billbindc

This is interesting:

Putin has consistently made logical choices...taking into account the facts as he believed they stood. There is nobody in Moscow who thinks a Belarus takeover will augment Moscow's strength in any way except as some sort of face saving move in the event of a collapse in Ukraine. So, until the latter happens...

I would be pretty surprised if there Putin was really trying to get Lukashenko out of the way. The bottom line is that direct Russian control of Belarus doesn't help Russia to win Ukraine and has every prospect of hurting. The RA doesn't have the forces to create a new front and the Belarus military is likelier to switch sides, refuse, desert as it is to fight. Maintaining order without Lukashenko would also require extending already overtaxed Russian security forces to keep things quiescent. In addition, Belarussians have shown nothing like Ukrainian's willingness to go the mat to drive out the siloviks. Without a general revulsion against a Russian regime, activists aren't enough to engineer an overthrow. Killing Lukashenko and sending in ramshackle Rosgvardia might just create that revulsion. The FSB is internally wired into Belarussia and knows this...so Putin does too.

Belarus likely does on its own but it would...as last time did...require commitment of supporting resources from Russia. And Russia could probably supply those resources but not without further diminishing what it needs to hold off what Ukraine is planning to do shortly.

Looks like we are in the vehicle and fuel phase with at least some effort at pulling Russian reinforcements towards Bakhmut.

That sir, is a thrown gauntlet too far. They were Romanioi!!!!

Eyebrow firmly raised.

My attempt at pith has been to say that the UA will lean on a lot of doors to see which are rotten and then start kicking them in.

Anybody know where I can find a map with some detail on where the different command lines separate the front on the Russia side?

Fascinating placement tonight:

And Peng shall judge.

Worth noting that paying too much attention to the Moscow parade tends to distort the larger picture.

I'm less interested in the quantity than in the slap dash quality of it. This year's parade came off as a result of a not terribly interested committee who didn't want to take any risks. There was little in the way of substantive messaging, only a sort of backhanded way of acknowledging the state of the war and Putin's speech was a fairly tepid example of the form. It is claimed that the couple of weeks culminating in the parade was about catalyzing the Russian masses behind the war. If so, I thought it very weak tea.

What are we betting?

I think they are paralyzed because there’s no longer any elite input to Putin about the direction of the war or the country. He’s gone late season Cersei with the remnant undead security organs of the Soviet Union ominously hovering to smite naysayers. Because there isn’t really discussion, things are reduced to whatever imagination is left in the grey husk that is the visionary part of Putin’s character. And so, the shamble towards 1917 continues.

Just so. And by bringing in the Central Asian, Armenian and Byelorussian leaders, Putin's team in effect protected him. To be honest, this is exactly the sort of parade I would have done and noted so above. Where they failed was by not leaning into the WWII and day of prayer themes enough.

What's an estimate an estimate for the Ukrainian forces they will face?

Does anyone have an idea of the number of Russian troops manning the Zaporizhzhia front? Their force mix and/or mobility? I'm curious what the differences will be btw this phase and the Kherson offensive for the Russians. Front depth, supply, the ability to retreat to safety. What else?

No, it wouldn't be. He'd be removed. And that's my point...Putin's still running the show. There are certainly stresses to his ability to arbitrate conflicts but so far there's no sign at all that he's losing control. So far, he's just losing the war.

What Prigozhin has around him is an armed, motivated *mercenary* group that is surrounded by the Russian military and depends wholly on it for support. You can be quite sure that the FSB and GRU keep close tabs and cultivate internal factions constantly. It's the one thing they do well. If Prigozhin smells danger, what does he do? He tries to make himself a national hero that's more trouble that it's worth to eliminate. In fact, that's exactly what he's doing now. If he gets a summons from Moscow and demurs, he'd be dead in a week. What Putin can offer Prigozhin's lieutenants is decisively safer and better.

Wagner isn’t a single entity and yes it owns mining and minerals but virtually all of those operations/acquisitions are through a series of shell companies. Who owns those? Well…take a guess who might want to have a way to influence events globally and the money to do it that could avoid post 2014 sanctions. It wasn’t even started by Prigozhin…that dubious honor goes to Utkin (the original “Wagner”). The former was brought in by Putin when the organization got bigger. Prigozhin is the tool, not the artist. Putin rewards loyalty in this tools but he doesn’t forget the hierarchy. As for Kadyrov, I think he’s actually in a pretty good position. He is holding back his own forces still. He is letting the MoD and Wagner wreck themselves and, should push come to shove, he’s now in a position where the Russian Federation probably couldn’t militarily defeat him in the near future. Maybe that changes if there is a breakthrough but so far, the Chechens are the most unmanaged force on the Russian side.

Because Putin keeps him at arm's length. He's not important enough to have direct access and he's not powerful enough to force it. Prigozhin's dramatics are a sign of prominence but that's not the same thing as power. And he is now in a quite dangerous position. He demanded and got enormous resources to take Bakhmut. He used it all up and failed. The leaders of the MoD are clearly not going anywhere since Putin dumped them and brought them back and they are going to want a reckoning for all that wasted combat power and time. They are also going to have an excellent excuse if/when the Ukrainian offensive smashes a now under supplied Russian army. Prigozhin is trying to save his life.

The power structure: 1. Kadyrov is a warlord with a defined territory he controls as a palatinate of the Russian Federation. He has intense local ties, a populace and geography that is quite difficult if not now impossible for the Russian army to subdue and an army that is loyal, personally, to him. His power is interleaved with Putin's but negotiated and inalienable by the Kremlin. 2. Prigozhin is a functionary without any defined territorial control and thus no independent logistics, manpower sources or arms. He is, in essence, the appointed head of a quasi-state enterprise without a stronghold in any institution, region or ethnic group. He can be subdued by the simple expedient of cutting him off, trumping up a tax charge against him and tossing him back into the Russian penal system. His power derives from favor only, is alienable and only negotiated with difficulty. What you are witnessing is the interplay between (in order of importance) the large institutional powers (FSB, MoD), the regional warlord (Kadyrov), the disposable functionary (Prigozhin) and the system created by Putin in which all must vie for his favor in whatever way they can. The FSB/MoD are in daily contact and have the greatest access to Putin. They don't need to shout to be heard. Kadyrov mostly boasts but more importantly he withholds his forces in order to gain concessions and preserve his own strength for the aftermath. Prigozhin is much more marginal and so he must go public and make dramatic gestures for Putin to hear him. That's what you saw last week. The larger point of course is that Russia is run as a semi-mafia state primarily concerned with safeguarding Putin's power. Putin is the arbiter of the factions who must appeal to him in order to protect themselves and receive decisions and resources while their competition keeps them from uniting against him. And that creates inherent weaknesses...like divided command, conflicts between military needs and domestic power struggles, etc.

Putin *owns* Wagner. Prigozhin does not. Don't let the chef try to fool you into thinking he's the the boss outside of the kitchen. Edit for some clarifying details: 1. Putin can use lawfare to remove Prigozhin from his position at any time and there are any number of malleable alternates waiting in the wings. 2. Wagner can't feed, ammo or move itself. That is controlled by the MoD who would starve it at Putin's suggestion immediately. That means that Wagner is going to fight when/where/how Putin directs. Finis.

https://jamestown.org/program/collapse-of-the-russian-empires-main-historical-pillar/ Of interest.