On Friday, June 24th the Russian Federation nearly fell into a civil war.
And it could happen again- this time with more disastrous consequences.
It all began with Yevegeny Prigozhin and his infamous Wagner Group.
The private military company has become one of the most powerful fighting forces inside
of Ukraine, and according to the Ukrainians themselves- is a better fighting force than
the regular Russian army.
While technically PMCs are illegal under Russian law, Russian president Vladimir Putin allowed
Prigozhin to create Wagner Group so it could originally be used as an extension of the
Russian government itself, undertaking operations around the world on behalf of Russian interests
while providing plausible deniability.
By doing this, Putin had planted the seeds of his own downfall.
Wagner quickly grew from a small, light infantry force into a formidable army in its own right.
Unlike other PMCs, Wagner operates a significant amount of its own heavy equipment, including
main battle tanks, artillery, air defenses, and even helicopters.
The group has operations all over the world, but its most valuable assets are multiple
mines in Africa which enrich Prigozhin and make Wagner a self-funded operation, nearly
completely independent of the Russian government.
It's this independence that would prove deadly to Vladimir Putin, who hadn't realized that
he'd given his favorite dog way too much leash.
Details remain incredibly thin, and by the time you see this video we might have learned
new things or corrected some of the information presented here.
However, what we do know is that the seeds of Russia's greatest internal catastrophe
since the fall of the Soviet Union were planted in the battle of Bakhmut.
The town was strategically insignificant save for one thing: the Russians wanted it badly.
When Ukraine realized just how many casualties the Russian Federation was willing to tolerate
for its capture, it immediately become a focal point of the entire war.
The formerly strategically worthless town was now on the lips of every observer around
the world, quickly becoming the greatest repository of sunflower fertilizer as the Russians continued
to stack their casualties up attempting to take it.
Russia has not had a very good time during this war, and Vladimir Putin was desperate
for a win.
Hot on the heels of the stunning Ukrainian fall counterattack, the Russian army needed
an ideological victory- and for a whole lot of really stupid reasons, Bakhmut became that
victory.
Suffering anywhere between a five to one to seven to one casualty disparity, Russia nevertheless
managed to push the Ukrainians back slowly, meter by meter over the course of a ten month
long battle.
Somewhere around the mid point though, as casualties and costs were skyrocketing, Prigozhin
attempted to strike a deal with Ukrainian intelligence.
Now Prigozhin has vehemently denied this, but given current events there's little reason
left to doubt Ukraine's intelligence agencies.
According to them, Prigozhin reached out and offered a deal: in exchange for Bakhmut, he
would give them the precise locations and dispositions of nearby Russian units.
This would enable Ukraine to launch devastating attacks against Russian regular army forces,
and all they had to give up was a strategically worthless town that was nothing more than
a propaganda victory.
Prigozhin and Wagner would be heroes, while gaining nothing really, and Ukraine could
inflict a serious hurt on the Russian army.
But the battle of Bakhmut was too profitable for Ukraine to strike a deal over- with the
Russians stacking their dead like cord wood trying to take it, there was little reason
to launch surprise attacks against exposed army units outside of it.
Besides, it's unlikely that Prigozhin's intelligence was significantly more valuable and accurate
than what Ukraine was already getting from western intelligence agencies- especially
the United States and its constellation of spy satellites and wealth of intelligence
sources inside the Russian army itself.
With no deal, the slog for Bakhmut continued, and the mounting costs quickly created tensions
within the Russian war effort itself.
Prigozhin already had significant differences with Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu,
and his direct number one, Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov.
The rivalry had stemmed from a number of sources, but chief amongst them had been several high
profile incidents between Wagner and the Russian army, with each blaming the other of purposefully
sabotaging each other's efforts.
The rivalry came to a head during the conquest of Soledar, a salt mining town that Wagner
bled hard to push the Ukrainians out of- only for the Russian army to swoop in at the last
minute and claim victory, stealing Wagner's glory out from under them.
The rivalry was not entirely by accident either.
Dictators like Vladimir Putin tend to play their subordinates against each other, that
way they won't band together to pose a challenge- this likely saved Putin's life in Wagner's
insurrection, as it was only the rivalry between Shoigu and Prigozhin that prevented Wagner
and the Russian regular army from banding together on the march to Moscow.
Indeed, we have reports of many regular Russian units refusing to stop Prigozhin's Wagner
forces, and some even joining him.
Had this happened en masse, Putin would have gone the way of countless Russian dictators
before him into an early and permanent retirement six feet underground.
But the rivalry between the army and Wagner was toxic to the Russian war effort, and has
directly led to Russia's general incompetence in its effort to defeat the much smaller,
and less well equipped Ukraine.
There are credible allegations of Wagner leaking intelligence to the Ukrainians on the location
of Russian officers they wanted to see dead, only for Uncle HIMARS to pay a swift visit
with several hundred pounds of high explosives.
Indeed, Russia's loss rate for senior officers has been nothing short of apocalyptic.
There are also known incidents of Wagner and the Russian army engaging in brief skirmishes,
famously with one Russian colonel ordering Wagner's exit route out of Bakhmut to be mined.
For Ukraine, the beef between Wagner and the Russian army has been a godsend.
It ensures that Ukraine isn't facing one unified invasion force, but rather a multitude of
individual armies all working for their own interests.
None of these forces are incentivized to work together, an indeed purposefully keep vital
intelligence to themselves so as to sabotage each other.
This was on full display during the battle of Vuhledar, when Wagner, Patriot PMC, and
the Russian army all refused to share intelligence- leading to each of the three organization's
forces falling into the exact same ambushes.
It would become the greatest tank battle of the war, with 120 armored vehicles destroyed
on the Russian side.
With Ukraine being steadily pushed out of Bakhmut though, the rivalry intensified between
Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Both sides were out for the glory of capturing Bakhmut- if the ten month campaign resulting
in an estimated 100,000 casualties both in and around Bakhmut could in any way be called
'glorious'.
As Wagner pushed the Ukrainians to the very outskirts of the town, the Russian army began
to launch an attempted pincer attack to beat Wagner there.
Prigozhin was furious, and began to claim that the Russian army was purposefully denying
his troops the ammunition needed to finish the fight.
This lack of ammo was costing his men's lives, and Prigozhin put out a series of very emotional,
and very staged videos of himself ranting against the Russian MOD in front of dead Russian
casualties.
It was all a show of course, Prigozhin has never once cared about casualties on either
side- but the show has recently been revealed to be even bigger than any of us knew.
The world was buying Prigozhin's narrative of the Ministry of Defense cutting him off
from supplies, and to an extent this was apparently true.
When he threatened to remove Wagner form Bakhmut on May 10th, the MOD opened up the taps and
let ammo and shells flow, only to shut off the tap again two days later, sparking fresh
protests from Prigozhin.
But American intelligence had secretly confirmed that Wagner was not in fact facing an ammo
shortage- they were simply making it look that way.
Instead, Prigozhin had begun to secretly order caches of supplies to be moved to rear areas
near the Russian border.
While no one yet knows when Prigozhin had made up his mind to attempt a coup, it seems
that he was already preparing for it by the start of May.
Here is where details remain very sketchy, and more will come out in time.
However, we know the key events of Prigozhin's brief coup.
It all began with what many are convinced was a false flag attack by Wagner forces on
itself.
Prigozhin claimed that the Russian army had shelled one of his camps, killing many of
his fighters.
This was backed up by video evidence of the aftermath of what appeared to be an artillery
strike- though immediately most observers noted that the footage did not in any way
show evidence of a mass artillery strike as claimed by Prigozhin.
There was also a significant lack of casualties on video, with only one body and several body
parts- evidence of some casualties, but not the mass casualties claimed by Prigozhin.
In retaliation, Prigozhin launched what he called a “march for justice”, careful
to not term his invasion of Russia a coup.
Wagner crossed into Russia via multiple points and headed for the headquarters of the southern
military district, the city of Rostov-on-Don.
We know that some Russian forces were sent to attempt to slow down his estimated 15,000
to 25,000 strong force, but per Prigozhin himself, they allowed him and his forces to
simply pass on by.
Indeed there is no evidence of anything but very brief and sporadic gun battles between
Wagner and Russian military forces.
Upon reaching the city of Rostov-on-Don, Wagner surrounded key buildings including the municipal
center, the FSB headquarters, and the headquarters of the Southern Military District.
Other than one explosion attributed to an anti-tank mine that may have been accidentally
detonated, there was no violence reported- indeed local police forces were seen on video
casually greeting Wagnerites in the city.
Prigozhin did claim that the Russian air force had attempted to attack his column with a
helicopter, which according to Wagner destroyed a civilian bus traveling alongside the Wagner
troops.
In return, Wagner downed at least 3 Russian helicopters, and later a Russian Il-18 aircraft.
Leaving a small contingent behind in Rostov, Prigozhin marched north and hours later was
confirmed by British intelligence to have captured the major city of Voronezh along
with all of its military facilities.
Here there were more reports of combat between Wagner and Russian forces, and Russia appeared
to attack its own oil facility with a Ka-52 attack helicopter in order to deny the supplies
to Wagner.
However, any regular army resistance was swiftly overcome, and the march towards Moscow continued.
As Moscow scrambled to set up defenses, it quickly became apparent to observers why Wagner
was seemingly unstoppable.
Having scoured social media for video and footage uploaded by Muscovites themselves,
we were unable to spot anything more than a handful of armored personnel carriers and
some helicopters being deployed by the Russian army, along with some armored trucks from
reserve forces.
In just one clip shot by a passerby of the Wagner convoy however we counted four T-72
tanks, numerous Infantry Fighting Vehicles, a Pantsir air defense unit, and multiple towed
artillery systems.
Basically, Wagner was significantly outgunning the Russian army by any measure according
to all available information at the time.
With so much of its reserve inventory dedicated to Ukraine, it comes as no surprise that the
Russian military was incapable of stopping an invasion of its own territory-begging the
question of what would happen if Ukraine were to suddenly do the same thing.
However, while Wagner was significantly outgunning anything the Russian army could muster together,
there was no political support coming for Prigozhin- and this may have been instrumental
to him canceling his march on Moscow.
After a series of negotiations with Belarus's Lukashenko, Prigozhin announced an end to
his coup attempt, and ordered Wagner forces back to field camps.
In exchange, Wagner and Prigozhin received a blanket pardon from Vladimir Putin, and
Prigozhin was allowed to leave Russia for Belarus.
The question on everyone's mind though is why did Prigozhin launch this short-lived
coup, and why did he stop it when it was so wildly successful?
Details remain scarce, but we can piece together some solid theories based off information
available.
First, it became evident at the end of the first twenty four hours that while Prigozhin
lacked political support, he was enjoying a significant amount of popular support where
Wagner traveled.
After the end of the coup was announced, massive crowds gathered in Rostov-on-Don to cheer
on Wagner as it departed the city, with the crowds chanting Wager and Prigozhin's name.
There is also very credible reports of Russian army units refusing to engage Wagner, and
a small number of soldiers even joining him outright.
Online, Prigozhin's announcement over Telegram that he was canceling the operation was met
with a flood of negative responses from tens of thousands of people who apparently wanted
him to continue.
But the wave of popular support wasn't immediately visible to anyone inside of Russia thanks
to the government's crackdown on social media and internet use.
Prigozhin may not have known just how many were cheering him on back in occupied Rostov-on-Don,
or the amount of popularity he was gaining on social media.
Before the coup Prigozhin was not well known to most Russians thanks to a media ban on
mentioning him or Wagner and the careful curating of news inside Russia to make the Russian
army look like heroes.
However, Prigozhin has surged in popularity since the coup- had he known this, perhaps
he would have continued marching on Moscow.
With no politicians declaring their support for Wagner though, it might have been prudent
to end the march when he died- while he could have easily taken Moscow and forced Putin
into exile, Prigozhin would have lacked any serious credibility to establish a new government.
Another theory however is that Prigozhin never had any intentions of overthrowing Putin.
Rather, he may have become aware of the case already being built against him for treason
by the FSB and other Russian legal agencies.
Sergei Shoigu for one was very motivated to remove Prigozhin as a rival, and could wield
the Russian legal apparatus to do just that.
Prigozhin was also proving to be a thorn in Putin's side, with moves that some took as
seditious or outright challenges to Putin's power.
Knowing the consequences of legal charges against him, Prigozhin may have seen an armed
insurrection his only option, and knowing how weak the Russian army was he could have
calculated that all he needed to do was get close to Moscow to force Putin into pardoning
him.
This would have been a calculated risk, but one very well calculated, and could explain
why Wagner opted to launch an attack south towards Rostov-on-Don from the Ukrainian border
and north towards Moscow- instead of massing for one massive thrust northwards.
Capturing a major city like Rostov-on-Don, which housed the Southern Military District's
headquarters, and Voronezh would have rattled Putin significantly, as both cities are of
critical importance to the war effort.
Further, if Prigozhin had seriously wanted to launch a coup, he could have coordinated
better with Russian partisan forces such as the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Freedom
of Russia Legion.
Working together, Prigozhin's coup would have been even more devastating, with attacks across
multiple Russian regions throwing the government and military into further disarray.
The fact that despite seizing major cities, Prigozhin never took to broadcasting over
regular Russian media also speaks to the conclusion that Prigozhin was never serious about removing
Putin from power.
Wagner and Prigozhin were both immediately cut off from most of their social media channels,
and Russian media had been banned from mentioning either Wagner or Prigozhin for weeks already.
Even as President Putin addressed the nation over the crisis, he never mentioned Prigozhin
or Wagner by name.
Prigozhin could have made his case to the Russian public over traditional media via
the numerous broadcast options captured inside of Rostov-on-don and Voronezh- yet there appears
to be no evidence that he did this.
That would be a very curious omission for a man attempting to launch a coup of the government,
but perfectly in line if the plan was always to simply rattle the government's cage and
force them into a pardon and major concessions preventing Prigozhin from being prosecuted.
A final theory, and one that seems increasingly unlikely in the wake of the insurrection,
is that this was all for show.
Putin and Prigozhin could have organized the entire thing as a way of pinning the blame
for the failing war on Sergei Shoigu and General Gerasimov.
Prigozhin made numerous statements blaming the Ministry of Defense for misleading the
president into this disastrous war, even outright calling typical Russian talking points of
Ukraine or NATO preparing to attack Russia false fabrications made up by the Ministry
of Defense.
Even once the insurrection was launched, Prigozhin never made any mention of removing Putin-
stating numerous times that he was still loyal to the office of the President.
Then again this might have just been personal cover by making it seem like he only intended
to remove Shoigu and Gerasimov from power, but it could have been carefully orchestrated
theater to avoid a direct challenge to Putin, and excuse Prigozhin later as a well-meaning
patriot who took things a little too far.
However, we have yet to see the removal of either Shoigu or Gerasimov, and there is no
indication that Putin is considering putting an end to this failed war.
Thus it becomes more and more unlikely that this was the case.
The truth behind Prigozhin's coup may not be known for weeks, months, or even years
to come, when other secrets of this war come to light.
But given the absolute clown-shoes level of stupidity and incompetence the modern Russian
Federation has displayed in the last year and four months, absolutely no theory would
surprise us any more.
At this point, we're even willing to believe that Prigozhin simply marched Wagner in the
wrong direction and by the time he realized he was invading Russia, he decided to just
roll with it in order to avoid the embarrassment and take his chances.
One thing is for sure though, only Ukraine benefits from this chaos.
Many pro-revolution activists did their part by flooding Russian media channels with calls
for civil war and memes.
When the story of this war is written in history books, rest assured that many people did their
part in the fight for freedom by trolling as hard as it possibly could (insert image
included with trello card here).
Now see how people are continuing to fight the good fight by checking out Analyzing Russia's
Massive Failures In War Against Ukraine, or click this other video instead!
Mobile infantry made us the men we are today!