this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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Actually Prigozhin is arguably waaayyyy worse. Putin is a ruthless warlord just like Prigozhin, yes. They have equally virulent ideologies, yep.
But Putin is a politician first and Prigozhin is 100% not. Say what you want of Putin but deep down he still gives a shit about projecting certain images of control, law, etc -- he still values the opinion of certain international communities. He is still the leader of a government, not just a battalion or an army.
Prigozhin doesn't give a shit about any of that, he is a simple and ruthless warlord without any pretense of governance at all, who only understands force and who has no qualms about being open in his toxic ideologies.
I think it's extraordinarily unlikely Prigozhin actually accomplishes any of his own goals towards Russia because he isn't a politician and he's just a thug, but I also think it's equally unlikely Putin's Russia recovers from this. Wagner was Putin's pitbull. They were virtually the entirety of professional real soldiers Russia had under its command. No more pit bull changes things dramatically. We can easily expect a social "downgrade" of Russia's status as superpower in the eyes of other nations. That leaves some big doors open for China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and of course, the United States.
We may be on the cusp of a second break up of the USSR, further breaking Russia down into disparate nationstates. That possibility offers a lot of problems on its own. It's no longer a question of "rogue warlord gains control of russian nukes", now its "russian nukes don't exist, now those nukes belong to 15 new whatever-istan nations, each without any pre-existing relationships or treaties". That's scarier. Doubly so because in that big muck of former Russian states, Wagner could still be around in the middle of it with the biggest dick on the block. He'd predictably go Atilla, march through every one of them and conscript every dude over 16 to fight. And history tells us over and over just how those situations end: global-scale wars. Conqueror types never stop, they just keep conquering until they get stopped.
Just to add to this, a Prigozhin government would likely be far worse for Ukraine. While Putin had few qualms brutalizing civilians and committing war crimes Prigozhin has none. He's a ruthless, murderous thug. The best outcome would be that he is defeated by the Russian military but that they have to withdraw troops from Ukraine, allowing the Ukrainians to seize the initiative with their offensive. The worst outcomes don't bear thinking about.
How do you know all this about him? I've never heard of this guy until 5 minutes ago and am very curious.
Edit: 2022 corrupt person of the year... Great.
Have you been following the war in Ukraine at all in the last 16mo? If not, that's surprising, but understandable.
Anyway, Prigozhin and his Wagner PMC group of mercenaries have been talked about consistently since the beginning. In the last ~6mo or so, he's been constantly in the eyes of the (Western) media as his rhetoric against the Russian military leadership—not against Putin, though—has steadily been increasing all the way to this sudden outbreak of internecine violence.
Aside from Putin, he's basically been the #2 face of this war from the Russian side, at least in Western media, over even Russia MoD head Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, who's the Chief of Staff of the Russian military, who are supposedly in charge of prosecuting this war.
Oh dear god the war has been going for 16 months now?
I stopped following it after the first month.
Thanks for the information that's very helpful.
I think you're mistaken, it is Putin who is the warmongering conqueror here, not Prigozhin.
If you think Prigozhin isn't a warmongering conqueror, you don't know much about him.
They both are. I'm late to this thread now, but the best case scenario for Ukraine would have been Prigozhin not backing down, Wagner getting wiped out, but the Russian military facing heavy losses, which would significantly hinder their ability to wage war.
And then maybe some other less warmongering oligarchs assassinating Putin