Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Now Shoigu has appeared, acting like nothing happened so Prigozhin failed in his primary objective. No doubt, Gerasimov will also appear soon.

It will be trickier for Putin. He can’t just reappear - he has to tell the Russian people how he saved Russia from the “apostasy against our people”, “the great disaster” of 1917, the “stolen victory”.

He needed Prigozhin’s head on a spike from the Kremlin walls, instead Prigozhin was seen smiling and waving to well-wishers as he headed for Belarus.

Western media was full of commentary over the weekend. Don’t waste your time. I haven’t seen anything which added to our sum of knowledge.

Does the CIA or MI-6 or the BND know what’s going on? Does Putin?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12233421/Russian-Defence-Minister-Sergei-Shoigu-seen-meeting-troops-Russian-state-TV.html

So far, the only winner I can see here is Lukashenko.

He has been fending off the embrace of his “big brother” Putin for years. Just last month, he had to accept Russian nuclear weapons on his territory. Now, he looks like Russia’s saviour- the man who made the deal that prevented a second Russian civil war. Of course, he could only play that role with Putin’s agreement but the fact remains that he got Putin out of a bind.

It will be fascinating to see how Lukashanko leverages his new position as the “guarantor of the deal”. He holds a trump card - Prigozhin. A guest of the nation.

Absolutely not. In fact he's been called out on that very tweet

But yeah he's constantly making up stories. I stopped following him a few months ago when he claimed that the Russians had nuclear bombers in the air who had to be persuaded to ignore their order and not to launch their weapons. Whenever he bothers to answer skepticism he points to sources that are completely unverifiable

Nobody and nothing can cure that idiot and idiots like him

I swear, at this stage I'm not sure the Kremlin knows what the Kremlin is doing in the Kremlin.

Another thing to consider is that Prigozhin stayed in Rostov with the main body of his troops, whereas the thunder run to Moscow was apparently led by the man who, for many years was considered the founder of Wagner, Dmitriy Utkin.

I'm not sure what the relationship is between the two of them but clearly Prigozhin had enough authority to stop Utkin in his tracks. He must have given him a good reason to halt. So that's another person who probably knows a lot more than everyone else does right now. The more people in the know, the more likely it will be to leak out at some point.

The bots are saying it’s a masterstroke by Putin as now Wagner is only 100km from Kyiv.

I wonder if a small group of special forces types (50 -100) landed on the Kremlin by helicopter could they overthrow the government at the moment. I suspect that they could.

Alexey Dyumin's name is now popping up more frequently as Shoigu's successor. There had been speculation during Prigozhin's mutiny that Dyumin was pulling the strings. Dyumin is currently governor of the Tula region. Unlike Shoigu, he is former military and was active as an intelligence agent in Crimea in 2014, so I guess he'll be popular with the Z-radical crowd.

It was on a dominant height so it was definitely the strongpoint in that defence.

This will open up a lot of possible routes of attack to south now for Ukraine - they wont be long getting to the first big entrenched line after this. Time for a big push soon

I think now that everyone has seen how easy it is to make your way to Moscow that some of these separatists groups that have popped up round Belgorod and other places might think it's worth having a go. They'll need to commandier some decent gear but seemingly you can rock up the the nearest base and take whatever is going without too much resistance. Its like the soviet firesale all over.

Just wondering what happened to Mrs Prigozhin and the kids. As far as I know they live in Moscow.

Prigozhin stopped his men before they got to Moscow. And he got nothing in return. He got to go to Belarus and that's it.

There's obviously some part of the deal that we don't know. Either Putin gave him something, maybe gave into some demand that we don't know of. Or Prigozhin suddenly had more to lose by continuing. I wouldn't put it past Putin to take the family hostage.

id put the house on the A-team being able to do it...

Rivnopil confirmed, that flattens the front line in that sector.