Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Well that was the nuttiest 24hrs I've witnessed in my lifetime. If the writers on cornation Street came up with that they'd crumple it up and throw it in the bin for being too ridiculous.

Any wagernites or Russian defectors must feel very let down tonight. They've been left right in the shìt and will now always be looking over their shoulder for retribution. This will have done untold damage to the war effort on the frontline

But will soldiers on the frontline now see there is no point downing arms as it will get you nowhere?

I don’t see how any of this works in Ukraines favour.

It doesn't it's a disaster for Ukraine. If this rumbled on the days or weeks they could have made their move as the counter offensive looks to be not going as expected. Now all the focus is back on the war.

Incorrect. It is not a disaster.

In the very worst case:

• Putin will have to pull thousands of troops and equipment from the frontline to prevent something like this happening again.
• They lost 6 helicopters, a plane and bombed their own oil depot.
• The main hub for all their supply routes (Rostov on Don) to southern Ukraine were frozen for all of this. And probably still are.(At a time when their main supply route from Crimea was also destroyed the day prior)
• Putin looks like an absolute moron in front of his people. After basically locking down all Moscow and throwing trucks filled with sand and cars on the road to stop Wagner and promising retribution for these crimes. He now has no explanation to give that will make sense.

Yes its not the beginning of the end of the war we were all hoping for. But it required no input from Ukraine at all and honestly if I were a betting man I would bet we haven't seen the tail end of this bizarre day play out yet.

Either it was a coke and vodka fueled “look at me” or he was promised support that didn’t materialize.

Obviously there maybe be another option.

But there is no civil war.

Any joker with 25k lunatics behind them now knows they can march on Moscow virtually unopposed. That'll surely embolden others, maybe even the Chinese because there'll be even fewer defenders on the eastern borders. There's sod all Russian army worth a damn in Ukraine and even less in Russia.

Putin is at his weakest ever if the likes of Lukashenko can talk him into a deal. He looks like the schoolyard bully who got beaten by a little girl, after calling her every name under the sun and needed teacher to intervene. Tomorrow he'll pretend like nothing happened but everyone will know...

We don't know what really was going on behind the scenes. Prigoz might presumably have been banking on support that never materialised. The whole thing seems incredibly illogical from an outside perspective but there was logic behind the move, it obviously didn't work out as hoped.

Bit of an Operation Valkyrie basically.

Regardless whole thing is a massive embarrassment to Putin.

Sure. Sure. Prigozhin getting his freedom…

US intelligence now claiming they had wind of this several days ago and a catalyst was an order from Shoigu etc for units of Wagner to change their contracts to MOD.

Whatever the Russian civilian population will be rattled by all this.

Feel sorry for the people of Belarus, they must have got a taste of freedom. Now their president has even more backup

Last paragraph of the above piece sums up things nicely

"Moreover, Mr Prigozhin has also punctured Mr Putin’s rationale for war. In a video posted on June 23rd he rubbished Russian claims that Ukraine had bombed the Donbas region for eight years and that Ukraine and nato intended to attack Russia. The war, he said, was in fact launched for the benefit of Russia’s “oligarchic elite”. That might prompt unsettling questions among Russia’s rank-and-file. “Who,” asks John Foreman, British defence attaché in Moscow until recently, “would want to fight on for a Russian regime which has shown such weakness, declaring a mutiny and then rowing back within the day?"

Good to see Putin is stil, in some kind of control... the World is a bit safer compared to 24h ago

We don't really know that 25,000 armed men couldn't pull it off because Putin evidently panicked and negotiated with them, or rather their leader Prigozhin. Had that negotiation not taken place, god knows what the situation would have been.

Whatever the terms of the negotiations were, I should think they were ones which made heavy promises about Prigozhin's security, otherwise he's hardly going to agree to move to Belarus - a place where he could be picked up at any moment by Russian security forces.