billbindc

Pretty clear that Ukraine has a strong ground game within Russia: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ukraine-assassinated-russian-propagandists-admits-intelligence-chief-fl33rn5vc

I'll remain agnostic for now. There are plenty of good reasons that Ukraine would want to Russians to believe if it's untrue, or to obscure it if it is. And of course, the commanding general of an imminent offensive isn't going to be in public if there's any chance that it might tip off the enemy its direction.

It says quite a bit about Ukrainian message discipline if this is still as murky as it appears to be.

The 'one weird trick' of nuclear escalation...

The F-16 is not a panacea thread:

I'm not too sure Stalin would agree with the thesis that Russian authoritarian states suffer much from stretching the limits of the monopoly of violence to maintain domestic control.

Literally the only exceptions of any note to Putin’s monopoly on violence have been the Dugin assassination, the drone attack on the Kremlin and the Ukrainian attacks in Belgogrod, etc. In other words, acts of war not breakdowns in civil control.

I have only heard this one instance so I can't tell you how much I'd rate him but I read/listen/talk to plenty of folks more directly in this space and pretty much everyone is outside looking in when it comes to Russia today.

You said earlier "They legally do not have to do what Putin tells them to do. And that still matters because the regime is still trying to maintain some degree of "rule of law"." which I took literally. What you say above is something much closer to what I understand the situation to be. The 'rule-by-law' framework essentially means that the law isn't an institutional bulwark but is a negotiated and contested lever of control. In the case of elites, they get to abuse it until they fall out of favor. In the case of the lumpen, they contest it via the suggestion of unrest or resistance and the regime trims its sales accordingly. But make no mistake...Russians don't see it as Putin 'following the rules'. The rules are variable by ethnic group (i.e. you don't see Kipchaks getting the same dispensation Moscow Russians do), etc. As noted above...everything is provisional and negotiated. Regarding Wagner and rules, I'm not sure I see what you do there. There are numerous examples of mobiks being dragooned into disposable units, highly specious transfers from prisons, LNR/DPR units, etc. Yes, the legal authorities are mouthed routinely but Wagner operates outside the law by its very nature...it is quite clearly both illegal in Russian law and at the same time is a direct creation and tool of Putin himself. Lastly, I do think it's pretty clear why Putin is choosing door 3. Wagner's job was to provide Russia with a symbolic political victory to the Russian population, to demonstrate that the established military had failed the leader and that the leader's strategic and operational vision was superior. It failed on all three counts and has now been weakened to a degree that might be dangerous for Putin. He's pulling it out to reconstitute it's ability to balance out the MoD and to protect its reputation in case the weight of the UA offensive obliterates it in toto.

Just listening now. "mellifluously functional" is a very good line. I think he's got an interesting perspective but I think he's pretty seriously wrong in imagining that the Putinist state has lost the monopoly on violence within Russia proper (i.e. not Ukraine or Chechnya). As he notes himself, Prigozhin was allowed to recruit prisoners and then...like a tap being turned off...he was not at Putin's order. I would say he's interesting but pretty much like the rest of us...folks looking from the outside in and reading the tea leaves.

Welcome to the too ****ing dumb to interact with ignore list.

That's just word salad. Wilted word salad. Meh.

If you want to be taken seriously, don't start the discussion with a logical fallacy. If you want to get a grip on nuclear deterrence, I'd suggest with starting with the classics: https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Weapons-Foreign-Policy-Kissinger/dp/0393004945 Forewarning: it's not an 8th grade text.

I absolutely agree with your first point and much of the rest! It's not static. For a long time, Prigozhin and the regime made the leadership murky because it provide useful deniability to fellow travelers in the EU. Wagner remained small and specialized. Why did he become so public and so big? For both Putin and himself. Putin needed a foil to poke the MoD and Prigozhin needed some sort of sainthood among the nationalists to not end up in Lubianka when this all ends. The latter point applies today and for the rest of his life. But what has not changed are the essential sinews of power in Russia. Putin essentially owns Wagner. Wagner cannot supply itself as the MoD holds those strings. Putin can make the MoD give or withhold logistics and at the same time Wagner can humiliate and threaten MoD. It's a system designed by Putin to check and balance threats to his power base. It is definitively not politics as we understand it.

"It's easy" is a profoundly stupid way to think of it. Sorry.

Prigozhin and Kadryov tried to take over the MoD. They didn't just get shut down because they didn't have anything close to the power to pull it off...they actually managed to get Putin to rehabilitate Gerasimov and Shoigu in response. Full proof that this is about faction management and Putin is pulling the strings.

No worries. Happy to dig into it. It makes me think through what I believe and where I get it from. I agree that Wagner is bigger than it was and that Prigozhin has become a much larger public figure in the last year. I just differ on who, why and what for in each case. Here are my premises/positions: 1. Putin correctly sees that in a war, win or lose, the MoD will grow in power. 2. He is *very* cognizant of the role disgruntled soldiers played the last time Russia lost a war badly in Europe. 3. He already had Wagner, fully under his personal control, as a vehicle for military operations. 4. Diverting military resources into Wagner prevents too much power from accumulating on the Arbatskaya. 5. Building up Wagner gives Putin unmediated control of military power that is amenable political objectives. 6. The war in Ukraine is now about survival in Moscow, not winning in Mariupol. Apply those premises to just Bakhmut alone and I think they stand up very well.

It occurs to me that if you can explain nuclear deterrence on an 8th grade level, you aren't explaining nuclear deterrence. The internet's full of dumb places. Let's not actually try to dumb this one down, eh?

Utkin founded it in 2014 after the Slavonic Group was not just shut down but its founders jailed by the FSB. Why? Because they founded a Russian merc group without Putin's express permission. Utkin's krisha was already tied to Putin then and Wagner was immediately sent in to support the seizure of the Donbass in concert with the GRU, spetznaz, et alia. He was getting medals in person from Putin within 18 months. Nothing about that suggests an independent operation. I agree Prigozhin is making a splash. My argument is that he is trying to curry favor with Putin and to create a persona that makes him hard to eliminate after Putin goes. A war hero fighting for the homeland is a pretty good idea...but it doesn't let you take on the big guy...just ask Zhukov. My point on logistics is that if Putin tells the MoD to cut off Wagner, they will. Wagner without ammo isn't a threat to the regime and you can bet the FSB keeps a careful eye on who can/would help him. They hate Prigozhin like the plague.

Where he wasn't wrong was in the fear that a democratic tide could swamp his autocracy. Where he completely blew it was in thinking that the solution to that problem was in going pure autocrat rather than in creating institutions to mediate domestic politics. In essence, he couldn't imagine that the world wasn't like him.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has become pretty much irrelevant to the policy of the Russian state. Lavrov is a lapdog and the embassies are primarily fonts of poorly thought out propaganda. Prigozhin and Wagner are tightly tied into the GRU operationally and watched by the FSB. That's where the power is.

Who put Prigozhin in charge of Wagner? Who controls Wagner's logistics? Who controls them?

Russian fears about Ukraine were always tied to the potential for color revolutions to get to Moscow and their pre-2014 interventions always tied to creating a Kyiv regime that was similar to the Kremlin. The neo-Yalta deal they wanted had the same fixation. Novarossiya ideology only arrived in any serious way post 2014 when the success of that intervention convinced them that such a thing was possible. As their horizons have diminished with the disaster of this one, the core concerns return to the fore.

All of the above. This isn't Texas Hold'em at your buddy's house. Who floats a peace deal, how and why can go in a myriad of directions.

I pretty strongly disagree with this. Russia doesn't have rule of law. It has what some like to call a rule-by-law state. What that means is that the law exists on the books but it is only selectively enforced. Anyone with krysha can ignore the law at will and at the upper levels competition virtually requires that one does. Conversely, the power structure...meaning Putin...can at any time decide to activate the law against those he wishes to destroy or punish. This is not an esoteric subject within Russia. Everybody knows it and must adhere to the system. Wagner's slightly nebulous status heretofore was not to fool Russians...it was aimed at providing convenient myopia to decision makers in the West. In the context of Prigozhin, the situation is the reverse of your description above. The mercenaries under Prigozhin's wing can push back against him...precisely because they all work for Putin and Prigozhin's perceived maneuvering isn't arm twisting Putin...it is to curry favor with him by balancing out the war primed influence of the MoD. Make no mistake...in every sense that matters, Putin is the Russian state and the Russian state owns Wagner. The day Prigozhin forgets that is the last day you will hear from him.