For A Guy Who’s So “Weak,” Putin Still Has Game

This is why I like waiting before I get too stupid time. With more time passing, there were a couple of things I heard reported today that I hadn’t heard yesterday, but which bring a little more clarity to the end result of the events.

For starters, it now appears that Prigozhin’s coup wasn’t quite as bloodless as first thought. According to reporting on MSNBC, at some time after the Wagner Group crossed into Russia, the military sent several fighter jets to interce2pt. Whether these jets were sent simply to tag and identify the mark the column, or to bomb and strafe them isn’t clear. But Prigozhin viewed them as pure threat, and all of them were shot down.

Let’s be clear, Putin is weak. And it’s a bed of his own making. Does anybody here honestly believe that a real dictator like Xi, or Kim, or the Ayatollah, or Assad in Syria would allow even a close crony to put together a fully manned, fully equipped 50,000 man private army, loyal only to their creator? But Putin was so enamored at the thought of a disposable army to do his dirty work while giving him plausible deniability that he never considered the thought that Prigozhin would turn on him. OOOPS!

Next, the Wagner Group is nowhere for wimps. Putin allowed Prigozhin to seed his army with convicted Russian prisoners, released to fight for the Wagner Group for a paycheck and a promise of freedom if they survived. Former members have told about how fighters who tried to retreat in combat were shot in the back by their own superiors. And the best thing? No matter how severe the losses, there are plenty more where they came from.

Putin, like his lap poodle Traitor Tot has carefully cultivated the persona of a man who never gives in, never gives up, and never negotiates. Until that is, the jury is being selected the next day. Then the checkbook gets opened. A mere six hours after Putin went to the air to describe the Wagner Group as traitors, and that the FSB had opened a criminal investigation on Prigozhin, he’s back on the air announcing that a deal was brokered to allow clemency for Prigozhin to live in exile in Belarus. Say wha’?

But here’s where Putin showed that unlike El Pendejo Presidente, Putin is capable of linear thinking while under severe stress. Letting Prigozhin live, even in exile in a country friendly to Putin like Belarus, doesn’t solve Putin’s problem of a well equipped 25,000 private army loyal to Prigozhin. So Putin solved it with a stroke of the pen.

As a part of the agreement, Putin signed a sweeping mass pardon for the 25,000 men in Prigozhin’s Ukraine army. Remember, these maniacs were loyal to Prigozhin because he offered them a paycheck and the promise of freedom for fighting for him. But Vlad the Imp just solved that by giving them all a pardon for all crimes they committed. Why fight loke chained dogs for Prigozhin when you can now go wherever you want with impunity? That portion of the Wagner Group is about to melt away into the mist like a banshee.

This is a twin edged sword for Putin. On the positive side, Putin has just dissolved the threat of Prigozhin pitching another Trumper tantrum and coming after him with the Wagner Group again. But on the downside, that means that Putin is now 25k light in the Ukraine manpower kitty. One of the benefits of having the Wagner Group was that Putin didn’t have to hold a new conscription for Russians every time the losses got too high. Just get more prisoners for the Wagner Group. That option is gone now.

There was some chatter earlier that the Russian army was going to fold the Wagner Group fighters into regular Russian forces to bulk them up. This was nonsensical. Prigozhin and the Wagner Group were furious with the Russian army, feeling they were using them as cannon fodder, and denying them of ammunition, supplies, and air support. If you’re a Russian commander, do you want a bunch of these honey badgers running through your unit?

But what of Prigozhin? I wrote yesterday that if he was in Belarus, he had better learn to sleep with his eyes open. But there’s no reason for him to stay there. After all, he’s an oligarch, and you can bet he has squirreled away enough to places where Putin can’t get at it to do what he wants. Who knows, climb on his super yacht, and become the kind of moving target that would be almost impossible for Putin to get to.

But I don’t think so. Every time you see Prigozhin, he’s in combat fatigues, working with his commanders near the front. Personally, I think he’s hooked on the risk and action, from a safe distance of course. I find it much more likely that Prigozhin will find a quick, quiet, discreet way out of Belarus, and make his way to the Central African Republic to join his group there. There he can be protected by loyal troops, get that whiff of action, and make sure that the estimated $500 million a year in blood diamonds and minerals that his group has mined goes into his pockets, and not Putin’s.

This is the best reading I have at this moment, with the information I have available. But this is still a fluid situation. After all, Putin must be dismayed that ordinary citizens of Rostov on Don were cheering and posing for selfies with Wagner Group mercenaries. And don’t forget the other two private Russian military groups in Ukraine that charged across the border into southern Russia and wreaked havoc for a couple of days. There are more groups out there, and if they combine forces, then Putin is facing more risks at his flank, from what should be friendly forces. Don’t touch that dial.