this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
189 points (97.5% liked)

World News

38803 readers
2546 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Russia did not face an imminent security threat to justify its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary outfit, said in a bombshell video posted on social media Friday. “The Armed Forces of Ukraine were not going to attack Russia with the NATO bloc,” Prigozhin explained in the half-hour tirade released by his press service. “The Russian Defense Ministry is deceiving the public and the president,” he added.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Aux 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The reality of the situation is that Russia doesn't work the same way as Western countries. Or most countries for that matter. The structure of power in Russia is completely different for historical reasons (you can learn more here https://youtu.be/f8ZqBLcIvw0).

The short version is that in most countries members of lower classes of the society compete with members of the higher classes for rights, privileges, etc. In Russia members of the same class compete with each other to please the higher classes for privileges, etc.

The situation in Russia right now is that there are three major military forces: regular army, Wagner group and Putin's private army.

Regular army and Wagner are in the same class and they compete with each other. Regular army is highly corrupt, inefficient and pretty much rotten to the core after decades of mismanagement. Yet it still poses some threat to Putin. Wagner group is a small and efficient (compared to regular army) force. It won't be able to take an open fight with a regular army due to man power, but it's string enough to hold a punch here and there.

Prigozhin shits on regular army to win points in the eyes of Putin. Putin then uses Prigozhin's critique to put dump the faces of generals into their shit and to control them. Regular army doesn't like this though and is now planning counter offensive against Prigozhin. And this is something people in the West rarely hear about.

So, the latest news of this in-class fighting! Prigozhin has a contract to supply regular army with food rations and he is using these profits to execute military operations across the world in the interest of Russian Federation. Sometime ago Shoigu took over army control. He also has legislative powers. So he decided to increase daily spend per person. Sounds like free money for Prigozhin? Of course not! Once the spending was increased, a lot of oligarchs started to get into Prigozhin's supply chain. And he didn't like it. So he wrote an official letter to Shoigu that he won't be complicit in corruption, that it undermines his ability to fund his operations and that Russian MoD should find another food supplier. Big thick fuck you to Shoigu!

But that was the first play. Right now Shoigu is pushing another bill to force independent military groups to become part of regular army or, at least, be controlled by the army. Now that will hurt Wagner group a lot. The question is what will Putin do about it as he's not interested in losing Prigozhin.

[–] joneskind 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I knew that Prigozhin hates Shoigu, but I didn't have the perspective you gave.

Prigozhin doesn't involve Putin in its rants, and it makes perfect sense with what you are saying. But could he go at war with the regular Russian army like he's saying? He's talking about "tens and tens of thousands" of loss on his side, and calling about overthrowing corrupt leaders? That's crazy.

[–] Aux 1 points 1 year ago

I don't know his real capabilities, but I don't think he can go to war. And there's no need. The whole point of the power system in Russia is to serve your Tzar better than your peers.

Btw, here's the letter from Prigozhin to Shoigu I mentioned, it's in Russian, obviously:

https://cdn.jpg.wtf/futurico/74/73/1686494576-747304f253e4b429f2200447d9928b24.jpeg

https://cdn.jpg.wtf/futurico/6b/95/1686494601-6b950ef5df7d7fe5eb0b96f7480f8bc2.jpeg