dan/california

Winner

Given the entire encyclopedia of unknown unknowns at the heart of this thing right now, we should perhaps get back to thinking about how Ukraine wins this war regardless?

He retires to Belarus, or he is Lukashenko's successor? The Wagner guys were tired of being killed by Ukrainian PGMs, but they can handle the Belarusian military before lunch. It would actually make Prig more of a problem for NATO, lots of other implications. Edit: Fancy_Cat got there first.

In a very quiet country I am going to decline to name, under an alias I am not going to mention, ect.

This is so amazingly true, and at some point it has to make the country almost ungovernable, right? I thought they would go thru the drained reservoir, the floods disruption of the first belt or two of minefields might have trumped all other considerations.

https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1672651487850242048 Can't get it to repost correctly, but this tweet says Ukraine has launched some level of operation to cross the Dnipro near Antonoskvy bridge. Do we know if this is true?

Not until Putin finds a bunch more people willing to shoot at Wagner. And evicting them from Rostov by force probably involves losing the war spectacularly.

Dang it, he is still alive..... Edit: So civil war then?

Putin has not shown proof of life, I am not believing he is still with us until he proves it, conclusively. If he is still alive I agree with GrigB, this some sort of scripted shoe to enable leadership succession, probably. There just has not been enough blood shed, considering the stakes, and the historical pattern. I am torn. if you nassume Russia will be able to continue the war, then yes Put that bleeping thing in the water. But if there is a real posssibilty that Russia is about to admit defeat my imperfect historical analogy is "never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. I have long had a strong belief that the decision that cost Hosni Mubarak his throne was turning off the internet. People were bored bleepless and decided to join the riots for entertainment, essentially.

A complaint voiced by a the ancient greeks as well.

Is there a way to do a poll on this forum software? I propose A actual Putin speaking sense, at least by Putin standards B Badly done deep fake C Recorded speech about fertilizer production or similar

Priceless work GrigB!

I am not nearly as confident about that as the former ambassador. His comments as reported very much have the feel of the people who said " Well of course it is very sad, but Putin will certainly take Kyiv in three days". The Russian air force might be able to flatten SMD headquarters and half of the city, although depending on exactly what Prig has gotten control of that might not be easy either. Essentially all of Russia's functional ground combat forces are in Ukraine. If they have to pull even ten percent of them in a badly planned hurry the entire front in Ukraine will blow away in the wind. By the way the people who would need to plan it are in that SMD headquarters. How is that going to work?

I think Prigozhin had a real plan, at least some support from outside Wagner, and had probably bribed some critical people as well. It would be one thing SMD if headquarters was a smoking hole in the ground when Wagner took it over. There is no evidence they had to fire anything bigger than a sub machine gun, and perhaps not even that. GrigB is the resident subject matter expert, and I think his idea is a plausible as anything else. As for me I am rapidly coming to agree with Huba, and starting to wonder if Putin is dead, or so sick he might as well be. This would be the first move in the game of thrones to succeed him, if so. Please note I expect that struggle to be at lest as ugly as the one in the books. Happily I think virtually all of these outcomes are good for Ukraine. It will be fascinating whether or not we get a video of Putin tomorrow saying something about the crisis that makes sense, and isn't obviously a deep fake of some sort, or not. If we get some recorded speech about fertilizer production it is Katie bar door. We talked thru a LOT of different scenarios for regime failure in Russia several months go. I think we are on one of the more plausible paths to that very thing, unless they sort who is actually in charge in the next 36 hours. Not sure they even have that long. And remember this is a conflict where absolutely all the major players know they are far better off to eat their pistol than to even consider surrendering. Most of them are so toxic their exile options are not great either.

That was before it became clear Wagner took SMD headquarters and a great deal else without firing a shot.

Straight to Tblisi if she has any sense.

Edit: She looks like a woman who understands the possible endings are bad and worse.

Fascinating question, did he sign up with Prig in the last 24 hours, or 15 months ago? This feels like a deeply planned operation. Moving even five thousand troops hundreds of mile and taking over a major city by coup de main is not something you do on a weekend bender.

You all surely know by now I am the worlds worst typist.

I also have to point out The_Capt was correct, civil war in CAN move Ukraine right off the front page.

I am officially going to brag. I said months and months ago that Prigozhin was going to make himself Czar or get messily dead. I should have put money down.

He has a ton of pictures.

And now come to the next hard question. Would Putin give the order to nuke a RUSSIAN city? If he gave the order would it be followed?

BLEEP ME, this game is for real folks. If that tweet is true, at least.

Ukraine probably promised not to shoot them at Russia proper.