Today’s big news, of course, is the apparent murder of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary “private military contractors” group and architect of a short-lived rebellion that advanced surprisingly close to Moscow before ending under mysterious circumstances.
The fact that Prigozhin had remained alive and free for this long was a “mysterious circumstance” in itself. Yet this is Russia we’re talking about and not only are things not always what they appear, but there will be a million conspiracy theories to fill the information void as people try to make sense of a confusing and bizarre situation.
Additionally, we will take a look at the state of the southern front, and Ukraine’s apparent refocus at the behest of its Western partners.
So … Prigozhin. You guys have already been discussing the news on this AP story we posted, and this community story by Lib Dem FoP. I won’t dwell on the details beyond wondering why Vladimir Putin opted to shoot down or bomb or sabotage this plane rather than merely throw Prigozhin out of a high window. Perhaps variety is the spice of life?
Now, the big question is quite clear: Was Prigozhin actually on the plane? The manifest says he was, but so what? Maybe Prigozhin got wind from his Kremlin allies and decided to skip the flight. Maybe Prigozhin staged this whole thing himself and it had nothing to do with Putin. Maybe they were murdered by Russia before they got on the plane, and merely blew it up in the air to make it look like an accident. Who knows!
Any remains will likely be unrecognizable and require DNA verification, and will anyone trust what the Kremlin claims they find? Their track record with the truth is shit, and as we’ve already seen, they’ll stage whatever they need to stage to support their lies, even if it’s comically inept.
But really, there are two obvious possibilities: Either Putin killed Prigozhin to settle the score from the failed coup, or Prigozhin faked his death to hide from Putin. Yet there’s an entire constellation of conspiracy theorists currently reenacting Charlie’s famously memed scene from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”:
Of course you have the “Prigozhin wasn’t on the plane” crowd, like Ukrainian-American propagandist (in the most negative sense of the word) Igor Sushko, who you shouldn’t believe about anything:
President Joe Biden’s comments will feed a million new conspiracies in the days ahead:
Coming soon to a tankie near you: “The imperialist American CIA murdered Prigozhin because his Wagner Group was helping foster a new African socialist utopia!” With Wagner deploying to Niger to support coup leaders against the Western-backed ECOWAS coalition of regional nations, that’s a particularly tidy explanation. People do love to blame the West for everything, and Putin will happily feed that narrative if it’s in his interest.
For now, the tankies are being more vague in their insinuation:
What’s more plausible? Putin getting rid of someone who literally launched an almost-successful coup against him, or the CIA shooting him down near Moscow for undetermined reasons?
But don’t worry, logistics aren’t something that will deter a conspiracy theorist.
Just make up some nonsense about “infiltrators” carrying surface-to-air missiles capable of hitting a passenger plane at cruising altitude (hint, you can’t carry those on your shoulder), and voila! No loose ends.
Don’t ask me to make sense of this one:
This next one at least has internal logic, though I missed the conspiracy that the CIA was funding Prigozhin as he destabilized and overthrew Western-friendly governments in Africa.
I dug into the darkest internet corners to find out more about this conspiracy, and it turns out there’s a whole world that truly believes that Prigozhin’s coup attempt was backed by the CIA. As one conspiracy account put it, “After the CIA backed Coup attempt earlier this year, Putin vowed NOT to seek revenge. But in reality Prigozhin was a marked man after that event! The CIA backed and supported the Coup attempt, and maybe behind his death, fake or not!”
Imagine being stupid enough and clueless about the situation in Ukraine, Russia, and Africa to think that the CIA would work with Prigozhin, and that there was anything the CIA could even offer Prigozhin of value that he didn’t already get from the Russian Ministry of Defense or his network of pals inside the Kremlin.
Not to mention, Putin never vowed NOT to seek revenge. Quite the opposite, in fact. “The office does not forgive, the past cannot be returned,” Putin said in the midst of Prigozhin’s coup attempt. But why let reality get in the way of a good conspiracy?
In fact, these morons think the CIA paid Prigozhin $6 billion for the coup attempt.
Note how the CIA is at fault for everything, but they’re also “dumber than mud.” It kind of mirrors MAGA attacks on President Joe Biden—he’s a dotard who can’t string two sentences together, but he’s also a criminal mastermind.
Speaking of MAGA, do you think those guys can get in on the conspiracy action? Of course they can!
Not bad. They’ll level up when they blame it on the Jewish space laser. In the meantime, what the hell is this:
I don’t even know what to say about that one ...
Now for something entirely different, did you hear that Prigozhin’s death triggers … something something something and it’s bad?
Yeah, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Still, Prigozhin knew he was likely to be murdered. Hopefully he planned accordingly and left some kind of surprise behind.
Not sure this qualifies as “conspiracy theory,” but there is certainly a desire to find a pattern in the chaos:
Anyway, these are first-impression conspiracies. It’ll be interesting to see how they evolve over the next couple of days. The frame-by-frame “analysis” of the crash site should be particularly fun. It’s actually quite enjoyable seeing a bona fide war criminal, mass murderer, and Nazi get his comeuppance, regardless of the details.
Bakhmut has long been a ginormous question mark in the story of this war. Russia captured it, mostly using Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries and prison labor, after a bloody nine-month campaign. It never made sense—the city (Ukraine’s 58th or 59th largest) lacked any real strategic merit. Still, Russia threw everything it could at it, and Ukraine lost thousands of their own in its defense, when there were perfectly adequate heights to the city’s west to mount a less costly defense.
Indeed, once Russia hit those heights, that was that. It could obviously be argued that Russia culminated on this advance precisely because Ukraine fiercely fought for each city block, but ultimately, it was an incredibly costly campaign for both sides, over something with no strategic value.
Anyway, that advance was done. Russia was stuck in their Bakhmut fishbowl, with Ukraine raining death from the heights on anyone that moved out in the open. It was time for Ukraine to focus on the battle that mattered—the effort to cut Russia’s “land bridge” connecting mainland Russia to the Crimean peninsula through Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts in southern Ukraine. Instead, Ukraine deployed several of its best units to begin retaking territory north and south of Bakhmut.
I’ve questioned it before, and the obvious retort is “best to try and take it back before Russia has a chance to dig in.” That makes sense, but still, who cares? Who cares if Russia digs in around Bakhmut? The city has no geographic value. It’s been leveled to the ground, so there’s no one left to save from the occupiers. It’s not in a particularly important direction. So what was with Ukraine’s obsession to keep fighting there? It was no longer about bleeding Russians on the attack. It was them doing the bleeding attempting to retake Russian positions.
Turns out, NATO generals had the same questions, and have apparently convinced Ukraine to quit that bullshit and focus on where it matters, as The New York Times reported.
The main goal of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by severing the so-called land bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. But instead of focusing on that, Ukrainian commanders have divided troops and firepower roughly equally between the east and the south, the U.S. officials said.As a result, more Ukrainian forces are near Bakhmut and other cities in the east than are near Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south, both far more strategically significant fronts, officials say.
American planners have advised Ukraine to concentrate on the front driving toward Melitopol, Kyiv’s top priority, and on punching through Russian minefields and other defenses, even if the Ukrainians lose more soldiers and equipment in the process.
We mocked Russia early in the war for dividing its troops across four different axes and over a dozen separate directions, and here is Ukraine doing much of the same. But that is now changing. “In a video teleconference on Aug. 10, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; his British counterpart, Adm. Sir Tony Radakin; and Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander in Europe, urged Ukraine’s most senior military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, to focus on one main front,” the Times reported. “And, according to two officials briefed on the call, General Zaluzhnyi agreed.”
There is this weird sentiment that Ukraine can do no wrong, and to “trust” their decisions. They absolutely can get things wrong, and clinging to old Soviet doctrine that dictates attacking along multiple fronts is clearly wrong. Russia just proved that in this very war, just last year.
Under American war doctrine, there is always a main effort to ensure that maximum resources go to a single front, even if supporting forces are fighting in other areas to hedge against failure or spread-out enemy defenses.But Ukraine and Russia fight under old Soviet Communist doctrine, which seeks to minimize rivalries among factions of the army by providing equal amounts of manpower and equipment across commands. Both armies have failed to prioritize their most important objectives, officials say.
Ukraine is finally making headway, and doing it in the Robotyne-Tokmak-Melitopol direction, which is literally the most heavily fortified stretch of Russian-held territory in the entire country.
As I type this, Ukraine has raised its flag in Robotyne and declared it liberated.
It’s a small village with outsized strategic importance, marking Ukraine’s conquest of Russia’s first major line of defense. There are at least three more to go, but after Ukraine consolidates the high ground around Robotyne, flattening its flanks to avoid salients and expel Russian forces from its best vantage points, it’s literally downhill the rest of the way to Tokmak.
If history is any guide, expect Russia to send wave after wave of hapless infantry to try and retake Robotyne. Ukraine can mow those down as it prepares to breach the next defensive line. Let’s hope the gods of war are smiling on Ukraine, and that line is weak and depleted thanks to Russia’s obsession with fighting in front of its lines, rather than protected inside them.
kos August 24, 2023 at 01:46AM From Daily Kos
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