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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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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 coup special 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.

It appears that Prigozhin and Putin have negotiated a "oopsie doopsie, it's all been just a big misunderstanding."

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-06-24-23/index.html

An absurd end to an absurd coup. Prigozhin can't be long for this world.

There's no way this is a stable arrangement. You can't get this close to successfully doing a coup and just go back to things as before. Putin can't let Pirghozin keep his power base, and Pirghozin has to know he's a dead man if he loses his power base. Why Pirghozin would take that deal is bizarre, maybe rank & file Wagner didn't want to go through with it?

Supposedly they're even leaving Rostov and going back to Ukraine? This is insane.

Apparently the deal is Prigozhin and the Wagner Group get redeployed to Africa indefinitely, and in exchange Putin replaces the top brass at the MOD?

I don't see why either of them would agree to this. It makes obvious that Putin is incredibly impotent.

I don't know why Pirghozin would take his army to a different continent where they'll be dependent on Russia's navy and airforce for logistics. He has no leverage there and no guarantee of safety.

Because he gets to wear short shorts and bushwhack and keep extracting incredible amounts of money from the goldmines and other such Wagner holds instead of getting his special boys shot up in hill 60 2: electric boogaloo.

There is no guarantee of safety anywhere, but they wouldn't be dependent on Russia's navy or airforce for logistics. Wagner in Africa wouldn't exactly be in high-tempo combat operations needing such a train, there are no logistics trains in Africa, and the Wagner model in Africa is to work through local actors, supporting them in exchange for resource rights (such as mines), which would be a more independent revenue source than MOD.