Fake Coups, Real Purges

It's not Prigozhin vs Shoigu, it's Statists versus Fascists

Prigozhin is about as lucky as your typical Royal Cup Bearer. Those who mock him as “Putin's Chef” (https://archive.fo/YtTUF) have no ability whatsoever to examine Putin's position from Putin's point of view. They cannot conceive how important food security is for the ruler of a country that specializes in poisoning powerful people. Did Prigozhin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Prigozhin) betray Putin? Unlikely. In a country where chain of command depends on personal power bases, even the food Putin eats needs to be under the control of someone unbribeable. The only caterer you can't bribe to poison the President is one that collects a billion dollars a year in catering contracts from the government already. You can't outbribe that. And even if you could, once you get to that level of money, it becomes political, which makes it harder to spend. Prigozhin isn't lucky. Lukashenko didn't lobby to save his life. This is political theater designed to root out disloyal cliques in the military. Prigozhin is a widely disliked half-Jew whose power base comes entirely from his closeness to Putin and his own personal ability to hustle. The notion that he was going to successfully seize power is utterly insane. And while it's true that war makes people insane, war also reinforces reality with the hard physics that refutes all sorts of nonsense arguments. As a successful commander, it seems unlikely he completely lost his wits. Because that's the only explanation for the 'sincere mutiny' scenario. If it was a fake mutiny, then so much more makes sense. It then makes sense why he was allowed to mouth-off to the Russian MOD in Bakhmut. Stoking tensions between Wagner and the MOD created inter-agency tensions designed to generate a counter-revolutionary covert operation. It was one Putin loyalist (Prigozhin) versus another (Shoigu), in an attempt to see who might try to capitalize on the 'chaos.' This is why Surovikin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Surovikin) wasn't arrested, while Prigozhin was exiled to Belarus to run Wagner from there. Remember what I wrote about Belarus as proxy war weapon against NATO? More evidence for that thesis.

Surovikin waged war in way that made it harder to absorb the conquered sections of Ukraine. Antithetical to the soft touch of Putin. That's why he was demoted. He was excessively hawkish. It was only natural that Putin would suspect he might be disloyal. His orders for the mutineers to stand-down was probably unexpected by those who suspected he was on the side of hawks who wanted to escalate the war in Ukraine. One thing the pro-Russia commentariot complains about again and again is 'why is Russia holding back in Ukraine? Why hasn't Russia declared war and fully mobilized?' The answer is that Putin is uncomfortable with the legal power the military gains when a war declaration is announced. Very similar to how the US President can wage war without the authorization of Congress because 'war was never officially declared.' This is why it's essential that the war remain a 'Special Military Operation.'

We can see Putin's reluctance to strengthen even his own St Petersberg clique in the Russian Ministry of Defense, when he appointed Anatoly Serdyukov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Serdyukov) to be Minister of Defense. Serdyukov's mission was to end corruption in the MOD because Putin's military modernization program by 2012 was not going as scheduled, due to massive corruption. Serdyukov was the Minister of Taxes and was the guy who send all those balaclava clad, AK-74 armed tax police to collect taxes from scofflaws (https://www.intellinews.com/putin-increases-personal-income-tax-for-the-first-time-in-two-decades-197247/). He brought that same fiscal rigidity to the MOD, which let funds go where needed. When he was done, Putin replaced him with Shoigu: an industrial engineer. For the last sixteen years, the Russian Minister of Defense has been a non-military man. Before Serdyukov, it was Sergei Ivanov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Ivanov) who was in charge of the MOD: an inside member of Putin's own clique! That shows that Putin grew to distrust his own power base and sought to diversify his personal power base. This was during the period we first starting hearing rumors that Putin might be the world's richest man (https://www.news18.com/news/tech/worlds-richest-man-elon-musk-thinks-vladimir-putin-is-significantly-richer-than-him-4918382.html). He was probably the one receiving the majority of the loot from corruption. Once he got enough, removed both the enablers and betrayed incorrigible loyalists in order to rebuild Russia's military industrial complex. What Serdyukov did for the military's fund-control, Shoigu clearly did for the military-industrial supply chain. We can see that in the way the Russian military's production has surged since 2014. Sergey Chemezov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Chemezov), one of Putin's insiders, also played a role with his management of Rostec. But that just goes to show that there was decay in the original St Petersberg posse from which Putin drew his power. He diversified into a United Russia party, so he could avoid having a rival in his own party. He became the world's richest man. And he acquired a team of subordinates who could never challenge his authority the same way a Russian, Christian Slav could. Hence, Shoigu, Prigozhin, Lukashenko, and Kadyrov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramzan_Kadyrov). Shoigu is half-Tuvan and can never hope to lead racist Russia. Prigozhin's father was Jewish and leader of Putin's personal army. There's no way antisemitic Russia would accept him as their leader. Kadyrov is sick psycho (Mr “There are no gays in Chechnya.”)(Think about that statement a little harder)(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ramzan-kadyrov-says-there-are-no-gay-men-in-chechnya-but-if-there-are-take-them-to-canada-a7843466.html) Chechen and leader of Putin's modern day Cossacks. Russians are terrified of them and would rather nuke Chechnya than be ruled by Chechens, and Lukashenko's power base is in Belarus alone. None of them threaten Putin's power base. But plenty in the Russian Ministry of Defense do.

Surovikin passed Putin's test, but many inside the Russian Ministry of Defense did not. Rumors of his arrest was used to confuse the actual conspirators. Did everybody forget that Russia purges? Did everybody forget that Putin is a master spy? Prigozhin was used by Putin as a rallying point for disloyal elements inside the Russian military. Actual coup plotters imagined that after Prigozhin had done the dirty work, they'd kill him and nobody would cry for the half-Jew ex-con. Utter miscalculation and failure to profile the opponent's power structure. Unknown forces have been trying to kill Shoigu for quite some time, which means that they are a clique not in Putin's control.

Which cliques are outside Putin's control? Oligarchs and the military. Hey, those are the two tastes that go great together. Your classic old-fashioned fascist team-up. Which Russians lost the most during the war? Other than the ones who died, probably the oligarchs. Yachts seized, assets frozen, arrest warrants... (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/29/kremlin-putin-investigation-wagner-rebellion/) and hmm, isn't fascism the government in Ukraine? My my, the narrative has gotten confusing. The fact that there is no clean explanation for what has happened means that we can see the activity of several power cliques inside Russia.

Putin is far more patient than his military counterparts. And yet, Putin has won almost all of his engagements by preventing his opposition from escalating. As a practitioner of Judo, I can certainly see how he likes to choke out his opponents. Why escalate when Russia is winning? Escalation can get too out of control. Better to wage economic war and watch France burn. Funny how Belarus pops up again as a proxy war weapon. Didn't they flood the EU with Muslim migrants and didn't Europe complain about weaponized migration? (https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b33210.html) The hawks in Russia are stupid. They want to do some galvanizing act of violence so that the whole world renounces Russia and isolates it. Like that idiot Kaiser who didn't recognize that Germany wasn't stronger than all of Europe. Putin's restraint is why Russia continues to expand its wealth and influence. He didn't blow Russia's first financial windfall on pensions. He cut them. His fiscal management has ensured that Russia is in a position to fight a prolonged high intensity war without any major loss of currency reserves. In the history of war, that has only happened a few other times and always on the winning side. The UK from the Seven Years War through the Boer War comes to mind. In the interim, they won the Napoleonic wars and the Crimean war. The USA has enjoyed this status too, since WWI, only we don't trade for reserves, we print them. Only, not so much anymore it seems. We can maybe spend 10% of our GDP on the military, but Russia manages something like 20%. And Russia seems to be able to produce at this speed with no problems at all. The USA is as far behind Russia with ammunition production as Russia is behind the USA in semiconductor technology.

We should expect Wagner to operate from inside Belarus indefinitely and used to escalate the war into NATO countries. Probably with 'Little Green Men,' (Polite People if you are a Russian nationalist)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Russo-Ukrainian_War). Wagner will use ethnic Russians, criminals, and corrupt people to activate insurgencies inside neighboring NATO countries. They will be based in Belarus, so Russia can deny involvement. Prigozhin is after all an 'Enemy of Russia.' By creating perceived distance in public, Belarus can act in a way it claims is independent, but really they serve the role of medicine show shill. With the civil war in France (as I predicted with a specific deadline of August), the time is ripe for Russian subversion in NATO countries. Only the most loyal of Putin's men could pull this off. As Putin's Royal Cupbearer, only Prigozhin is trusted enough to make this work.

This feud between the Russian Fascists (Oligarchs and military hawks) and Russian Nationalists (post-Soviet Statists... of which Putin is the leader) explains the Kremlin attack,

explains the Wagner Mutiny, explains attempts to oust Shoigu, and explains why Prigozhin appears to be the luckiest man in Russia. If the Statists can hold power during war, then Russia's institutions might survive future coup attempts. More importantly, Russian factions seem to be checking each others' power. Stomping out a coup attempt is proof that the state is strong, not weak. And finding disloyal military officers is an ancient form of statesmanship that the Russians have never forgotten.