dan/california

Between a fight with Wagner and the epic loss in Ukraine that Prigozhin has probably made the rest of the way inevitable, they are going to have to kick the rallying into high gear. I mean Ukraine commits EVERYTHING in in the next 24 hours at the latest don't they? I really doubt not knowing whose orders to take improves the performance of the average mobik battalion.

Putins life expectancy starts to be measured in hours, perhaps minutes. Because ten seconds after the inner circle realizes Putin is losing, the one that walks out on the balcony with Putin's head is the only one Prigozhin might not kill.

So if Prighozin starts sending out orders from that building thru channels that people have been trained to obey on pain of death, literally more or less, how many units will follow them out of ingrained habit?

The civilians just standing there watching are being a little slow on the uptake. There is a ~50% chance a shooting war breaks out at that exact spot at any moment. Time go folks, pretty much anywhere else.

I have no clue who this guy is, but he seems to be reading about forty Russian telegram channels live on air. He is saying some units are refusing orders to confront Wagner. Zero idea of credibility.

https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/statu He is the greatest scholar of Eastern European history living west of the Oder. Edit: after all I four/fifths agree with you, and so does the Ghirkin post below that I can't get to display correctly. The other side of the coin though is that Putin might be about to learn the down side teaching people to keep their heads down and do nothing with a stick. People will keep their heads down and do nothing. If Prighozin is ruthless enough to go straight for the weakest/most valuable spots in the MOD logistics system, he could have it all rigged with C4 before the MOD can do much about it. The only winner from that stand off would be Ukraine. https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1672403905886519296

We need a a current photo from the NASA fire tracking satellite. I am very curious whose artillery is doing what while Prighozin, at a minimum dominates the Russian information space, and command bandwidth.

Te Wagnerites have many, many flaws, illusions are not one of them.

Whoever picked the timing for these ongoing NATO exercises is adding a star. It is EXACTLY the right time for NATO to be in high state of readiness.

Putin's head on pike, and the most pitiful plea in the history of mankind. from the new Russian Government, for help from NATO. Only half joking. We should tell them that will cost them the nukes, all of them.

Any news at all, coming out of Rostov on Don? The logistics hub their is the key to everything.

1917, 1917, 1917, an army that couldn't take it anymore decided it would rather evict the Czar than keep fighting the Germans. Prig has already 3/4 said that the real enemies are in the Kremlin, now he needs to tell the army that if they join him they can go home. To repeat, it worked for Lenin.

You know a guy named Lenin made a deal exactly like that with the Russian Army once upon a time. Whatever happened to him?

did most of Russias logistics just disappear?

We are not yet seeing the amount of violence implied by the multi sided information op that seems to be underway on the Russian side. Still not quite sure if this is a real break, or some sort of scripted show.

Which of course is what they would say either way....

If this is real, and I assume some combination of NATO, and Ukrainian intelligence can check fairly well, this is the monment for Ukraine to PUSH IT. The Russians will never be more distracted than they are right now. It might also be the moment for all the deep fakes and other methods of issuing false orders to Russian units I suspect Ukraine has been working on. I am pretty sure they have been working on a lot of that.

There are many reports about essentially every military aged male in the L/DPR being dead, wounded, captured, or in the case of the very lucky fled to another country. The defenses in front of Donetsk itself may just be so undermanned that the quantity of trenches and concrete just doesn't matter anymore. Breaking thru at Bakmuht, and then going behind Donetsk city to cut the land bridge would be the power move of all power moves. Russian logistics would just dissolve, never mind the morale.

It is closer to a one hundred and twenty years now. The last Tsar got in over his head in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905. There is a pretty good argument that all Russia has done is stagger from crisis to crisis since then. Every period of "stability" has been bought with iron fisted totalitarianism, and that works until doesn't.

And they have only had Storm Shadow for what, a month? And their were some targets with huge blinking kill me signs like that ammo dump on the the railway just north of Crimea at the front of the list.

Long, and good.

If The_Capt gets deployed we need to pass the hat to get him every ultralight carbon fiber and titanium piece of gear there is. It is the least we can do for a free staff college education. Edit: We didn't even have to take the class on logistics forms...

It is time for one last all channel push to convince the people around Putin that killing him has become a lower risk option than not killing him. Because if they blow that plant several hundred names are going on a list, and they are going to hunted until the end of their days. And that is if Moscow DOESN'T wind up as a crater.

At least you can drive around most of Ukraine. That probably isn't much compensation. On the plus side, if there is a plus side, this all probably means that Putin actually understands he is losing. On the hopeful side he may come out with a negotiating position that makes a little bit of sense if he decides against making this a much bigger war.