• JohnBrownsBussy2 [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I don’t understand the logic here. When the putsch occured and then ignomously fizzled out, I saw Putin as weak for letting Pringles walk out with a (relative) slap on the wrist. Taking Prigo out of the picture was overdue. Obviously, anyone would feel threatened by an semi-autonomous mercenary army, so removing its leadership and breaking it up is just a rational course of action that probably should have been done sooner from that POV

    • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      If they took him out before the deal was made sure, this soon after just shows weakness and a lack of credibility. They did the equivalent to getting into a bar fight, talking it out instead and then in front of every one sucker punching the other guy.

      • Zrc [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        you know you don’t have to forcibly try to interpret every event as a sign of Russian weakness

        • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          They were losing a war to a bunch of tractors and their flagship was sunk by a country without a navy.

          It’s not Russian weakness, it’s Russian stupidity.

                • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  Yes… I am the propagandized one.

                  Not the rural poor being marched off to die for half the price of a lada they’ll never receive for an oligarch’s pride.

                  All I can say is: Please, PLEASE! Make sure they keep marching.

                  • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    1 year ago

                    You claim they started with tractors. This is utter nonsense; the AFU started the war as a legitimate military, especially after it took the decade following the Minsk agreements to arm up in anticipation of this war.

                    You also claim they are pushing Russia back despite the front not moving appreciably in the past year, even during the latest vaunted counteroffensive.

          • Zrc [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            were? so you admit that Russia is winning?

            besides, this is not what this thread is about, go cope to someone who cares

            • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              No, they were losing to tractors, and Moskva was sunk without a navy.

              Now they’re getting real gear and training to play.

              The only thing Russia ever wins are Darwin awards. Fucking being proud of almost hurting a country a fraction of your size right next door, like the US being proud of conquering Ottawa.

              Say hi to those F-16s for me.

        • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Losing multiple cities to a tiny domestic invading force of mercenaries after completely losing control of said force due to lack of command discipline, and finally only being able to force them to disband by threatening the families of the mercenaries involved isn’t exactly a sign of strength, though, is it? It’s not exactly what we’d expect of a professional modern military.

          It would be like if Erik Prince took his Blackwater army and started marching on Washington, capturing towns along the way, and the US army was helpless to stop them until the American government threatened to hunt down and kill the family members of Blackwater mercenaries.

          That would be considered unusual, and not really a sign of political or military strength.

          • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            If Erik Prince marched Blackwater through some American cities and – instead of sending the U.S. military to start a hot war on its own soil – American leadership pressured Prince and Blackwater to go home, would you be calling the president weak for not turning Virginia into a battlefield?

            • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              I would think American leadership completely dysfunctional if they allowed that situation to occur. If they did not have enough command authority to trust that the US military wouldn’t confront Prince with immediate and overwhelming force when ordered, the US would be a laughingstock. The scenario is borderline unimaginable in a developed country with anything resembling a modern political infrastructure.

              Don’t get me wrong. I love Russia. I was originally trained as a Sovietologist, when that was still a thing you could be an -ologist of. I could talk for hours about strategic weapons systems and Russian prep for NBC warfare and what the politics in the Kremlin were like under the troika approach and why the fascistic tendencies of Putin in rejecting Russian political history in favor of personal enrichment and plundering the nation have irrevocably broken Russian politics.

              But that’s for another day. Putin responded the way dictators in developing nations do, not like someone who actually has command and control over their modern military forces. I mean, it’s a Russian tradition to threaten the families of people who publicly disagree with leadership. In the US, the forces brought to bear against Blackwater’s attempted putsch would have been so overwhelming that his own men would have arrested him. But as much as I hate Blackwater and think Prince should probably be in prison for war crimes, their cadre was recruited from a different class of people than Wagner.

              • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                the US military wouldn’t confront Prince with immediate and overwhelming force

                You realize that’s the worst-case scenario of the incident we’re talking about, right? A sane leader would want to avoid starting a pitched battle in their backyard at all costs, and that’s entirely independent of speculation about control over the military.

                The scenario is borderline unimaginable in a developed country with anything resembling a modern political infrastructure.

                We had a half-assed putsch of our own not even three years ago.

                • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  A sane leader would want to avoid starting a pitched battle…

                  A competent government would have prevented it from occurring. The IS government is hardly a model of efficiency, and that goes double for the military. However, it doesn’t happen here because it’s not something that’s organizationally enabled. Blackwater would be slaughtered in hours, for instance. I absolutely hate Blackwater, I think Prince is a fascist just like Prigo who would absolutely pull a Wagner if he thought he could. He knows he’s better off using bribes to gain power and wealth.

                  And I wouldn’t call J6 a putsch if we’re using that term in context to describe a military invasion by heavily armed forces gone rogue. But even if we do, the point we are discussing is that it is characteristic of a crap-tier government to be unable to put it down. Trump left the US government almost unable to put down a riot that he invoked and that consisted of a few thousand angry but mostly unarmed rednecks. Again, it was on a different scale, but once a more competent government was in place we saw a thousand arrests, not a threat to kill the families of the J6 rioters. It was a planned violent coup, but the plan was absolute shit because the planners are absolute idiots.

    • ahornsirup@artemis.camp
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      1 year ago

      Putin absolutely couldn’t let Prigozhin walk, nobody could have. It’s not just about the semi-autonomous mercenary army, if a government lets someone get away with an attempted coup d’état they’d effectively encourage others to give it their best shot as well because there was no effective punishment. Assassination is, well, a very Russian approach to the issue, but every government on this planet would have taken some form of action.

      • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        You are absolutely right. The US would have an armed coup leader strung up so fast. Maybe not assassination style, but there would most definitely be a quick trial and execution. If the US government couldn’t catch the person, I imagine that assassination would be on the table.

      • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        It is the method used that has me baffled, if this happened as reported then they did not even try for any sort of plausible deniability.

        • ahornsirup@artemis.camp
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          1 year ago

          I’m not really surprised. They got more and more open about their assassination attempts for years. They’re not meant to covertly get rid of enemies, they’re very public warnings to other dissidents. It’s rule by fear.

          • Yondoza@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Russian assassination are pretty clear. Anyone with half a brain can put the pieces together, but there is just enough plausible deniability that there cannot be direct retaliation legally or politically. It is a clear threat but just barely veiled enough to avoid legitimate retaliatory action via legal or international responses.

            • Do you think if Putin goes on the record during his next q&a saying “little Ehrmantrotsky here just got what he deserved lol” that there’s any chance the RU ‘legal’ system is coming after him?? Shit I don’t know how to post pics here yet but really