Institute for the Study of War
www.understandingwar.org
The Kremlin announced late on June 24 that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko negotiated a deal under which Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin will travel to Belarus without facing criminal charges in Russia; some portion of Wagner Group

Some key takeaways :

The Kremlin struggled to cohere an effective rapid response to Wagner’s advances, highlighting internal security weaknesses likely due to surprise and the impact of heavy losses in Ukraine.

Putin unsurprisingly elected to back the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and its ongoing efforts to centralize control of Russian irregular forces (including Wagner) over Prigozhin.

The Lukashenko-brokered agreement will very likely eliminate Wagner Group as a Prigozhin-led independent actor in its current form, although elements of the organization may endure under existing and new capacities.

Prigozhin likely gambled that his only avenue to retain Wagner Group as an independent force was to march against the Russian MoD, likely intending to secure defections in the Russian military but overestimating his own prospects.

The optics of Belarusian President Lukashenko playing a direct role in halting a military advance on Moscow are humiliating to Putin and may have secured Lukashenko other benefits.

The Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable equilibrium. The Lukashenko-negotiated deal is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution, and Prigozhin’s rebellion exposed severe weaknesses in the Kremlin and Russian MoD.

  • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.caEnglish
    23·
    1 year ago

    but it was an equally insane idea to try to goad Russia into a war

    Who goaded Russia into a war? Do you consider Ukraine existing as a sovereign democracy to be a provocation?

    The one thing we’ve learned from the whole wagner fiasco is that conditions for any sort of a coup simply don’t exist in Russia.

    Haha please tell me you’re joking. The only reason Russia avoided a coup is because they gave into the demands of the rebels.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlEnglish
      33·
      1 year ago

      Plenty of western experts have been saying this for many decades. This only became controversial to mention after the war started. Here’s what Chomsky has to say on the issue recently:

      https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/

      https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-military-escalation-against-russia-would-have-no-victors/

      50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:

      George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.

      Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"

      Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.

      Haha please tell me you’re joking. The only reason Russia avoided a coup is because they gave into the demands of the rebels.

      What demands did they give in to, be specific. 🤡

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.caEnglish
        22·
        1 year ago

        Chomsky LOL. An old communist that doesn’t know what decade it is anymore.

        Why not give me Henry Kissinger’s take on it too?

        Here’s a fun fact: Anyone less than 32 years old wasn’t even alive when the Soviet Union existed. How time flies, huh?

        Only people middle-aged or older actually care about all this cold war spheres of influence bullshit. And this is extremely relevant when you consider the age group that actually fights the wars. In fact many of the people fighting this war were either children or not born when most of this stuff you quoted were said.

        In the world of today, Ukraine is a sovereign democracy. Ukraine has the right to determine whether it wants to be part of the EU, NATO, or any other organization, alliance, or treaty it wants to be a part of. Ukraine has the right to self-determination, and doesn’t need to ask Russia’s permission for anything it wants to do. And as a democracy they enjoy the support of other democracies in the world.

        I grant you Putin was probably going under the decades old and obsolete logic you are. In the world of today, Putin is sending young men to die to restore a map that hasn’t existed in their lifetimes. Meanwhile Ukrainians are fighting to defend their country from foreign invasion. They’re fighting for their independence and freedom.

        This is why Russia can’t win. It’s why Putin was stupid to even attempt this. Too much time has passed and the world of the Chomsky and Kissinger just doesn’t exist for the people that are actually fighting this war.

        The “you kids don’t understand!” doesn’t really work when there’s a war on. Because in a war, the kids that “don’t understand” are the people with weapons in their hands.

          • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
            21·
            1 year ago

            And others understand what SSBNs are and their relevance in deterence theory.

            And there’s also people that understand that not all NATO countries host nuclear weapons and it’s possible to achieve any goal of keeping a distance to nuclear weapons via negotiation.

            Sorry, the spheres of influence thing is some Napoleonic imperialistic bullshit. Only relevant because senile old fools like Putin cling onto it.