Post-Mutiny Assessment In Russia – OpEd

It’s over. Former Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin goes to Belarus with Wagner under direct Russian military command. Don’t believe the BS about Russian President Vladimir Putin being in decline – something the Kiev regime and its backers are spinning, which serves to divert attention away from the ongoing Kiev regime shortcomings.

In 2016, there was an attempted coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, involving some fairly key military people. In comparison, no one prominent in Russia backed Prigozhin, who either became an agent of the neocons/neolibs, or a useful idiot for them. His comment that there was no legit basis to attack Ukraine is neocon/neolib is crock. 

The Kiev regime, France and Germany acknowledged they didn’t plan to have the Minsk Accords observed. Under that agreement, Donbass was to achieve autonomy within Ukraine’s Communist drawn boundary. For seven years after the Minsk signing, the Kiev regime was building up its forces with some open talk about doing an Operation Storm– the 1995 ethnic cleansing of at least 150,000 Krajina Serbs with hundreds of casualties in that process. Shortly before February 24, 2022 (the start of Russia’s special military operation), OSCE observers saidthere was a dramatic increase of Kiev regime shelling at rebel Donbass territory.

It has been noted that Prigozhin isn’t a professional military man. He expressed frustration that Russia doesn’t take the offensive enough. Russia isn’t doing so because it’ll lose more personnel that way, even with a win as opposed to letting the NATO backed Kiev regime advance. Russia is clearly winning the war of attrition, which is about taking out more of your enemy’s military assets than losing yours.

Prigozhin complained about his forces not getting (in some instances) enough supplies which (according to him) led to unnecessary casualties among his men. As presented, was that supply situation calculated (doubtful as Russia seeks a win), or a matter of bad planning, or the supply line facing an unintended obstacle along the way? With artillery support from the Russian military, his forces prevailed over a larger Kiev regime military contingent in Artyomovsk (renamed as Bakhmut by the Kiev regime in 2016).

In his appeal to Wagner personnel, General Sergey Surovikin made it a point to suggest that some of Prigozhin’s stated grievances might have merit, while adding that the rebellion move and some comments by Prigozhin aren’t appropriate. 

The video posted which claims the Russian Ministry of Defense had struck at some Wagner troops is dubious. Note the peaceful response to how Prigozhin’s rebellion was handled. In addition, it appears that the majority of Wagner personnel didn’t go along with his mutinous attempt. 

Either way you cut it, Prigozhin screwed up. Russian President Vladimir Putin should’ve acted sooner on Prigozhin. Had Putin done so, he would’ve been spun as a super authoritarian unlike when US President Harry Truman axed General Douglas MacArthur over strategic differences. The Kiev regime and its backers are now erroneously claiming that Russia is cracking as a basis to keep the armed conflict going in the form of giving more Western arms and military training to Ukraine.

Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic.