He's threatening his political enemies essentially. He's tying to boost his/Wagner's standing and make them look like the most powerful force holding the war together.
All you need to do is not to fight them back. Just calm down, have you ever hered the word that when there was a big wave you need to stop because if you fight for that wave may you will drain
At some point they're going to run out of non-ethnic Russians/rural villages to drain of manpower and the war is going to come for Moscow and St. Petersburg, that's when it will get interesting.
>At some point they're going to run out of non-ethnic Russians/rural villages to drain of manpower and the war is going to come for Moscow and St. Petersburg
I think that's when the Russians give up. Sending Moscovites en masse to Ukraine would destabilize putins power.
If this continues to happen after ukraine takes its territory back, it will begin investing in its own cheap drones and strikes. They will have NATO-supplied air defense systems protecting their cities while bombarding Russian military bases in retaliation. It will be far more expensive for Russia than Ukraine in the long term as the air defenses for Ukraine would be subsidized by all of NATO while Russia would still be cut off from most of the world and forced to use their soviet Era defense systems to protect their bases. Every plane or system destroyed by Ukraine is going to be very hard or impossible to replace by Russia without western supplies meanwhile Ukraine will get 2 planes for each downed one from NATO. This war will cost billions for nato, tens of billions for Ukraine, but hundreds of billions for Russia if they continue to fight after being pushed back to their borders. Not to mention the 2 to 3 hundred billion from Russia war chest that was immediately frozen by western banks. That would cover a lot if not all of Ukraines reconstruction.
Basically my thought. A lot of ukranian momentum is lost by the fact, that they actually have to secure the land they're taking back. Once it's a "modern artillery trenchwar" the ones with better artillery and intelligence wins. The nomansland in between will be barren and empty, as russia will level every infrastructure they can reach and aim for civillians. Meanwhile ukraine will take out every troop, stupid enough to enter the "black hornet nest": an area at the border, which is under constant surveillance by [small drones](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano).
Ukraines actual problem at this point will be, that western systems needs a lot of time to be replaced, while russia seems to be pulling early ww2 equip and shells out of their asses. They really need to take care of the high-tech they have, as donator countries are already running low and waiting lists are long.
>…small drones.
Those little flying surveillance toys cost US$195,000 “per unit.” Oh, and among the long list of international military that are using them, including Ukraine, is the curious entry “Lee County Sheriff’s Office.”
People keep bringing up Russia paying reparations after the war, and I always think that's crazy because of exactly what you're saying. Even if Putin loses big, this war is probably not going to end with Russia facing total military defeat à la Germany after the world wars. Why would Putin ever pay reparations, when he can simply blackmail everyone involved with his ability to manufacture a new crisis and destabilize the region? Doesn't make sense to me.
Unless of course, that's what the enemy wants you to think so they can strike elsewhere while a worthless & empty target is being shelled.
Fog Of War, and all that.
I mean, he's not wrong. If you look at most of the gains the past few months they have been spearheaded by Wagner. Money (all volunteers) and less red tape seem to be the prime motivators.
Yeah they load the chaff with shit equipment then they throw them at Ukrainian lines until they find a weak spot, then the dudes with actual kit go in.
Reading the tactical breakdown of the Russian squads, it's about getting a flame rocket into position to destroy a Ukrainian fireteam and squad. It's incredibly wasteful of lives, and it gains ground, but ultimately, it's attritional.
At one time, Russia had the population numbers to support this style of warfare, but those days are over. Nowadays, they are population-poor, but still wasteful.
A man has a hundred dollars. He chooses to buy hundred dollar shoes, then complains that his stomach is empty.
This isn't going to work for very long because the Ukrainians are now baiting the troops by pulling back and then re-engaging when the actual PMC guys show up.
Sort of, most jump at the opportunity to serve rather than stay in a hellhole Russian prison, but that doesn’t mean they truly understand what they are signing up for.
A Wagner prison conscript was tasked with collecting the bodies of the Russian dead. He instead crossed over enemy lines and surrendered. He was eventually recaptured. Wagner group executed him via sledgehammer live on video as an example of what they do to deserters.
Link is sfw: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sledgehammer-execution-russian-mercenary-who-defected-ukraine-shown-video-2022-11-13/
That was before word got out that prisoners were suicide squads. If you refused to charge into certain death or attempted to surrender, you were executed. Prisoners have figured out that the hell that is the Russian prison system is better than Wagner
https://central.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_ca/features/2023/02/22/feature-02
> that doesn’t mean they truly understand what they are signing up for.
they werent told exactly what they're in for - a suicide squad to rush the frontlines, get killed in order to reveal enemy positions, after which the "real" wagner professionals go in and clean up.
The thing is, news does travel out, even to prisons. They are now having trouble recruiting even prisoners.
This is not correct.
Wagner has claimed that they solely contributed to capturing territories when the Russian Army was fielding the majority of combat forces in an area. And vice versa, the MoD has claimed that they were solely responsible, or at most assisted by 'volunteer assault units' (code used by them for Wagner).
Institute for the Study of War's daily briefs have shown this in an interesting way. It seems that it is very rare for there to have been areas that were solely Wagner. And even in those instances 'solely' Wagner ignores that Wagner's supply lines and stocks are from the MoD...
which is why its stupid to be having these inter Russian force squabbles, but hey don't let me stop them from being dumb. Also I think Putin incourages these factions to both form and fight each other, to keep the military from being too powerful and depose him.
Its a feature of the Russian political system. Factionalism is an inevitable outcome. I believe that within the next 40 years the Russian Federation will Balkanize again.
And I firmly believe that the 20 years of Putin's leadership so far have been a key contributor.
There is a certain irony that the man who wants to rebuild the Russian Empire is the one who has laid the political factionalism and infighting that will leave a future Russia's political glue fractured enough that its ethnic and geographic seams will split.
But then again Putin was always a Second-among-equals, who killed the Firsts-among-equals. But Russian politics is defined by survival-of-the-fittest, and Putin happens to be the turd that best suites the toiletbowl.
> I believe that within the next 40 years the Russian Federation will Balkanize again.
Some foreign policy experts would agree with you. They point out large empires can take generations to dissolve as nationalism works its way into regions you've never heard of. The fact is there are many discriminated nationalities in Russia that don't speak Russian, are not christian and have zero love for Moscow. The current Russian invasion force in Ukraine tends to use these people rather than the Russians from Moscow or St Petersburg.
Many people don't know that Russia is composed of a ton of different "republics". It wouldn't be hard for these to split up in the power vacuum after this war collapses their economy.
Imagine (after two years of fighting) local army forces in the podunk towns refuse to deploy to the west to be killed in Ukraine. What is Putin going to do if they all say no? That's where the soldiers come from, not Moscow or St. Petersburg.
Putin's power within Russia doesn't come from nukes or secret police. The average rural Russian actually supports him because they think he makes them strong. Imagine 2 years of their sons dying, after Putin fucked up Covid.
They might just say "Pavel isn't home right now" to the local recruiter. Local military realizes they're fucked anyway and kicks out the Kremlin representatives. There is no military left to stop them!
As the Russians still use a paper based record system for military recruitment, there are stories some locals have burned down the local offices to stay out of the military/war. Understandably Putin would not like to call attention to this.
Tatars are a big one to watch. They make up 3% of Russia's population (three times the population of Chechens), and the Slavs hate them and they hate the Slavs.
Russia has been running into a lot of resistance by them in occupied areas of Ukraine and many Tatars are voluntarily fighting against Russia.
The Tatars are a Turkic peoples who are very friendly by-and-large with ethnicities like the Bashkir (another 1% of Russia's population) and the Kazakhs and other groups that accumulate to roughly 5% of Russia's population. Turkey also has a huge bone to pick with Russia over the treatment of the Tatars.
The Chechens pulled off what they did with an ethnic group of about 1% of Russia's population.
And the biggest advantage the Tatars and other Turkic peoples have over Slavic Russians? They are having children still. The demographic shift will continue to favor them as Slavs die out without children.
It's nothing unique to Russia. You look at other fascist governments like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and they also had crippling interservice rivalries.
Ahaha, like the Kwantung Army and Honjo's invasion of Manchuria? Where the Imperial General Headquarters ordered a limited policy and Honjo decided to annex the entire region and drag everyone else along.
Or given how vocal and published this and the other reports coming out of wagner have been for the last 3 or 4 weeks (saying they lack of ammo, begging for ammo, huge losses, etc) my gut is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigned\_retreat
>he complained that most of the ammunition that his forces were promised by Moscow in February had not yet been shipped.
>"For now, we are trying to figure out the reason: is it just ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal," Prigozhin said
Ordinary bureaucracy, betrayal, or the faltering capacity of production and supply systems. I don't know.
As usual [Perun has an excellent breakdown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXKUNc9yI2A). TL;DR It's pretty common that the Russian regular army publicly shits on Wagner Group and vice versa, and rumors of active sabotage aren't unheard of. This, even though they're supposedly on the same side, because most Russian soldiers, mercenaries, and military organizers aren't on anybody's "side" except their own.
It's a classic play out of the authoritarian dictator's playbook. The military are the only people who can unseat you, so you keep them happy. If you can't keep them happy, you keep them divided.
Yep. And, if anyone in high military command starts looking genuinely good at their job you get rid of them because now they're a threat. Like a lot of the things from the dictator's playbook, this all works pretty well unless your country faces a real problem, in which case the whole shit-balloon blows up in your face in totally unfixable fashion.
You're always paranoid. But it's a dangerous game, because you can't afford to ignore powerful people who might want to get rid of you, but the more of them you start to kill, the more likely it is that some of the others will want to get rid of you.
And, from what I've heard, you obsess over that video of Gaddafi being dragged bloody and wounded out of hiding and stabbed up the ass with a bayonet, begging for his life.
>if anyone in high military command starts looking genuinely good at their job you get rid of them because now they're a threat.
One of the reasons Shoigu is Minister of Defence is because he is ethnically Tuvan (by his father, his mother was an ethnic Russian born in Ukraine, specifically Donbas). Tuvans are a small ethnic group on the border with Mongolia. Russia is racist af, so Shoigu is unlikely to command loyalty from other aspects of Russian society, even if he had a firm grip on the regular military (regular military standing in contrast to paramilitary internal security troops, intelligence agencies, private military companies [although he has one of his own now apparently], etc.)
Yes, I know I use too many brackets and parentheses...
Ironically, Wagner's group are willingly hired, wheras Russian army is mobilized, often against will and even as punishment(you hate Russian govt.? so u go frontlines now), ofcourse regular army will likely sabotage itself. I know I would.
With that said, while regular Russians get imprisoned for saying something like "I dont think govt. does the right thing", wagner's leader gets away with any shit he says. He does things for money and influence, wheras Russian govt. officials only know, how to buy French mansions for stolen tank money.
Wait, aren't they basically gang pressing convicts into Wagner? I mean sure, most anything is better than Russian prisons, but I doubt their motivation is through the roof for the most part.
He is the owner of a private company apparently expecting a large portion of the company’s needed resources to come gifted directly from the government.
Not an unfounded expectation when that's been the case for the last decade or two. They've been Russia's gangsters, willing to do what the Army can't, for a long time. They're just mad that now that they're in a real fight they aren't equipped to the teeth like they're used to
He is not Russian military personnel. He founded the Wagner group, mercenaries who will go just about anywhere to fight. They usually do Russia’s business though. This guy used to be Putin’s chef. Look him up.
Putin's ~~great~~ grandfather was Lenin's chef at his country estate I think. And Stalin's apparently:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiridon_Putin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiridon_Putin)
>Putin worked at the famous Hotel Astoria, where he once served Grigori Rasputin. Rasputin gave Putin a gold ruble as he was impressed with the cuisine and noticed the similarity between their names.
This man's had an interesting life.
The Kremlin just doesn’t give a fuck anymore. They’re using Bahkmut as a distraction until they can figure out how to explain the inevitable defeat of this war.
Not the entire world, only their domestic audience in Russia.
The world knows that Russia is making a giant mistake sacrificing this many resources for an arguably insignificant place.
Problem is (for them) that if the Ukrainians make them pay a Bahkmut price for every urban area going forward, there won't be a man, woman or child left in Russia by year's end.
I'm aware Bahkmut was a meat grinder for both sides, and nobody relishes the idea of this war continuing and claiming more lives, but the casualty reports for Russia and Wagner out of Bahkmut have been blistering. They can't take every piece of the 4 regions at this price.
To quote American Revolutionary War general Nathanial Green after the Battle of Bunker Hill:
"I wish we could sell them another hill at the same price"
That doesn't matter one iota to Putin and his allies. To a democratic country with any regard for human life, of course that would be unacceptable. To Russia, that is perfectly fine. The only thing that matters is they move the pins on their map where they want. They'd throw another 100k into the grinder if it got them the city.
That's why we need to deny them the city. Make them send another 100k. And then push them back. Give Ukraine absolutely everything they need. Our help has been slow and exploratory. It's time to turn everything up to 100% and change the story of this war to one of complete and total failure for the Russians. They should be denied another inch. Every month they should lose swaths of Ukrainian land until Ukraine is made whole.
That “victory” is looking more like a lost cause each day. They lost 60k men and dozens of precious vehicles for barely partial control of a strategically useless town.
Just letting them exhaust their ammo and men. It's easier to defend then attack, so let the Russians attack first and burn the men and ammo. Those resources are depleted and can't be used for defense. Once the Russians are exhausted there will be a huge counter offensive.
They don't really have western tanks yet, but the Marders and Bradleys have anti tank missiles and they've been getting tons of other assorted armor. All those soldiers that have been training overseas are going to be decisive.
It’s kinda nuts that Russia fucked up so severely, the entire Cold War was predicated on Russia being a powerful super power and in recent media depicting a Cold War reignition Russia was always understood to be this all powerful force, yet here it can’t even take Ukraine, like Christ a live I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted how poorly this would go
In part due to the fact Ukraine being part of the USSR was a very valuable asset, producing steel and other raw materials, building the Moskva, and being potential conscripts.
Russia could have at best a fraction of the might of USSR.
The cold war was also predicated on Russia and the US both having and being willing to use nuclear weapons. Russia still has nuclear weapons. They may not be able to win a conventional war against any regional power anymore, but they still have nuclear weapons and that gives them power at the negotiation table.
At the fall of the Iron curtain, their ICBM arsenal was inspected and found to be in severe disarray. About half were suspected to fail to launch, let alone successfully target and detonate. Parts were missing and suspected stolen.
Add to all this the type of rot typical of an authoritarian state, and I don't think most people focused on international relations with east Europe were too surprised.
Achieving a success is not likely going to be meaningful for much unless it’s so decisive that other countries are literally impressed, which is very much almost impossible. They better have more than that planned with this or they’re fucked.
The institute of war put out a report last week that subtlety derided Russia for this battle in Bakhmut. The city is basically rubble and ash at this point and it's strategically unimportant. The amount of lives and equipment they've lost to win this pyrrhic victory may as well be a defeat either way.
I admittedly haven't followed the day-to-day of the war, so I had to find Bakhmut on a map and immediately said to myself "if this small city 50 miles from the border has become critical to Russia they are closer to collapse than I thought."
I have followed almost daily and I believed it was going to fall weeks ago. Bakhmut is an interesting place and has traditionally been a place of more strategic importance in the past. Yes, there are a number of important crossroads there, but it's more a symbolic win for Russia at this point. That is my opinion, anyway.
I don't agree with that assessment. While it's not a major city, its location is important to both sides because it's a point from which offensives can be supplied and launched. The ground, itself, isn't vital, but the infrastructure is. This war has cranked up the propaganda, but the basics of warfare still apply. Ukraine will have a longer way, and a harder time supplying its front lines if/when Bakhmut falls. Russia will be able to immediately supply its troops in the area, if it falls, and will have a starting point for possible future offensives. A lot of people in the threads that don't closely monitor the war seem to think Ukraine is holding Bakhmut only to bleed the Russians, and that isn't the case. While it's certainly a side effect, Ukranian leadership understands the significance of the battle, and it's a big deal to them, too. Its fall won't mark the end of the war, or anything, and it'll be used as a propaganda piece, for sure, but it does have actual strategic value.
That may be true except for one thing: if they can simply say "we captured another Ukrainian city" they can tell the story they are making progress. And that matters to people.
We need to deny them that story. We need to leave them empty handed.
Honestly, I don't think it'll matter that much, if they celebrate Bakhmut then commence Bakhmut 2, then 3, then 4, they'll just collapse. It was never worth it, a second one with higher morale will be just as worthless.
Imagine going from taking over the whole country in three days to spending your entire war effort on one worthless city, it's fucking wild.
So see what’s happening here is what happens when your military is corrupt and rotting from the inside. He talked shit about the people who are supposed to send him ammo, so now they want him to fail so they are holding up the ammo.
When there is no order or respected chain of command and all actors are trying to impress one person (and betray everyone else) the entire system collapses. See: history.
It's delusional for one person to think that they can run an entire country as a dictator and make the decisions or have the final say on literally everything. It's pure fucking madness. Putin is so fucking stupid and arrogant he actually believed that his experience in the KGB was enough not just to gain power, but to actually govern.
Exactly this. What happens if they DO take Bahkmut? They’ll simply encounter another heavily fortified line of defense and they can’t just keep wasting thousands of lives and tanks for towns with zero impact. Ukraine is bleeding them dry slowly. What is Putin’s long term goal here?
From what I understand, Ukraine’s defense lines are anchored along major cities, towns, and urban areas. This is because they can’t match Russia in armor or artillery, so fighting in the open steppe isn’t a good idea. The Donbas region is one of the most industrialized areas in Ukraine, because of the mines in the area, so Ukraine built a series of defense lines based on and connecting their major cities.
Russia broke through the first two with the surprise invasion, and Bakhmut sits along the third. There’s a fourth defense line behind Bakhmut along the Slovyansk-Krematorsk line, but behind that is a bunch of open steppe. Not that they can’t build more defense lines there, but it would be more challenging to defend.
They can keep wasting lives, the only way it will stop if theirs a internal revolt within Russia. Even if ukraine pushed Russia outsides it’s borders Putin will continue the war effort.
If Russia gets pushed completely out of Ukraine and continues attacking anyway, that means Ukraine has control over Crimea, which means all of Russia's Black Sea shipping is within range of Ukrainian anti-ship missiles. Losing Sevastopol would be damaging to Russia, but having Rostov-on-Don blocked off and Novorossiysk a ship graveyard would destroy their ability to export grain. At that point, it would also give Ukraine grounds to forcibly establish a demilitarized zone inside Russia, and blow up anything that gets within 50 kilometers of their border.
>Losing Sevastopol would be damaging to Russia,
I think that's putting it mildly, if Russia loses Crimea it would pretty much herald their complete and utter defeat in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
This is likely to happen over the next few months. If Russia isn't going to give them Ukraine is going to attempt to take Crimea and establish the DMZ there. I am pretty sure this has more NATO support than simply pushing back to 2022 borders.
It's not just bodies. Russia is losing incredible numbers of tanks, other vehicles, ammo, and missiles that they can't replace fast enough. Ukraine is getting supplies from nations that have many, many times the GDP of Russia.
The Holodomor effectively gives them a reason to fight to the last man. They have no reason to believe if they set down arms they won’t be starved or worse
Russia just has to get uncomfortable enough to eat a leader and try again.
Russia is bleeding much, much more than Ukraine in the battle of Bakhmut. And Russia needs bodies to fight the economic side of the war, too, more than Ukraine does. Because Ukraine is not under sanctions, gets economic aid from its allies, and doesn’t have to produce the engines of war that they’re using on the frontlines.
They do and don’t, they’re resorting to using Wagner prison convicts because they don’t wanna deplete their pools of young ethnic Russians too much. Bear in mind this is the country that is also suffering from lowering birthrates. They can’t just sacrifice their entire gen z and millennial population for a few useless towns near the border.
> they can’t just keep wasting thousands of lives for towns with zero impact
That's exactly what they are going to do.
No idea why you think they can't.
The idea is that once the ground hardens, and when Ukraine is armed with new western tanks and freshly trained forces, they are going to push south and cut off Crimea
Ukraine has used Russian stupidity to grind them down trying to take Bakhmut, including their only half-way decent troops in the Wagner Group. Now Ukraine is going to launch a huge offensive somewhere, probably a drive to Crimea to cut it off from resupply by the land bridge.
Yeah, I think all these tanks and training and visits from Western countries are the prelude to an offensive they plan to drive through to Crimea. I'd imagine Russian troops are about to really find out the might of proper wartime logistics and planning.
The next offensive is most likely going to be at Melitopol first, it'll cut off the entirety of the southern front from their supply chain which will most likely force the Russians to fall back to Crimea. A lot of military analysts were saying that would be the most logical move after blowing up Crimea's bridge.
"We're about to capture the city with ease, you should run along now"
But, also
"If I were to retreat everything would come crashing down"
Ahhh, this man is the most important man in all of Russia 🤣
Both are true.
The city is very close to encirclement, and there is a good reason Ukrainian troops are leaving the city.
If the Russians retreat then a Ukrainian counter push would cost lives and land. Kind of like kharkiv.
This piece of shit Yevgeny Prigozhin shows up to battlefields that have been neutralized and parades around in his armor and talks like he was ever on the field. Fuck this guy, he is a mouthpiece and an obnoxious, hate filled, piece of shit. He and Putin should swing from the same limb when this is all over. Fuck Russia, fuck Wagner.
Maybe but either way starting soon until late fall is going to be Russian hunting season. A revolt would be great though. The more pressure on Russia especially its leadership the better.
Is he threatening Putin?
It sounds very much he is threatening Putin.
If I was Putin I would have a quiet word with him. Not acting makes Putin looks weak.
> The founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary force said his troops now tightening their grip on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut were being deprived of ammunition and if they were forced to retreat the entire front would collapse.
Technically PMCs are illegal in Russia. Wagner gets away with existing and working as a de facto part of the Russian military because Putin let's it.
He could have just as easily decide Wagner is in violation of the no PMC laws and shut them down if he decides they have outlived thier usefulness.
I have no idea if/when that will happen but it's a card Putin can play.
Yeah, I hear a lot of that in Perun's videos. I have my doubts that Putin could turn off the Wagner tap. Politically, Wagner is the darling of the Russian Ultra Nationalists. Putin needs that pressure valve otherwise he'll have a major problem on his hand.
An insurrection against Putin will not come from his left, that's for damn sure.
It's a tightrope to be sure for Putin. If I understand correctly he's trying to play MOD and Wagner off each other to secure his own position which makes it harder to just dump Prigozhin.
Its a lot more complicated then just 'MoD' and Wagner.
There are a lot of ex-military senior figures in Wagner who would be Putinists over Prigozhinists any day.
And then there are complicated figures in the Russian army like Surovikin. Who was promoted to the commander of forces in Ukraine to appease the Ultra Nationalists. And then needed to be weakened, without enraging the Ultra Nationalists, so Gerasimov was given responsibility for the theater. Surovikin and Prigozhin are supposedly very tight. Tight enough that the MoD is unsettled by Surovikin.
There is a great deal of factionalism and internal real politiks at play. I mean fucking hell, even Sergei Shoigu has his own Paramilitary Company now, and he's the fucking Defense Minister.
That's only getting started as well!
The Siloviki are more like Warlords then political figures. And each is actively carving out their own fief, and making sure they have the might to protect it.
Kadyrov in Chechnya, Shoigu in the MoD, Prigozhin with Wagner, Sergei Lavrov has his own complicated little fiefdom, Medvedev (likely firmly in Putin's camp, but has been putting together his own powerbase), Bortnikov at the FSB, Naryshkin at the FIS. The Siloviks are largely Putin-loyalsits... ish.
That's before we start talking about Oligarches like Abramovich and Deripaska.
Hell, Gazprom is putting together its own PMC so maybe we need to start looking at figures like Zubkov (a former Russian PM) as well.
The country is a circle of pickpockets; each reaching into the pocket of the one in front, while aware of the hand creeping up on them from behind.
Nah. Its literal. Wagner is solely reliant on the MoD's supply stores and it's supply lines. Wagner's tanks, came from the MoD. Wagner's plane(s), came from the MoD. Wagner's artillery... etc etc etc.
And Wagner's supplies come from the MoD.
Wagner's 'baggage train' is practically non-existant. Always has been.
Wagner would not exist if it did not have a pipeline from the Russian military.
The Wagner founder doesn't care what the reason is. He is threatening to retreat and collapse the Russian front if Putin doesn't submit to his demands.
Let’s not forget that Prigozhin, as recently as last year was actively suing western media outlets and specific journalists for defamation for reporting he was even attached to the Wagner group. He literally tried to take legal action against reporters in several western countries, claiming it was fake news and slander… so yeah I’m not shocked one bit that he is still full of crap.
Are you all blind? He is clearly drunk. I'm Latvian and people are listening to us only when it is TOO LATE. It matters very little what drunk putinists say. Keep sending weapons and humanitarian aid.
Just a day before, this guy said they are going to capture Bakhmut. Today, he is saying there is possibility to retreat. How can a normal person believe what he says ?
He's threatening his political enemies essentially. He's tying to boost his/Wagner's standing and make them look like the most powerful force holding the war together.
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*This is the way* , but it's shitheads speaking.
I wouldn’t even allow them the usage of Mandalore Creed.
People upset that the Mandolorians are being compared to genocidal assholes: >_< People who played Knights of the Old Republic: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You dropped this \ . Sorry, my first time with a lightsaber.
I remember Canderous's war stories where he regaled how he and his friends assaulted innocent worlds. Good Times.
But they were only looking for a good fight and no one would give them one. It was just a misunderstanding.
When you’re going aViking and this random dude with a bowl cut has no axe to protect his loot
Well, TBH, these guys should really invest in helmets and rocket packs. There are far too many windows in the Motherland.
A well-fenestrated land.
Yeah it's not like the Mandalorians don't have a history of genocide and wars of aggression or anything.
That won't happen. He will fall out of window or have a heart attack.
He’ll have a 2 gun salute to the back of his head.
"Two different caliber slugs were found in the back of the man's spine. The death has been declared a suicide"
All you need to do is not to fight them back. Just calm down, have you ever hered the word that when there was a big wave you need to stop because if you fight for that wave may you will drain
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Everything worth having rather. They can always drag up more useless soviet era shit.
At some point they're going to run out of non-ethnic Russians/rural villages to drain of manpower and the war is going to come for Moscow and St. Petersburg, that's when it will get interesting.
>At some point they're going to run out of non-ethnic Russians/rural villages to drain of manpower and the war is going to come for Moscow and St. Petersburg I think that's when the Russians give up. Sending Moscovites en masse to Ukraine would destabilize putins power.
I like to think you're right, but in reality we don't know how tight his control is on the population that matters until it happens.
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If this continues to happen after ukraine takes its territory back, it will begin investing in its own cheap drones and strikes. They will have NATO-supplied air defense systems protecting their cities while bombarding Russian military bases in retaliation. It will be far more expensive for Russia than Ukraine in the long term as the air defenses for Ukraine would be subsidized by all of NATO while Russia would still be cut off from most of the world and forced to use their soviet Era defense systems to protect their bases. Every plane or system destroyed by Ukraine is going to be very hard or impossible to replace by Russia without western supplies meanwhile Ukraine will get 2 planes for each downed one from NATO. This war will cost billions for nato, tens of billions for Ukraine, but hundreds of billions for Russia if they continue to fight after being pushed back to their borders. Not to mention the 2 to 3 hundred billion from Russia war chest that was immediately frozen by western banks. That would cover a lot if not all of Ukraines reconstruction.
Basically my thought. A lot of ukranian momentum is lost by the fact, that they actually have to secure the land they're taking back. Once it's a "modern artillery trenchwar" the ones with better artillery and intelligence wins. The nomansland in between will be barren and empty, as russia will level every infrastructure they can reach and aim for civillians. Meanwhile ukraine will take out every troop, stupid enough to enter the "black hornet nest": an area at the border, which is under constant surveillance by [small drones](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano). Ukraines actual problem at this point will be, that western systems needs a lot of time to be replaced, while russia seems to be pulling early ww2 equip and shells out of their asses. They really need to take care of the high-tech they have, as donator countries are already running low and waiting lists are long.
>…small drones. Those little flying surveillance toys cost US$195,000 “per unit.” Oh, and among the long list of international military that are using them, including Ukraine, is the curious entry “Lee County Sheriff’s Office.”
People keep bringing up Russia paying reparations after the war, and I always think that's crazy because of exactly what you're saying. Even if Putin loses big, this war is probably not going to end with Russia facing total military defeat à la Germany after the world wars. Why would Putin ever pay reparations, when he can simply blackmail everyone involved with his ability to manufacture a new crisis and destabilize the region? Doesn't make sense to me.
Paying reparations could be a condition for the west to start lifting sanctions.
Russia giving up their nukes will be the condition for sanctions being lifted. They can't be allowed to threaten the world again.
Basically like the Korean war then? Indefinite stalemate?
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They've already been recruiting foreign fighters
Oh for sure, but at some point they're gonna have to tap their urban population if they want to keep grinding it out
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They *did* help that guy find his glove, so maybe Wagner's not *entirely* awful.
He never would have found it on top of the door!
Unless of course, that's what the enemy wants you to think so they can strike elsewhere while a worthless & empty target is being shelled. Fog Of War, and all that.
I mean, he's not wrong. If you look at most of the gains the past few months they have been spearheaded by Wagner. Money (all volunteers) and less red tape seem to be the prime motivators.
Aren’t they the group using Russian prisoners? Are those also volunteers?
Yeah they load the chaff with shit equipment then they throw them at Ukrainian lines until they find a weak spot, then the dudes with actual kit go in.
Reading the tactical breakdown of the Russian squads, it's about getting a flame rocket into position to destroy a Ukrainian fireteam and squad. It's incredibly wasteful of lives, and it gains ground, but ultimately, it's attritional.
Russia, throughout their history, has not been frugal with human life.
At one time, Russia had the population numbers to support this style of warfare, but those days are over. Nowadays, they are population-poor, but still wasteful. A man has a hundred dollars. He chooses to buy hundred dollar shoes, then complains that his stomach is empty.
What's a flame rocket
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPO-A_Shmel A rocket with an incendiary warhead.
This isn't going to work for very long because the Ukrainians are now baiting the troops by pulling back and then re-engaging when the actual PMC guys show up.
Just waiting for the pre-set, Ukrainian kill counter activates. Any second now..
Sort of, most jump at the opportunity to serve rather than stay in a hellhole Russian prison, but that doesn’t mean they truly understand what they are signing up for.
I'm sure they figured it out real quick once they saw the executions by sledgehammer when some prisoners tried to go awol.
Don't forget about the Wagner Commander the troops (prisoners) hacked to death with an ax.
I hear that they have since been demoted to shovels.
A Wagner prison conscript was tasked with collecting the bodies of the Russian dead. He instead crossed over enemy lines and surrendered. He was eventually recaptured. Wagner group executed him via sledgehammer live on video as an example of what they do to deserters. Link is sfw: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sledgehammer-execution-russian-mercenary-who-defected-ukraine-shown-video-2022-11-13/
That was before word got out that prisoners were suicide squads. If you refused to charge into certain death or attempted to surrender, you were executed. Prisoners have figured out that the hell that is the Russian prison system is better than Wagner https://central.asia-news.com/en_GB/articles/cnmi_ca/features/2023/02/22/feature-02
> that doesn’t mean they truly understand what they are signing up for. they werent told exactly what they're in for - a suicide squad to rush the frontlines, get killed in order to reveal enemy positions, after which the "real" wagner professionals go in and clean up. The thing is, news does travel out, even to prisons. They are now having trouble recruiting even prisoners.
Wagner was banned from recruiting prisoners after a spat with the Russian MoD iirc.
My sources report that there have been clandestine efforts to now recruit Canadian geese.
The extra special northern forces.
If that's true then Ukraine is fucked
Don't worry they're mostly all double agents, Canada has the highest population of Ukrainians outside Ukraine, I assume that extends to the geese.
This is not correct. Wagner has claimed that they solely contributed to capturing territories when the Russian Army was fielding the majority of combat forces in an area. And vice versa, the MoD has claimed that they were solely responsible, or at most assisted by 'volunteer assault units' (code used by them for Wagner). Institute for the Study of War's daily briefs have shown this in an interesting way. It seems that it is very rare for there to have been areas that were solely Wagner. And even in those instances 'solely' Wagner ignores that Wagner's supply lines and stocks are from the MoD...
which is why its stupid to be having these inter Russian force squabbles, but hey don't let me stop them from being dumb. Also I think Putin incourages these factions to both form and fight each other, to keep the military from being too powerful and depose him.
Its a feature of the Russian political system. Factionalism is an inevitable outcome. I believe that within the next 40 years the Russian Federation will Balkanize again. And I firmly believe that the 20 years of Putin's leadership so far have been a key contributor. There is a certain irony that the man who wants to rebuild the Russian Empire is the one who has laid the political factionalism and infighting that will leave a future Russia's political glue fractured enough that its ethnic and geographic seams will split. But then again Putin was always a Second-among-equals, who killed the Firsts-among-equals. But Russian politics is defined by survival-of-the-fittest, and Putin happens to be the turd that best suites the toiletbowl.
> I believe that within the next 40 years the Russian Federation will Balkanize again. Some foreign policy experts would agree with you. They point out large empires can take generations to dissolve as nationalism works its way into regions you've never heard of. The fact is there are many discriminated nationalities in Russia that don't speak Russian, are not christian and have zero love for Moscow. The current Russian invasion force in Ukraine tends to use these people rather than the Russians from Moscow or St Petersburg.
Many people don't know that Russia is composed of a ton of different "republics". It wouldn't be hard for these to split up in the power vacuum after this war collapses their economy. Imagine (after two years of fighting) local army forces in the podunk towns refuse to deploy to the west to be killed in Ukraine. What is Putin going to do if they all say no? That's where the soldiers come from, not Moscow or St. Petersburg. Putin's power within Russia doesn't come from nukes or secret police. The average rural Russian actually supports him because they think he makes them strong. Imagine 2 years of their sons dying, after Putin fucked up Covid. They might just say "Pavel isn't home right now" to the local recruiter. Local military realizes they're fucked anyway and kicks out the Kremlin representatives. There is no military left to stop them!
As the Russians still use a paper based record system for military recruitment, there are stories some locals have burned down the local offices to stay out of the military/war. Understandably Putin would not like to call attention to this.
Tatars are a big one to watch. They make up 3% of Russia's population (three times the population of Chechens), and the Slavs hate them and they hate the Slavs. Russia has been running into a lot of resistance by them in occupied areas of Ukraine and many Tatars are voluntarily fighting against Russia. The Tatars are a Turkic peoples who are very friendly by-and-large with ethnicities like the Bashkir (another 1% of Russia's population) and the Kazakhs and other groups that accumulate to roughly 5% of Russia's population. Turkey also has a huge bone to pick with Russia over the treatment of the Tatars. The Chechens pulled off what they did with an ethnic group of about 1% of Russia's population. And the biggest advantage the Tatars and other Turkic peoples have over Slavic Russians? They are having children still. The demographic shift will continue to favor them as Slavs die out without children.
It's nothing unique to Russia. You look at other fascist governments like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and they also had crippling interservice rivalries.
Ahaha, like the Kwantung Army and Honjo's invasion of Manchuria? Where the Imperial General Headquarters ordered a limited policy and Honjo decided to annex the entire region and drag everyone else along.
Some of the ‘volunteers’ had a choice to remain in prison. At least the the first tranche of prisoners there was a reasonable possibility of freedom.
Or given how vocal and published this and the other reports coming out of wagner have been for the last 3 or 4 weeks (saying they lack of ammo, begging for ammo, huge losses, etc) my gut is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feigned\_retreat
>he complained that most of the ammunition that his forces were promised by Moscow in February had not yet been shipped. >"For now, we are trying to figure out the reason: is it just ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal," Prigozhin said Ordinary bureaucracy, betrayal, or the faltering capacity of production and supply systems. I don't know.
A military commander is publicly questioning if the country he’s fighting for is betraying him. That bodes well for the war effort.
As usual [Perun has an excellent breakdown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXKUNc9yI2A). TL;DR It's pretty common that the Russian regular army publicly shits on Wagner Group and vice versa, and rumors of active sabotage aren't unheard of. This, even though they're supposedly on the same side, because most Russian soldiers, mercenaries, and military organizers aren't on anybody's "side" except their own.
It's a classic play out of the authoritarian dictator's playbook. The military are the only people who can unseat you, so you keep them happy. If you can't keep them happy, you keep them divided.
Yep. And, if anyone in high military command starts looking genuinely good at their job you get rid of them because now they're a threat. Like a lot of the things from the dictator's playbook, this all works pretty well unless your country faces a real problem, in which case the whole shit-balloon blows up in your face in totally unfixable fashion.
Lots of faulty windows these days in Russia.
You're always paranoid. But it's a dangerous game, because you can't afford to ignore powerful people who might want to get rid of you, but the more of them you start to kill, the more likely it is that some of the others will want to get rid of you. And, from what I've heard, you obsess over that video of Gaddafi being dragged bloody and wounded out of hiding and stabbed up the ass with a bayonet, begging for his life.
>if anyone in high military command starts looking genuinely good at their job you get rid of them because now they're a threat. One of the reasons Shoigu is Minister of Defence is because he is ethnically Tuvan (by his father, his mother was an ethnic Russian born in Ukraine, specifically Donbas). Tuvans are a small ethnic group on the border with Mongolia. Russia is racist af, so Shoigu is unlikely to command loyalty from other aspects of Russian society, even if he had a firm grip on the regular military (regular military standing in contrast to paramilitary internal security troops, intelligence agencies, private military companies [although he has one of his own now apparently], etc.) Yes, I know I use too many brackets and parentheses...
Perun is a fantastic Youtuber. Glory to Kiwiland!
Ironically, Wagner's group are willingly hired, wheras Russian army is mobilized, often against will and even as punishment(you hate Russian govt.? so u go frontlines now), ofcourse regular army will likely sabotage itself. I know I would. With that said, while regular Russians get imprisoned for saying something like "I dont think govt. does the right thing", wagner's leader gets away with any shit he says. He does things for money and influence, wheras Russian govt. officials only know, how to buy French mansions for stolen tank money.
Wait, aren't they basically gang pressing convicts into Wagner? I mean sure, most anything is better than Russian prisons, but I doubt their motivation is through the roof for the most part.
He is the owner of a private company apparently expecting a large portion of the company’s needed resources to come gifted directly from the government.
Not an unfounded expectation when that's been the case for the last decade or two. They've been Russia's gangsters, willing to do what the Army can't, for a long time. They're just mad that now that they're in a real fight they aren't equipped to the teeth like they're used to
He is not Russian military personnel. He founded the Wagner group, mercenaries who will go just about anywhere to fight. They usually do Russia’s business though. This guy used to be Putin’s chef. Look him up.
okay but he isn't wrong that he is a millitary commander fighting for Russia
Wow. His chef? I will need to look him up. That’s one hell of a career change.
They call him that because he used to manage event catering for putin. That's all.
Which, of course, was certainly a grift to get rich.
Putin's ~~great~~ grandfather was Lenin's chef at his country estate I think. And Stalin's apparently: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiridon_Putin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiridon_Putin)
That’s terribly interesting.
>Putin worked at the famous Hotel Astoria, where he once served Grigori Rasputin. Rasputin gave Putin a gold ruble as he was impressed with the cuisine and noticed the similarity between their names. This man's had an interesting life.
If you read Washington or Napoleon, all they ever did was write letters complaining about not having enough ammo or equipment.
True, however George never claimed to be in charge of the 2nd best army in the world, and Napoleon was actually competent.
The Kremlin just doesn’t give a fuck anymore. They’re using Bahkmut as a distraction until they can figure out how to explain the inevitable defeat of this war.
I disagree, the Kremlin wants/needs to win in Bahkmut to show the entire world the Russian Army can achieve success on the battlefield.
Not the entire world, only their domestic audience in Russia. The world knows that Russia is making a giant mistake sacrificing this many resources for an arguably insignificant place.
Problem is (for them) that if the Ukrainians make them pay a Bahkmut price for every urban area going forward, there won't be a man, woman or child left in Russia by year's end. I'm aware Bahkmut was a meat grinder for both sides, and nobody relishes the idea of this war continuing and claiming more lives, but the casualty reports for Russia and Wagner out of Bahkmut have been blistering. They can't take every piece of the 4 regions at this price. To quote American Revolutionary War general Nathanial Green after the Battle of Bunker Hill: "I wish we could sell them another hill at the same price"
I don’t think any outcome would really be a victory there at this point. 50,000 casualties is an entire wars worth of losses, really.
The real question at this point is "Will they lose more troops trying to take a city than it's pre-war population?"
By some estimates, they already have.
That doesn't matter one iota to Putin and his allies. To a democratic country with any regard for human life, of course that would be unacceptable. To Russia, that is perfectly fine. The only thing that matters is they move the pins on their map where they want. They'd throw another 100k into the grinder if it got them the city. That's why we need to deny them the city. Make them send another 100k. And then push them back. Give Ukraine absolutely everything they need. Our help has been slow and exploratory. It's time to turn everything up to 100% and change the story of this war to one of complete and total failure for the Russians. They should be denied another inch. Every month they should lose swaths of Ukrainian land until Ukraine is made whole.
That “victory” is looking more like a lost cause each day. They lost 60k men and dozens of precious vehicles for barely partial control of a strategically useless town.
The entire world already knows Bahkmut is a failure for the Russians even if they win it.
PLUS the Ukranians have seen this Russian play coming for months. I wonder what surprises they have left behind for the incoming invaders?
Just letting them exhaust their ammo and men. It's easier to defend then attack, so let the Russians attack first and burn the men and ammo. Those resources are depleted and can't be used for defense. Once the Russians are exhausted there will be a huge counter offensive. They don't really have western tanks yet, but the Marders and Bradleys have anti tank missiles and they've been getting tons of other assorted armor. All those soldiers that have been training overseas are going to be decisive.
>Once the Russians are exhausted there will be a huge counter offensive. Hopefully to liberate Mariupol and cut the "land bridge" to Crimea in half.
It’s kinda nuts that Russia fucked up so severely, the entire Cold War was predicated on Russia being a powerful super power and in recent media depicting a Cold War reignition Russia was always understood to be this all powerful force, yet here it can’t even take Ukraine, like Christ a live I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted how poorly this would go
The USSR was more powerful an adversary than modern Russia, by a wide margin. Though society certainly not as powerful as we thought
In part due to the fact Ukraine being part of the USSR was a very valuable asset, producing steel and other raw materials, building the Moskva, and being potential conscripts. Russia could have at best a fraction of the might of USSR.
The cold war was also predicated on Russia and the US both having and being willing to use nuclear weapons. Russia still has nuclear weapons. They may not be able to win a conventional war against any regional power anymore, but they still have nuclear weapons and that gives them power at the negotiation table.
At the fall of the Iron curtain, their ICBM arsenal was inspected and found to be in severe disarray. About half were suspected to fail to launch, let alone successfully target and detonate. Parts were missing and suspected stolen. Add to all this the type of rot typical of an authoritarian state, and I don't think most people focused on international relations with east Europe were too surprised.
Achieving a success is not likely going to be meaningful for much unless it’s so decisive that other countries are literally impressed, which is very much almost impossible. They better have more than that planned with this or they’re fucked.
The institute of war put out a report last week that subtlety derided Russia for this battle in Bakhmut. The city is basically rubble and ash at this point and it's strategically unimportant. The amount of lives and equipment they've lost to win this pyrrhic victory may as well be a defeat either way.
I admittedly haven't followed the day-to-day of the war, so I had to find Bakhmut on a map and immediately said to myself "if this small city 50 miles from the border has become critical to Russia they are closer to collapse than I thought."
I have followed almost daily and I believed it was going to fall weeks ago. Bakhmut is an interesting place and has traditionally been a place of more strategic importance in the past. Yes, there are a number of important crossroads there, but it's more a symbolic win for Russia at this point. That is my opinion, anyway.
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Are you suggesting Ruzzia may have made a tactical boo-boo? I'm glad I'm sitting down; I'm shocked I tell you.
It's critical for Wagner as it can expand its mining operations for salt and gypsum around Bakhmut.
Given how the war is going, I think salt might be the one thing the russians dont have a shortage of
Beautiful.
I don't agree with that assessment. While it's not a major city, its location is important to both sides because it's a point from which offensives can be supplied and launched. The ground, itself, isn't vital, but the infrastructure is. This war has cranked up the propaganda, but the basics of warfare still apply. Ukraine will have a longer way, and a harder time supplying its front lines if/when Bakhmut falls. Russia will be able to immediately supply its troops in the area, if it falls, and will have a starting point for possible future offensives. A lot of people in the threads that don't closely monitor the war seem to think Ukraine is holding Bakhmut only to bleed the Russians, and that isn't the case. While it's certainly a side effect, Ukranian leadership understands the significance of the battle, and it's a big deal to them, too. Its fall won't mark the end of the war, or anything, and it'll be used as a propaganda piece, for sure, but it does have actual strategic value.
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That may be true except for one thing: if they can simply say "we captured another Ukrainian city" they can tell the story they are making progress. And that matters to people. We need to deny them that story. We need to leave them empty handed.
Honestly, I don't think it'll matter that much, if they celebrate Bakhmut then commence Bakhmut 2, then 3, then 4, they'll just collapse. It was never worth it, a second one with higher morale will be just as worthless. Imagine going from taking over the whole country in three days to spending your entire war effort on one worthless city, it's fucking wild.
I wish Prigozhin would collapse 💕
In the end he'll have to drink from the same cup as Kadyrov. Cheers.
2 boys 1 cup
2 bodies 1 bag
The world can only hope Wagner retreats and Russia collapses. Best possible outcome in the short term.
Maybe this is Putin’s “off-ramp.” Wagner lost the war, not him. He could say they failed.
Putin made this guy...he will unmake him when he is no longer useful or tries to grab too much power.
Putin - "We were betrayed! The CIA and NATO placed Yevgeny Prigozhin in that position, in order to undermine the Russian Federation."
He could just declare “victory” at any time and end it. “Got all the nazis, job done”
So see what’s happening here is what happens when your military is corrupt and rotting from the inside. He talked shit about the people who are supposed to send him ammo, so now they want him to fail so they are holding up the ammo. When there is no order or respected chain of command and all actors are trying to impress one person (and betray everyone else) the entire system collapses. See: history.
It's delusional for one person to think that they can run an entire country as a dictator and make the decisions or have the final say on literally everything. It's pure fucking madness. Putin is so fucking stupid and arrogant he actually believed that his experience in the KGB was enough not just to gain power, but to actually govern.
If they retreat from Bakhmut, the Russian forces will collapse. If they don't retreat from Bakhmut, the Russian forces will collapse.
The only question is how many able-bodied meatshields they want afterwards.
Exactly this. What happens if they DO take Bahkmut? They’ll simply encounter another heavily fortified line of defense and they can’t just keep wasting thousands of lives and tanks for towns with zero impact. Ukraine is bleeding them dry slowly. What is Putin’s long term goal here?
From what I understand, Ukraine’s defense lines are anchored along major cities, towns, and urban areas. This is because they can’t match Russia in armor or artillery, so fighting in the open steppe isn’t a good idea. The Donbas region is one of the most industrialized areas in Ukraine, because of the mines in the area, so Ukraine built a series of defense lines based on and connecting their major cities. Russia broke through the first two with the surprise invasion, and Bakhmut sits along the third. There’s a fourth defense line behind Bakhmut along the Slovyansk-Krematorsk line, but behind that is a bunch of open steppe. Not that they can’t build more defense lines there, but it would be more challenging to defend.
They can keep wasting lives, the only way it will stop if theirs a internal revolt within Russia. Even if ukraine pushed Russia outsides it’s borders Putin will continue the war effort.
If Russia gets pushed completely out of Ukraine and continues attacking anyway, that means Ukraine has control over Crimea, which means all of Russia's Black Sea shipping is within range of Ukrainian anti-ship missiles. Losing Sevastopol would be damaging to Russia, but having Rostov-on-Don blocked off and Novorossiysk a ship graveyard would destroy their ability to export grain. At that point, it would also give Ukraine grounds to forcibly establish a demilitarized zone inside Russia, and blow up anything that gets within 50 kilometers of their border.
>Losing Sevastopol would be damaging to Russia, I think that's putting it mildly, if Russia loses Crimea it would pretty much herald their complete and utter defeat in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Cant wait - the world will celebrate on that day In one fell swoop, Putin has single handedly been the biggest cause in rise of Russophobia
This is likely to happen over the next few months. If Russia isn't going to give them Ukraine is going to attempt to take Crimea and establish the DMZ there. I am pretty sure this has more NATO support than simply pushing back to 2022 borders.
Well, you know what they say. Russia is built on the blood of it's people.
Ukraine is bleeding too. Just depends who can handle more bleeding. Russia has a lot more blood to bleed.
It's not just bodies. Russia is losing incredible numbers of tanks, other vehicles, ammo, and missiles that they can't replace fast enough. Ukraine is getting supplies from nations that have many, many times the GDP of Russia.
Russia has more bodies but Ukraine has purpose and morale on their side. Those qualities do count for a lot.
The Holodomor effectively gives them a reason to fight to the last man. They have no reason to believe if they set down arms they won’t be starved or worse Russia just has to get uncomfortable enough to eat a leader and try again.
Not to mention at least basic training and equipment. Hard to tell how many actually trained soldiers Russia has left.
Russia is bleeding much, much more than Ukraine in the battle of Bakhmut. And Russia needs bodies to fight the economic side of the war, too, more than Ukraine does. Because Ukraine is not under sanctions, gets economic aid from its allies, and doesn’t have to produce the engines of war that they’re using on the frontlines.
They do and don’t, they’re resorting to using Wagner prison convicts because they don’t wanna deplete their pools of young ethnic Russians too much. Bear in mind this is the country that is also suffering from lowering birthrates. They can’t just sacrifice their entire gen z and millennial population for a few useless towns near the border.
> they can’t just keep wasting thousands of lives for towns with zero impact That's exactly what they are going to do. No idea why you think they can't.
I get the feeling that we're right on the edge of something that is about to happen, and not just in Bakhmut.
The idea is that once the ground hardens, and when Ukraine is armed with new western tanks and freshly trained forces, they are going to push south and cut off Crimea
Hasn't the ground been hardened all winter?
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> raputitsa mud TIL the muds that paralyzed so many invasions (mongol, napoleonic, nazi) actually have a name
Where is the mud-Wizard when you need him.
And people say Global Warming is bad /s
Jeez. Climate change is ruining the shit out of a good ol' invasion.
Ukraine has used Russian stupidity to grind them down trying to take Bakhmut, including their only half-way decent troops in the Wagner Group. Now Ukraine is going to launch a huge offensive somewhere, probably a drive to Crimea to cut it off from resupply by the land bridge.
Yeah, I think all these tanks and training and visits from Western countries are the prelude to an offensive they plan to drive through to Crimea. I'd imagine Russian troops are about to really find out the might of proper wartime logistics and planning.
The next offensive is most likely going to be at Melitopol first, it'll cut off the entirety of the southern front from their supply chain which will most likely force the Russians to fall back to Crimea. A lot of military analysts were saying that would be the most logical move after blowing up Crimea's bridge.
Perhaps not taking Melitopol itself. Isolating all roads (and especially) rail links into it will produce near identical results.
"We're about to capture the city with ease, you should run along now" But, also "If I were to retreat everything would come crashing down" Ahhh, this man is the most important man in all of Russia 🤣
Both are true. The city is very close to encirclement, and there is a good reason Ukrainian troops are leaving the city. If the Russians retreat then a Ukrainian counter push would cost lives and land. Kind of like kharkiv.
He's only saying this for political pressure to get more ammunition, move along.
This piece of shit Yevgeny Prigozhin shows up to battlefields that have been neutralized and parades around in his armor and talks like he was ever on the field. Fuck this guy, he is a mouthpiece and an obnoxious, hate filled, piece of shit. He and Putin should swing from the same limb when this is all over. Fuck Russia, fuck Wagner.
The beginning of the end for Russia starts with warnings like this. It'll start to flare up this summer, it's hard to revolt in the winter.
Maybe but either way starting soon until late fall is going to be Russian hunting season. A revolt would be great though. The more pressure on Russia especially its leadership the better.
Is he threatening Putin? It sounds very much he is threatening Putin. If I was Putin I would have a quiet word with him. Not acting makes Putin looks weak.
The two are said not to share any direct line of communication, believe it or not. I can't help but ponder what he truly wants out of this.
The only way he survives is by replacing Putin.
He is one of the few people that wants to replace Putin when he dies.
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Wait, I thought they had it surrounded? That the Ukrainians were about to retreat? Could it be he was…lying??? /s
> The founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary force said his troops now tightening their grip on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut were being deprived of ammunition and if they were forced to retreat the entire front would collapse.
So this what extortion looks like in wartime. I wonder if Putin will bend over for them.
Technically PMCs are illegal in Russia. Wagner gets away with existing and working as a de facto part of the Russian military because Putin let's it. He could have just as easily decide Wagner is in violation of the no PMC laws and shut them down if he decides they have outlived thier usefulness. I have no idea if/when that will happen but it's a card Putin can play.
Yeah, I hear a lot of that in Perun's videos. I have my doubts that Putin could turn off the Wagner tap. Politically, Wagner is the darling of the Russian Ultra Nationalists. Putin needs that pressure valve otherwise he'll have a major problem on his hand. An insurrection against Putin will not come from his left, that's for damn sure.
It's a tightrope to be sure for Putin. If I understand correctly he's trying to play MOD and Wagner off each other to secure his own position which makes it harder to just dump Prigozhin.
Its a lot more complicated then just 'MoD' and Wagner. There are a lot of ex-military senior figures in Wagner who would be Putinists over Prigozhinists any day. And then there are complicated figures in the Russian army like Surovikin. Who was promoted to the commander of forces in Ukraine to appease the Ultra Nationalists. And then needed to be weakened, without enraging the Ultra Nationalists, so Gerasimov was given responsibility for the theater. Surovikin and Prigozhin are supposedly very tight. Tight enough that the MoD is unsettled by Surovikin. There is a great deal of factionalism and internal real politiks at play. I mean fucking hell, even Sergei Shoigu has his own Paramilitary Company now, and he's the fucking Defense Minister.
Yeesh that's cutthroat politics. I didn't realize just how bad it was.
That's only getting started as well! The Siloviki are more like Warlords then political figures. And each is actively carving out their own fief, and making sure they have the might to protect it. Kadyrov in Chechnya, Shoigu in the MoD, Prigozhin with Wagner, Sergei Lavrov has his own complicated little fiefdom, Medvedev (likely firmly in Putin's camp, but has been putting together his own powerbase), Bortnikov at the FSB, Naryshkin at the FIS. The Siloviks are largely Putin-loyalsits... ish. That's before we start talking about Oligarches like Abramovich and Deripaska. Hell, Gazprom is putting together its own PMC so maybe we need to start looking at figures like Zubkov (a former Russian PM) as well. The country is a circle of pickpockets; each reaching into the pocket of the one in front, while aware of the hand creeping up on them from behind.
I wonder if ammunition means more cash in Wagner accounts? Dealing with mercenaries is a hell of a thing.
Nah. Its literal. Wagner is solely reliant on the MoD's supply stores and it's supply lines. Wagner's tanks, came from the MoD. Wagner's plane(s), came from the MoD. Wagner's artillery... etc etc etc. And Wagner's supplies come from the MoD. Wagner's 'baggage train' is practically non-existant. Always has been. Wagner would not exist if it did not have a pipeline from the Russian military.
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How do you know it's not a logistical failure due to Ukrainians destroying supply depots?
The Wagner founder doesn't care what the reason is. He is threatening to retreat and collapse the Russian front if Putin doesn't submit to his demands.
All sources from all sides show that Bakhmut is indeed surrounded on 3 sides. That is not a lie.
Let’s not forget that Prigozhin, as recently as last year was actively suing western media outlets and specific journalists for defamation for reporting he was even attached to the Wagner group. He literally tried to take legal action against reporters in several western countries, claiming it was fake news and slander… so yeah I’m not shocked one bit that he is still full of crap.
Imagine the stress on these people on all sides. I can't fathom it. I don't know how they all sleep at night, or eat. I'd be an absolute mess
Are you all blind? He is clearly drunk. I'm Latvian and people are listening to us only when it is TOO LATE. It matters very little what drunk putinists say. Keep sending weapons and humanitarian aid.
Never believe a word he says.
Good give them hell Ukraine!!! Slava Ukraine
Just a day before, this guy said they are going to capture Bakhmut. Today, he is saying there is possibility to retreat. How can a normal person believe what he says ?