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news from ukraine: the leader of wagner group has accused the russian military of bombing his forces. seems to be preparing some kind of
coupspecial military operation. russian generals are asking mercenaries not to join in. prigozhin has vocally criticized russian military leaders recently, but this is a massive escalation. could we see a civil war break out in the middle of this war?update: prigozhin claims that he has entered rostov without resistance. lots of unverified videos on twitter of wagner/russian convoy movements, and some combat footage; wagner claims to have shot down a russian helicopter.
video of supposedly wagner soldiers and tanks surrounding the MoD building in rostov.
As of writing this post, Wagner appears to be in control of Rostov and Voronezh, and en route to Moscow.
Prigozhin is playing the game of thrones, and he's going to win or he's going to die. The path to victory for him looks pretty much like he walks into Moscow and all the people with guns get out of the way and let him do what he wants. It's... optimistic but not completely impossible, given the lack of resistance he's encountered so far.
If that doesn't happen and he actually gets meaningfully challenged it's difficult to see an outcome where he survives the coming week. Wagner is more competent than the regular Russian army but also much smaller and if this turns into an actual civil war he surely gets crushed. One way or another, I expect we'll see a clear winner and a clear loser before very long.
there is already a convoy in lipetsk heading north, ~320 km from moscow.
It appears that Wagner is utilising the strategy that the Taliban used to rapidly conquer Afghanistan following the US withdrawal. That is, just brazenly walk in and have everyone lay down their arms and/or join you. It doesn't appear they needed to fire a single shot to take either of Rostov or Voronezh.
Does that tactic keep working all the way to Moscow? We'll see.
There have been some attempts to set up road blocks - some dump trucks filled with sand parked across the highway in some places, and I've seen video of excavators digging out sections of road in others. So far, they do not appear to have caused much delay.
It's possible that Putin's men blow the bridge across the Oka river. If they do, that might present a more serious speed bump.
I cannot predict what will happen but Prigozhin is trying to convince people to join his side by appealing to their grievances.
No one could convince Russians to protest the war. They are all united in their struggle for Russian supremacy. When the military incursion towards Kyiv started, Russians on social media cheered. But they also expressed that 300 casualties was a very high price. Little they knew that soon it would be 3000, then 30 thousand and 300 thousand is not so far away and still losing.
Prigozhin manipulated those sentiments by saying that he is not against Putin but against the corrupted generals who are to blame for this loss. Russians like to talk how bad is their corruption, how the government doesn't care about them at all etc. They might or might not see Prigozhin as their saviour but he has certainly changed the situation irreversibly and the narrative that the current leadership is not competent is not going to go away until something big happens.
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