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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.
Prediction time! Prigozhin is almost certain to lose. He has some collaborators in the RuAF but almost certainly not enough to make the coup seem inevitable. This is important, since coups basically only succeed if they seem inevitable within a few days at most. Coups need to act fast, neutralize the old leader as quickly as possible, and take over radio/TV stations to get people to acquiesce. Wagner's main body of forces were >1000km from Moscow in Rostov, Putin has had a full day to prepare and evacuate, and Prigozhin has not seized communication lines to make the effort seem inevitable. Perhaps that might be because it started out as more of a "mutiny" than a "coup", but there's no putting the toothpaste back in the tube now.
The upper brass at the MoD will remain steadfastly loyal to Putin. Junior and mid-level officers might waver a bit at first, but once it becomes clear that Prigozhin doesn't have everything tied up in a neat little bow he'll be hard pressed to get them to join his side outright. Prediction markets show a ~70% chance for Putin to come out on top, which is quite low for how this has progressed so far. This entire thing feels quite reminiscent of the Turkish coup against Erdogan. It feels like something forced Prigozhin's hand and he had to act early. He obviously would have preferred not to have his forces 1000km from the capital when it started.
The end result will likely be more (justifiable) paranoia from Putin, and for Russia to sink into an even more totalitarian state. I doubt there will be appreciable first-order impacts for Ukraine, although who knows what could happen down the road. Anything from Putin deciding to pull out of Ukraine to focus on retaining power, to Putin going all-in and doing something nuclear due to feeling like the West put him in this no-win position. But both of those extremes are pretty unlikely, and the most probable course of action is... nothing much.
Wagner forces were seen entering Moscow Oblast a few hours ago. I think Pirghozin understands he has to win quickly and is rushing Moscow and betting that they can't coordinate a serious defense fast enough. I don't think either side is trying to mobilize the people to get in the streets like Erdogan did in Turkey. The public is assumed to be bystanders, the audience for communications is the other military commanders, everything will hinge on whether Pirghovin has support from any other factions of the millitary. Rosgvardia vehicles were seen with Wagner vehicles if Rostov but it's unclear if they were seized or collaborating.
I agree that the odds of the coup succeeding are small but the coup hasn't stalled yet.
The single biggest factor at this point for any defense of Moscow is likely the Moscow mayor-equivallent. Major metropolitan mayors have substantial influence over not only lower security forces, who are key enablers for the state-level agencies under government control, but the sort of agencies that provide disproportionate enabling support.
Look to see if garbage trucks and school buses are called up and used as barricades, or if the government clerks totally unremoved from fighting start filling sandbags as labor.
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