Mark Sleboda, Real Politick
Radio Interview on The Final Countdown 05/05/23
As of May 5, Russia is still in control of 95% of Bakhmut.
Prigozhin spreads misinformation to induce Ukraine to continue to shift troops to Bakhmut. Yes, he will withdraw from Bakhmut but he will be replaced by Russian troops.
Mecouris explains all.
Wagner will complete the capture of Bakhmust by May 9 and will be rotated out.
Hello, Peloni.
That is a reasonable observation. Here are my thoughts on the matter:
1. Prigozhin was a billionaire friend of Vladimir Putin, long before he headed Wagner. That friendship seems to be enduring, judging by the fact that he could be imprisoned for his apparent mutiny, but hasn’t been.
2. Besides being a friend of Putin, Yevgeny is a consumate politician, with his eye on the throne — not to usurp Putin, but probably to head off a coup by Shoigu, Gerasimov and their friends. This has not been a sudden outrage; it’s been a long time in coming:
https://www.businessinsider.com/wagner-group-leader-prigozhin-may-be-preparing-for-ukraine-failure-2023-1
If Russia is as humiliated by the unfolding Ukrainian offensive, as it was by the sinking of its Black Sea flagship, a “Knock knock!” drone strike on the Kremlin, sabotage of Russian infrastructure, from Crimea to Vladivostok, the loss of hundreds of tanks, etc. have been, Putin may have to step down or be forced out. Prigozhin may want to be Caesar’s Marc Antony at the political or physical funeral.
What part of Sleboda’s claimed misinformation campaign requires Prighzhin to call Shoigu and the Kremlin corrupt. Indeed, Preghzhin’s accusations that the Russian military is complicit in the needless deaths of those soldiers whom he describes as someone’s husband and someone’s son was not aimed at the Ukrainians and I would suggest that it was, furthermore, quite damaging to the Russian govt, the Russian military, and the Russian home front.
Sleboda describing Prigozhin’s myriad of statements, which are quite focused upon damaging his own govt, as an attempt to draw Ukraine into Bakhmut seems quite wide of the truth. It is one thing to suggest that all is not going well at the front, which might be conjectured to be targeting the Ukrainians, but it is quite another thing to describe the Russian leadership as being corrupt or the leaders of the Russian military to be inept. That message was being broadcast to the wives, mothers, and loved ones at home in Russia, not Ukraine, and no disinformation campaign would include such claims which would sew the seeds of dissent at home during war. Indeed, Sleboda’s claims of this being disinformation has, itself, the ring of disinformation about it.
Russia has done a good job maintaining a quiet discipline throughout this war, and these remarks by Prighozhin are quite an important break with that military standard, and it has not placed Russia in a better light, but rather a much poorer one, I would suggest. I notice that Sleboda did not mention that a senior Russian veteran has been placed second in command of the Wagner Group since Prighozhin seemed to have run off the reservation, so to speak. This too, coming just as the Wagner Group was leaving the front, was an important tell that the Prighozhin rants were not part of the Russian script, but a rather stark break with it. Or so it seems reasonable to me.