please post any subsequent updates here unless they’re huge happenings. i just woke up and half our news front page is updates which is nice but also A Lot and most of these don’t have to be their own thread
please post any subsequent updates here unless they’re huge happenings. i just woke up and half our news front page is updates which is nice but also A Lot and most of these don’t have to be their own thread
What a weird outcome. Putin now looks weak and Prigozhin looks stupid for trusting any deal that Putin could make.
I wonder how many russians are actually happy with this outcome. Kremlin loyalist must be depressed, since their leader basically turned into a puppet. And the extreme wagner supporters wanted it to go all the way. So both sides hardcode supporters are now depressed. Some wagner members probably just wanted putin to concede even after his speech so they may be happy. Civilians that support none may be happy that their society didn’t collapse and cities turned to war zones.
Ukrainians are disappointed that the distraction didn’t last a little longer, but none the less content with a weakened Russia.
“Opportunity to return to Africa.”
Yeah, I suppose massacring badly equipped CAR “rebels” (while also guarding their diamond mines) and civilians are a lot more fun than having to fight someone being equipped by the military-industrial complex of the combined West.
Edit: oh and related to how many Russians are happy with this, this Mastodon post had some numbers from a Russian political blogger:
The numbers will be skewed due to the audience, but still interesting
Those figures can’t be at all reassuring to Putin.
This is nothing new. Politics has long involved compromise. Hardliners rarely get what they want.
Just had a thought, what if Putin has taken Prigozhin’s family hostage and pretending to take the deal is just a play for time while they rescue them? It would be a great movie plot.
What if the Ukrainians paid Wagner to do this to cause a distraction? That would be pretty crazy too!