wild explanations people have come up with.

  • Progozhin was turned by the CIA/Ukraine and genuinely attempting a coup.
  • Or he merely went rogue out of personal ambition.
  • Progozhin was protecting his brand, trying to get Shoigu replaced so Wagner troops would not need to sign contracts with the Russian MOD.
  • Progozhin suffered an episode of amphetamine psychosis.
  • It was a maskirovka psyop planned by Putin, with Progozhin the lead actor in it, designed to sucker Ukraine/NATO into keeping up their counter-attack.

[–]weavilsatemyface 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think we don't have anywhere near enough information to understand what went down there. I don't think that there has been confirmation that Wagner shot down Russian helicopters or that anyone has died.

Here are some more attempts at analysis:

I do not necessarily agree with all or any of these opinions.

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, this is much more sober and plausible than most of the reactions I've seen over the past 2 days. One minor quibble with the tweet:

the army stood aside (a clue to the identity of Wagner's friends) but the air force remained hostile and engaged them in limited ways

That gets the more likely explanation flipped; ground forces were clearly ordered not to engage (no one had any interest in civilians taking crossfire), and something unfortunate and unforeseen resulted in the surface/air engagement. This could be miscommunication or delay of orders, or one or both sides mistaking intent, all of which are far more likely when air forces are involved.

[–]stickdog[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Excerpt:

As I have rather miserable hay fever, this will be a short post, but I wanted to comment at least indirectly about the Wagner PMC mutiny in Russia and its sudden resolution. My own best tentative interpretation you can find here. It’s not worth very much, as there are better sources you can go to for the war, but I wanted to speak briefly to the idea that what happened was some kind of psyop – a deliberately staged putsch to further the purposes of Russian politics or strategy. In this conception, the aim was to create a pretence for repositioning Wagner forces near Kiev, or to smoke out hidden traitors, or perhaps something else.

I don’t find these theories credible, but I don’t want to litigate the details here. Instead, I’m interested in the degree to which appearances and reality can meaningfully diverge at the hard edge of power. They can do so only very slightly and temporarily, and not without substantial risk to the stagers.

Imagine (as some do) a government, the public officials of which are mere figureheads who take orders from hidden parties. There are ordinary elections, politicians and ministers, but they are all mere puppets for this hidden cabal. This might seem a plausible scenario, but if you think about it, it’s a highly volatile and unstable situation. The figurehead politicians can at any time just tell their minders to get lost, and these will have no recourse because the appearance of being in power hardly differs from the reality of it. There are many subtleties to modern politics – particularly in the relationships among specific parties – but the names of those who run things are for the most part known to you or easily discoverable, for this very reason. With modern communications, the pressure towards disintermediation of political power is if anything greater than ever before.

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