Russian Coup, False Flag or Psyop?
Interesting news out of Russia. Assuming its not just a psyop it seems Prigozhin might just have executed a coup attempt.
I should probably hold off and wait till the dust settles, as this will be outdated in hours, but what the hell.
Hours ago the NYT reported
Russia sent armored vehicles into the streets of Moscow and a southern Russian city near Ukraine after Yevgeny Prigozhin accused Russian forces of attacking his Wagner mercenaries and threatened reprisals.
Russian generals late on Friday accused Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the outspoken mercenary tycoon, of trying to mount a coup against President Vladimir V. Putin, as the Russian authorities opened an investigation into Mr. Prigozhin for “organizing an armed rebellion.”
Prigozhin has issued a new voice recording on the Telegram messaging platform. He says his fighters are approaching the city of Rostov-on-Don, which is in southern Russia, near Ukraine, and adds: “We are going farther. We will go to the end.” There’s no confirmation that Prigozhin’s forces are actually approaching Rostov.
The state news agency Tass says the authorities have blocked traffic on the M-4 highway outside Rostov-on-Don — a Russian city near Ukraine home to key Russian military facilities.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/23/world/russia-ukraine-news
"PMC Wagner Commanders' Council made a decision: the evil brought by the military leadership of the country must be stopped," Prigozhin said, according to a translation of his statement. "They neglect the lives of soldiers. They forgot the word 'justice', and we will bring it back."
"I'm asking: no one resist. Everyone who will try to resist, we will consider them a danger and destroy them immediately, including any checkpoints on our way," the Wagner chief said. "And any aviation that we see above our heads. I'm asking everyone to remain calm, do not succumb to provocations, and remain in their houses. Ideally, those along our way, do not go outside."
Now there are updated reports
A video circulating on Russian social media appears to show Wagner forces surrounding Russia's Southern Military District Headquarters in Rostov. Staged? Very real and very serious? Not even a real video (it's from Call of Duty 666)? We report, you decide!
https://t.me/edwardslavsquat/514
Crazy stuff of Twitter too claiming Wagner has captured Rostov
https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1672440998637756421
I have no idea, but we did have signs something was not right.
Lets step back to my post in early May
Wagner threatening to withdraw from Bakhmut on May 10 due to lack of support from Russian Military
I don’t know about you but I consider that treason. Is Prigozhin that powerful that he can spit on the Russian Military Leaderships face and their Commander in Chief Putin? If so I would say Wagner is an existential threat to the Russian Federation at some point.
I bet NATO would love to recruit Prigozhin and have him liberate Russia and dethrone Putin in an exchange , riches for Wagner and Prigozhin and opening up markets to the West like in the Yeltsin years, not to mention turning away from China, Iran and Syria and handing over Crimea.
Or is this just a ruse? Perhaps to get Ukraine to see an opportunity to retake Bakhmut and direct their counteroffensive in this area.
Frankly speaking , I don’t really understand why Russia does not pull out and just carpet bomb Bakhmut. Its not like there are any civilians left, and the city is mostly rubble anyways, and Ukraines air defenses are supposedly depleted.
That said, I am no military guy so there may be good reasons.
Maybe this is just an excuse to prolong the war by giving Ukraine a breather and time rebuild their strength. I have said more than a few times it seems the main objective of Putins Forever war is to depopulate Ukraine and allow Russia and Western Corporations to seize resources. This allows the Western Elites to fulfill the WEF mandate to destroy the Anglo-Americans-EU Economies so they can do a Great Reset and Build Back Better Better with drastically lower living standards and consumption for the bottom 90%
If this is true Putin is just a Globalist Puppet, a Trojan Horse for Russia like Trump is for the US
https://pete843.substack.com/p/petes-musings-5623
In the end Wagner finished the job in Bakhmut and pulled out for some rest by June.
Clearly it was no ruse and no state can take the head of a quasi private army making threats of that nature.
I guess the real question is who is backing Prigozhin?
I do remember Prigozhin saying some very kind words about the quality of the Ukrainian military forces and training leading one of NATOS cheerleaders to applaud
“I think that the Ukrainians today are one of the strongest armies. They have a high level of organization, a high level of training, a high level of intelligence, they have various weapons, and moreover, they work with any system: Soviet, NATO,” he added.
https://twitter.com/stavridisj/status/1661831284077764636
I honestly don’t know.
Lets keep it simple and use Wikipedia to look at Wagner and the GRU
Because it operates in support of Russian interests, receives equipment from the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and uses MoD installations for training, the Wagner Group is said to be a de facto unit of the MoD or Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU.
The director of the GRU is subordinate to the Russian military command, reporting to the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff.
The directorate is reputedly Russia's largest foreign-intelligence agency, and is distinguished among its counterparts for its willingness to execute riskier "complicated, high stakes operations".
According to unverified statements by Stanislav Lunev, a defector from the GRU, in 1997 the agency deployed six times as many agents in foreign countries as the SVR, and commanded some 25,000 Spetsnaz troops.
This makes me wonder if Russias Foreign Intelligence Agency - GRU has been infiltrated by NATO and is backing Wagner
Given its many agents based in foreign territory GRU might be more easily compromised and recruited by NATO with promises of great riches . Perhaps with the help of exiled Russian Oligarchs and disgruntled Oligarchs within Russia who pine for the good old days free of sanctions when they could openly rape their countries wealth with a hand from Western banksters
Now what about Prigozhin and Putin. This old report from 2018 sheds some light
State regulators also reviewed eight Defense Ministry contracts won by businesses linked to Mr. Prigozhin and issued a stern rebuke in May 2017.
Russian law mandates that any contract go to the lowest bidder, but the winning tenders were only a fraction lower than the rest. Otherwise the bids were virtually identical, the Anti-Monopoly Service said, calling the 2015 bids fixed.
The government announced that it would not press charges. Nobody anticipates Mr. Prigozhin appearing in a Russian court any time soon.
“We don’t expect him to be punished given that he is among the president’s closest friends,” said Maksim L. Reznik, another St. Petersburg legislator demanding that he be investigated.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/world/europe/prigozhin-russia-indictment-mueller.html
So Prigozhin is or was pretty tight with Putin, and Prigozhin says nothing against Putin even today saying his actions wont affect the Presidency
One must ask, is Putin using Prigozhin to do a coup against his own military? For what purpose?
Perhaps some in the Military are seeing Putin as a Globalist Trojan Horse as I do? They cant be happy with the restraints imposed turning the SMO into a Forever War
Here is a bit more on Prigozhin
Mr. Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg restaurateur who leveraged his personal connections with Mr. Putin into lucrative government contracts, gained international prominence after his online “troll factory” interfered in the 2016 American presidential election — and after his Wagner fighters were deployed in Syria and across Africa as a shadow force believed to be fighting for Kremlin interests.
For months the Russian war effort has been hampered by the bitter feud between Mr. Prigozhin and top military leaders, whom he has accused in scathing terms of incompetence in conducting the war. He has asserted that Russia’s top brass have refused to provide Wagner forces with needed ammunition even as they fought alongside the Russian military for control of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
But never before had Mr. Prigozhin accused Russia’s military leaders of attacking his forces, nor asserted in such stark terms that the Kremlin’s stated justification for the war was nonsense.
In a 30-minute video released on Friday, Mr. Prigozhin had described his country’s invasion of Ukraine as a “racket” perpetrated by a corrupt elite chasing money and glory without concern for Russian lives.
He also accused the Russian minister of defense, Sergei K. Shoigu, of orchestrating a deadly attack with missiles and helicopters on camps to the rear of the Russian lines in Ukraine, where his soldiers of fortune were bivouacked. And he accused Mr. Shoigu of overseeing the strikes himself from the town of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, near Ukraine.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/23/world/russia-ukraine-news#russia-prigozhin-putin-war-ukraine
Here is what Simplicius has to say
On that note, though, let’s explore a few possible options for what could actually be going on.
Prigozhin is working with AFU/SBU/CIA to backstab and destroy Russia, coordinating his actions with them.
Prigozhin is secretly working with Putin to remove the stodgily entrenched Russian command. Notice, not in a single one of his rants has Prigozhin accused Putin or so much as even mentioned his name. There’s a possibility that all this is theater to cause a “conciliatory deal” to be made which will result in the ‘stepping aside’ of Shoigu. Putin has previously “laterally promoted” (in actuality demotions) several big name siloviki in the past. For instance, Sergei Ivanov who was deputy prime minister and presidential chief of staff was “moved” to head some ‘ecological’ department. Could we see Shoigu used as a fig leaf to settle the impasse by “laterally” moving him to some other ostensibly ‘important’ (but actually irrelevant) position?
Everything is actually “as is” and whatever we see on the surface of the conflict pretty much represents what’s really happening.
Interesting. Could Putin and his buddy Prigozhin be preparing to serve serve Russia on a silver platter to NATO in exchange for great wealth and security guarantees? Maybe Putin gets to join Jeffrey Epstein on some magical Pleasure Island as a reward after a Fake Execution to disguise the fact a deal was made.
Hard to believe, I am not sure I am prepared to go that far.
Most likely scenario is they will do a purge of the Military leadership , assuming Prigozhin is not obliterated. That said I rule out nothing.
Perhaps if you wanted to roll out the Digital Gulag that Russia like China and the WEF are building , and at least in Russia and the West will be strongly opposed, creating conditions that would warrant a War on Domestic Terrorism, and a Prigozhin coup attempt unlike that 1-6 theater is certainly such a condition, and this would prove useful for gaining the support to lock things down.
What am I saying? Perhaps a false flag with Prigozhin vs MoD as the Fake Wrestlers. Crazy? Maybe.
But lets not forget many or at least some Russians thought Putin and his KGB thugs did the Moscow Apartment Building bombings that killed more than 300 between September 4-13, 1999 , shortly after Putin was made President when the drunken Yeltsin stepped down.
A suspicious device resembling those used in the bombings was found and defused in an apartment block in the Russian city of Ryazan on 22 September.[3][4] On 23 September, Vladimir Putin praised the vigilance of the inhabitants of Ryazan and ordered the air bombing of Grozny, which marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War. Three FSB agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police. The next day, FSB director Nikolay Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar.
With elections coming in 2000 the no name Putin would have stood little chance without his strong arm tactics against the Chechen Terrorists alleged to be responsible
Oh well, grab the popcorn and watch the show and see how it plays out. I certainly threw enough darts, maybe one of them is on target.
It is also well timed as a Distraction given the DNI pathetic declassified intelligence release on WIV , and although no doubt that is coincidental, the pathetic report will quickly be forgotten. I’ll get to that later, maybe.
Appreciate that you were on this story hours before praetorian narrative guards had their morning consult, thereby giving unfiltered sit-rep. I am looking at this from the historian perspective, and while I won’t get into details now, I will say that we should keep an eye on China.
The Sino-Soviet split was theater for western consumption and Putin and Xi have made it abundantly clear that they have each other’s back. As long as Putin remains at war, Xi is unable to carry out any military campaigns of his own. If Xi “decides” to come to Putin’s defense, then we’re faced with the old East v West showdown. Xi will be free to take Taiwan after he closes the Panama Canal, isolating our navy in the Pacific, while our East coast is open to attack from Cuba, the Bahamas and deep water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
I'll opt for Occam's Razor: elite units have always had differences with HQ. Prigozhin has had it with 'plowing fields with artillery' when his men are going short of munitions.
>>Russia is using Ukraine to degrade US/NATO. US/NATO is using Ukraine to degrade Russia<<
Accusations of 'traitor' are a standard reaction to division.
A 'forever war' is simply not Prigozhin's kind of war.