Hi gang! Hope everyone is doing great. Big shout out to Ellie for covering the DOT yesterday.
I’ve been a little under the weather and am still kinda feeling like shit.
Therefore, this is just a short DOT and prompt to “talk amongst yourselves”.
Have an amazing day!
The Wagner Group (Prigozhin) decided to be a law unto themselves and fight Russia.
Considering the absolute stupidity of Russia in the way the war began, was fought, is being fought and managed, can you blame the guy?
The irony is that Shogui and Pootin have been the Ukraine’s best allies and taking them out might make matters worse for everyone rather than the peace people were hoping for, we get smarter Russians running the show rather than the viscous clowns currently running it.
Regardless of what happens, we are watching a Wagnerian Opera in real time:
Prigozi’s Zeroes… Instead of Nazi gold, it’s the heads of Shogui and Gerasimov.
now would be a good time for ukraine to really commit to a counter offensive
chaos is good
unless we all end up getting nuked…that would kinda suck….but fuckit
…there was a lot of unverified speculation flying about overnight but it seems like enough of it was true that it’s definitely some kind of a big deal
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/24/wagner-chief-vows-revenge-on-moscow-what-we-know-so-far
…& vlad made a speech
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/24/vladimir-putin-russia-wagner-statement-full
…but the other guy has been making a lot of declarations & even the BBC seems comfortable saying whatever the hell is going on it’s the most precarious vlad’s spot has been for the duration not just of the war but his whole reign…so…to say the cracks are starting to show seems an understatement…but…he’s not toppled yet…& if he does go down…I’m not sure if “smarter” is the word for his replacement
…prigozhin for one doesn’t seem particularly hinged
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/24/wagner-chief-claims-to-have-seized-military-sites-in-rostov-as-moscow-implements-anti-terror-measures
…statistically going a lot less hard than he has is pretty much suicidal…gotta think he’s got his eyes peeled for a home with no windows…maybe a bungalow…with a moat
…but…if there’s more than a grain of truth to the numbers he’s throwing out about the truthful accounting of the casualties suffered…& ukraine truly haven’t committed the bulk of their reserves to that offensive…there might be a way this goes that makes recovering crimea look a lot more likely
…provided russia doesn’t decide it’s better to blow it all up than let people see how they shit the bed, I guess…the ruble’s worth, what…half what it was this time last year…a buck’ll get you upwards of 80 of the things…& you gotta think a lot of the populace aren’t loving the taste of the kremlin-brand kool aid…so where she stops…nobody knows?
prigozhin being upset about the number of casualties is a bit rich tho….
wagner used the tactic of making the untrained meatshields rush a position so the trained troops could open fire once they revealed themselves to take bakhmut
its an effective tactic….but i dont think you get to whine about losses after using it
(i have a bit of a fascination with military history and tactics and have been paying far more attention to this shit than is probably indicative of a healthy mind)
…I try to resist falling too deep in the whole open source intelligence rabbit hole that seems to be a significant front in its own right this go around…but…it’s almost as hard to ignore as it is to really contemplate the realities of…so I get that, I think
…but…if I’m honest…I kinda default to not believing most of what I see where the specifics are concerned…there’s so much bullshit rhetoric that seems at odds with the stuff we do seem to know…very much like your example…so hard agree on the hypocrisy being as bad or worse from the wagner group as from the kremlin
No kidding — who do you believe? I’m not even trusting video.
I think the main things are that they did this at all, they seem to have gone some distance, and Putin hasn’t stopped it yet.
This could all fall apart like the failed coup against Erdogan. Who knows. I sure don’t know how much backing either guy has, what it would take to topple Putin, and whether this stays one on one, or if somebody else might jump in too. There are other military leaders who might have grudges.
It sure does seem stupid for either guy to have trusted the other one in all the time leading up to this.
Straight out of Stalin’s WW2 playbook when he used Penal Battalions as the first wave to find minefields and machine gun nests. The 2nd wave (the actual shock troops) would attack. Anyone in the penal battalion who fled (or survived for that matter) would be gunned down by NKVD political officers/troops who would be at the rear waiting for them.
This is why Stalin once remarked to Churchill that it takes a very brave man NOT to be a Hero Of the Soviet Union.
Prigozhin *might* be whinging about the losses, because of hemorrhaging troops without anymore backup capacity, tbh!!!
At least if these allegations from last December-ish (and the MULTIPLE stores I’ve found, talking about how Wagner was no longer allowed to “recruit” from Russian Prisons!) are accurate…
If he’s got contracts to provide soldiers *around the world,* and the Russian Generals in Pooty-Poot’s orbit are *both* decimating his troops in Ukraine because they see them as “Expendable Meat-Shields,” the Generals & others “back home” are blocking him from recruiting *new* mercenaries to his game, and a bunch of the troops he *did* have contracted are getting freed by Pooty-Poot, after serving & *surviving* for 6 months…
Well, I can *see* why Prigozhin would be *SO* pissed off, that he’d pull back & take over Russian cities.…
Not a smart idea long-term, of course!
But it *WOULD* be a way to send a message to “Papa” and figure out who really has “Dear Papa’s” ear.🤔🤔🤔
Jake, I worry that ‘ol Pooty-Poot is going to take the *latter* of the two options you described, and just go for sheer annihilation… especially in light of the taking out of the Dam a little while ago…
Zelenskyy announced the mining of the shut down nuke plant, just a couple days ago…
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-russia-considering-terror-attack-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-2023-06-22/
The Wagner thing *could* absolutely be legit, with Prigozhin decamping to Belarus, because he’s hemorrhaging fighters…
Prigozhin *was* talking about it back in May, after all…
https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2023-05-05/wagner-mercenary-leader-accuses-moscow-of-ammunition-famine-prepares-to-withdraw-bloodied-troops
It *could* finally be a split between Wagner and Russia, as Pooty-Poot’s inner-circle gets smaller & smaller, and *more* insular & out-of-touch with realities on the ground…
https://www.pottsmerc.com/2022/03/30/white-house-intel-shows-putin-misled-by-advisers-on-ukraine/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliecoleman/2022/07/21/russia-denies-rumors-putin-is-sick/
*AND* there’s also the *third* option, too–
If Pooty-Poot and Prigozhin really are still *incredibly* tight, it could be a deflection ploy, to pull eyeballs *snd* media attention away from the news that Zelenskyy dropped a couple days ago–about Russians laying down lots of mines around the Zaporizhia…
And we ALL know that Wagner *and* ol Pooty-Poot are masters at deflection & redirection
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/7/wagner-group-founder-admits-to-us-election-interference
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/europe/russia-yevgeny-prigozhin-internet-research-agency-intl/index.html
This early in the game, it’s hard to even *speculate* which one would be most likely to be correct…
All of them are *Plausible*, ngl!!!
Even the one where Prigozhin *pretends* to be on the outs with Pooty-Poot, so that Russia can suck *all* the oxygen out of the room, so that they can *continue* to set Zaporizhia up for a man-made catastrophe.🙃
I have SO been rabbit-holing on this, since last night!!!😉
It’s a HUGE DEAL!!!!
Even *if* Prigozhin called off “The March on Moscow? The pullback & capture of Rostov-on-Don is MASSIVE, because *not only* did the head of The Wagner Group– Russia’s “Plausible Deniability” Army branch PUBLICALLY call out (and Humiliate!!!) ‘ol Pooty-Poot’s Generals, he showed AVERAGE RUSSIANS that the Army *is* intact weak & bungling/bumbling….
This was *potentially* epic, world-changing news, that broke yesterday…
It’ll take *time,* obviously, to see if it really *is* that type of “Historical!” of course….
But as someone autistic whose had one of their “Fascination Areas” be Russia, since childhood?
This *feels* like it might just be as momentous in future history books, as the truly *gawdawful* feeling i had (later proved correct!), when ‘ol Boris announced that a lizard-like cyborg-looking FSB Director would be his successor…
I had a TERRIBLE feeling about Putin, after Yeltsin’s announcement that Pooty-Poot would be his chosen successor…
As we’ve *all* seen, in the actions of that Evil Man, that read of him being rotten to the core was *correct.*
I don’t think Prigozhin can/will be the next leader of Russia–if that’s even his aim…
Because he doesn’t have the hair for it…
But IF he survives the next couple years, i *could* see him trying to rule down the road…
https://www.rbth.com/history/332013-bald-hairy-bald-obscure-rule-russian-leaders
@emmerdoesnotrepresentme I’m willing to die on your hill.
Tinfoil hats, for *ALL* of us, @MyopicProphet, I did get an A+, back when I took Millinery, back the… second? time i flunked out of college!😉😄🤣💖
I’m thinking a Gable-Hood for myself, maybe with some pinned-lappets, a box-back, and a hand-hemmed silk/aluminum *at least hip-length* veil😆😂🤣
I can make (simple!!! I don’t own any hat blocks, right now!) felt hats, wire-frame ones, I know a couple sources of straw for straw hats, fascinator-types, and I’ve even made a Top-hat style “Victorian Riding Hat” *just* because my Doctorate-having Millinery professor said “It’s impossible to make a good-looking Top Hat out of Buckram!”
That was my “Fun”/Extra Credit hat for that class… It was black velvet, and the hat band–which transitioned into a bow at the back was made of a scrap of hand-dyed aqua/turquoise-ish colored “flowy” silk. The ends/hanging part of the bow turned into a bit of a “veil”…
^That hat^ was the one that took my grade from “Just an A, to an A+” according to him!😉😂🤣
I could use a good craft project to distract me from allll the rabbit-holes lately (OBVIOUSLY!)😉😆
Forgot the link again!😖
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gable_hood
for some reason this song keeps playing in my head whenever i check on the news from russia
When they announced the Zuck vs Musk bout, I had no idea that Prigozhin vs Putin was going to be on the undercard.
@MegMegMcGee
Don’t worry about taking care of us. Just stay in bed. We can find the cereal and milk on our own. We promise we’ll turn the TV down low.
i found the alcohol and the medicine cabinet
weeee!
Only drink the clear ones and make sure when you top them off with water you get them back to the same level.
eh….
tbh…before i do anything i carefully calculate if its worth the trouble i am going to be in
and i almost always land on yes it is
i suck at math btw
It’s just a hunch, but I think this Jack Smith fellow may think that there was some skullduggery on Jan. 6.
Special counsel gives two fake Trump electors immunity to compel testimony
It will be interesting to see if he limits Trump’s exposure to essentially the white collar crime side of 1/6 and the vote fraud, or if he has enough evidence to connect him to the violence too.
There may be grounds to wrap it all up into a single conspiracy, but I have no idea. But you have to think possible defendants on the 1/6 side are looking nervously at how real the legal threat on the documents case is becoming. The risks of sticking with Trump aren’t such an abstraction anymore.
…I know garland copped a lot of flack for going after the small fry first & all…but the slow drip feed of increasingly long sentences dropping has to be sending a message?
At this point, I KNOW my stupid optimism is DUMB, as I hope we’ll someday nail all the slimy, traitorous, bastards to the wall….
But a ridiculous part of me *does* still hope that, somehow, some way, the Federal Prosecutors are pulling a Mueller, and working some deals with *this* “Teflon Don’s” Sammy the Bull…
Don’t know if it’s been posted, but:
Rest up, and consider a nice, soothing hot toddy and the company of a warm cat, @MegMegMcGee.
I read an article this morning on the Daily Beast, which I wanted to link to but can’t access now for some reason, where Russian TV personality and Putin propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, was dabbing a tear about the possibility of a civil war. And how he never thought he’d live to see such a thing in his country. Pretty rich considering that the Russian media couldn’t contain their glee about the chaos they helped unleash in the US. Tots and pears comrade.
oh man……thats probably the only timberlake song i straight up love
what was the topic again?
oh right yeah…
i am well beyond giving fucks in any direction about this whole thing
i mean…..we’ve got fucking landmines floating around in the sea now maybe beaching somewhere….maybe blowing up some unfortunate whale that thunk it was safe out of japanese waters….
shit be fucked up
got nothing against regular russians tho….self interest is a powerful thing…and the punishment for having a non approved opinion over there is severe
but i am all out of fucks and now at the popcorn stage of things……if it all ends in nukes
well…fuck it….i have popcorn…salty caramel popcorn
@perdido the motherfucking joyers had taken over a booth at Soulard Farmers Market this morning. I was like why are there so many suburban white beige esthetic families fucking walking around here at 9am and then I saw the booth and was like ugghghghg that’s why. They even had merch like different tshirts etc you could by with stupid phrases on them.
I’m lucky I got out of there while the day was still early otherwise I probably would have auto damage.
For reference, joyers are horrible drivers who always have a sticker on the back of their car for 99.1 Joy! FM – one of the local christian music stations.