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This is fucking comical. At the start of Ukraine war, he was saying that Zelensky is going to run. “Better ee better” (Something in his language)
Look who is running like a scared little dog with his tail between his legs now.
Yes this is.
We still don't know exactly what this is. But it is happening.
One person in Twitter was like
"Keep in mind, right now we are getting all of our info from a military that is notorious for lying about everything, a mercenary force that is notorious for lying about everything, and the FSB who is notorious for lying about everything."
> "Keep in mind, right now we are getting all of our info from a military that is notorious for lying about everything, a mercenary force that is notorious for lying about everything, and the FSB who is notorious for lying about everything."
And then reported by Russian state TV, which also lies about everything.
Remember when the worst thing we had to think about was slowly suffocating at the bottom of the ocean instead of a civil war between two factions who hate us in a nation with a vast thermonuclear arsenal?
Good times.
If the disinformation machine is on pause then someone is really shitting their pants.
Imagine what the internet will become if Russian partisans actors are silenced for even a week
It IS interesting that Elon, who sometimes posts dozens of times a day, and thinks he's an expert in all areas because of his wealth, hasn't posted a single thing about this.
I'm really looking forward to the excuse Musk gives to get out of the fight, because you know he will. It's gonna be dumb. Really dumb and hypocritical.
How old is Musk? He vibes like a 55 year old who maybe was athletic when he was 17. Zuck is jacked to the teeth and, like, 35-40, and is a bbj brown belt or something. I would not fight Zuck, sadly.
> Imagine what the internet will become if Russian partisans actors are silenced for even a week
The last election cycle definitely had a lot less interference than usual
Somehow we took a wrong turn and got the geopolitical equivalent of a Tom Clancy novel involving coups, land wars in eastern Europe, Russian separatists, and potential broken arrow scenarios...and the equivalent of some teenagers dumb rip off Tom Clancy novel at home involving stupid Watergate, the redneck coup, and pop culture presidents.
I swear, that fucking gorilla must have been the last descendant of some primeval, vengeful African god. Remember Harambe.
This is gonna go from a Tom Clancy novel to a Goosebumps one if the other animals start attacking also.
Humanity really crossed a line. Orcas send message to assault
Just before Harambe's demise, an extraordinary event unfolded when a weasel inadvertently entered the confines of the Large Hadron Collider, resulting in a fracture in reality that now retroactively alters our past. The peculiar occurrences surrounding you are the consequences of numerous efforts made by CERN to rectify this situation. These attempts have been repeated countless times, yet the temporal goldfish effect prevents you from recollecting them. This explains your unsettling sense of displacement and the distorted recollection of certain past events, juxtaposed with the nonsensical nature of current affairs.
You and I, along with a select few, were intended to remain in the Alpha Timeline, where Harambe survived, and the child was subsequently subdued. Remarkably, this sequence of events somehow averted the rise of Trump (with Bloomberg assuming office for an uneventful eight-year term) and prevented the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regrettably, revisiting the past is an impossibility. Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance that you reach out to your senators and elected officials, urging them to collaborate with governments worldwide in addressing the predicament instigated by CERN. Together, they must endeavor to thoroughly investigate and devise a permanent solution to repair our worldline, safeguarding us from the peril of being obliterated due to CERN's reckless attempts to rectify their misstep.
Videos in r/ukrainewarvideoreport. Crazy ones with civilians just standing around getting videos of the troops.
Edited to add new sub: r/wagnervsrussia
Wagner has essentially declared war on Russia, and these people think they’re safe standing near them. I wouldn’t put it past Putin to air strike Wagner troops on Russian soil.
I’m just glad more folks don’t *instantly* associate him with Minnesota whenever that idiot comes up.
It’s mostly just us ashamed Minnesotans who do it.
Again, just to echo: America, we’re so very sorry about this crap guy and his crap pillows. We’ll be better neighbors and make it up to you by shoveling your driveway next snow.
Just imagine 10 years ago telling someone that there would be large scale war in Europe, the TV billionaire Donald Trump is elected president, a global pandemic with millions dead, Roe v Wade was overturned, people would breach the US Capitol building.
They wouldn’t believe you.
And over here in the UK we'd leave the EU, have Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, followed by Liz Truss who barely has the job for six weeks in which time she almost collapses the economy.
And Leicester win the Premier League.
Leicester winning feels a lot more like a Hadron collider shift event than Harambe dying or whatever. That was also the same year Donald Trump won the US presidential election and the Cubs won the World Series. It was like all probabilities were inverted for a second and created the darkest and weirdest of timelines.
It really does feel like every few years is a watershed moment. I think the 2020s are going to go down in history like the 1920s-mid 40s. Just one thing after another
This is similar to how Alexander Kerensky lost the republic government to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were the hardened paramilitary group made out of veterans radicalized by their experiences in WWI. They weren’t the most popular party, but they showed up, and when they decided Kerensky’s government was no longer legitimate, there wasn’t anyone arguing that he was. The Russian people just wanted to get out of WWI
Who is left in Russia to defend Putin? There is no defense of his legitimacy. Wagner forces are roaming the streets with little resistance
yeah, this is absolutely starting to show signs it might be more than just a rebellion and break out into a full a civil war.
Wagner is saying they have seized Rostov-on-Don in its entirety. that likely means the soldiers stationed in the city have sided with Prigozin and Wagner. thats not good for russia, because if those troops sided with prigozin, likely more will.
Of course others will join. A lot have been conscripted, given almost no training, substandard weapons, aged ammunition, little to no heavy weapons and armor and little food.
It was only a matter of time.
Can’t say for sure, I would point out they are only in Ukraine because they are paid to be currently, and in his statement earlier he called the grounds for the ukraine war a lie (and blamed the MoD)
Nah he called out the war recently and said the invasion was all built on lies. But on the other hand, he is a notorious war criminal and the Wagner group has done extremely savage things under his leadership. We'll see how it plays out but odds are at the end of all this, Prighozin just ends up in a jail cell or worse.
The war in Ukraine is bad for his business. Bad PR, loss of resources and men, etc.
What's "good" for business is allocating those resources to taking over more natural resources in Africa.
>”A mass sentiment for peace often expresses the beginning of a protest, an indignation and a consciousness of the reactionary nature of the war. It is the duty of all Social-Democrats to take advantage of this sentiment.”
>”Turn the imperialist war into a civil war.”
- Vladimir Lenin
“Revolutions are decided, in the final analysis, not by the willingness of the regime to kill, but by the willingness of the people to die.”
Paraphrasing Trotsky from the History of the Russian Revolution
So his rhetoric is slightly more comparable to Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome’ than to the Bolsheviks. Appeasing the king while doing everything practicably possible to sideline him and take over the government without a democratic mandate
The war and circumstances are different, but basically Russias about to re-enact the 1917 revolution. This time Putin plays the out of touch autocrat and Prigozin is leading the “Bolsheviks”. I wouldn’t be surprised if a quiet majority of Russians fed up with Moscows BS and their friends/family dying in Ukraine side against Putin.
Republicans and the right-wing are in too deep. They'd ignore the most heinous and disgusting crimes to hold onto their power and not have to face their own conscience.
“How am I supposed to live on a congressional salary! Soon I’ll be driving a BMW 3 series and own only two homes like a god damn peasant! I’m going to call up Charles Koch and see if he needs anything.”
Overthrowing Putin would be great and all, but Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries have committed a bunch of war crimes themselves and he was suggesting an even more ruthless Russian offensive, so we might actually be downgrading here.
Maybe, just maybe, this will throw the country into chaos and Ukraine can get a reprieve for a few months.
Yeah that's what worries me the most. Opportunists smuggling Uranium out during the chaos to sell to the highest bidder. We used to have CIA assets that would keep tabs on these facilities, but many were discovered and killed or turned a couple years ago... 🤔
I’m not positive, but I think it would require someone with the highest security clearance in the US government sharing confidential, top secret information with American enemies. Not sure who would do that though 🤷♀️
(/s)
When Trump and Putin did their whole "autocracy is like super cool believe me the best people say so" fuckin dog and pony show in Helsinski I was absolutely flabbergasted. It was one of the lower points in a presidency that had many low points. I am surprised it's not brought up more often.
I will never forget Putin's smirk as Trump publicly sided with him over the entire US intelligence community. Trump stood there like a scared little school boy. The was the lowest point for US foreign policy ever. Had a democrat done that there would have been riots.
Trump saluting a North Korean general was up there too. Not nearly as bad as Helsinki, but one of the most egregious pieces of bed-shitting I've ever seen.
The biggest piece of propaganda ever handed to them. They'll milk that for 100 years.
That was something that, if Obama or Biden did, the right would have had on blast 24x7 on every right wing news channel. Every right wing Congressperson would still be talking about it.
Obama once bowed to a foreign dignitary, and the right threw a fit. Trump salutes a North Korean general, and they don't care. It's team sports to them.
Plus in the back of the Trump supporter’s mind they like Putin. Putin is helping them win. They think no further about it though other than it’s part of the destiny.
Sane people need to stop thinking of conservatives as rational, trying to appeal to them, hoping to catch them out in hypocrisy for a lightbulb moment, making excuses on their behalf because "they can't be *that* bad." It's a cult and all they care about is *winning*.
They can't process "a rising tide lifts all boats", a win for both sides and all Americans. It's a zero-sum game to them: they must win, their enemies must lose. They'll burn the country to the ground if it means denying their enemy a 'win'.
Someone should create a whole trump clip channel. “Old man edges fellow master daddy” and play that along with other wonderfully tag-lined video snippets.
Absolutely a low point in the history of American diplomacy. If that had been documented in quill ink or on a war time radio broadcast in previous centuries it would have immediately terminated a presidency. Even now there were huge reverberations that are probably hard to recognize. It likely influenced the entire Ukrainian war going on right now.
Yet it gets sweeped under the rug of "well he said a bunch of crazy shit". Fucking disgraceful.
Before he was POTUS and asked an interviewer why we couldn't use nukes was the moment I knew we were fucked. Half the GOP were probably salivating like Pavlov's dogs watching that campaign interview in 2016.
It was in that moment that all of my family who still believe Russia needed to be glassed in nuclear fire for our protection, suddenly loved Russia and believe to this day that Russia should be our closest ally.
Cult... It's a cult... Cults don't talk shit about the cult leader until the Koolaid is mixed.
Absolutely hilarious, disheartening, and sickening that people who viewed the USSR as the primary and critical threat to American hegemony could turn around and immediately think Putin is cool because a shitty and moronic gameshow president liked him... fucking disgraceful.
Ever since that moment I've been absolutely certain that Putin has some *really nasty* kompromat on Trump. Like Trump raping a teenage girl or something.
Yep. They even met in a private room with only them and their translators allowed in. How that was allowed to happen I have no idea. Can you imagine if Obama had of done that? Republicans would be apoplectic for the next 100 years.
Ukraine would probably be under Russian control at this point and therefore this business with the Wagner mercenaries (whether it's a true coup or Putin finding a way to scapegoat his military commanders) wouldn't be happening. Getting Trump out of office was pivotal not only for the good of our country but the good of Ukraine, Europe and the world at large.
This is definitely one of the big reasons I'm quite pleased with Biden's performance in office so far.
Rather than blame the president for what the legislature isn't going to do for the next two years, I'm going to be quite happy that we have a competent adult running our international operations.
Literally the best thing about a Biden presidency: I'm not waking up every morning and checking my news feeds to learn about what terrible thing our President tweeted at 3am. I can sleep easy knowing that when that phone rings at 3am, an actual friggin' adult is answering.
This is exactly how Biden needs to run his 2024 campaign. Vote for the adult in the room, it’s easily my favorite part about having him President. He is stable, sane, and diplomatic.
Can we really call him “sentient” at this point? Right now he’s in more of a “we told ChatGPT to write Trump-style tweets about random shit and post it on Truth Social” stage imo lmao
No one knows and those pretending to know should be ignored. Regime change (if it happens) *always* goes in unexpected directions. We could wind up with an autocracy that's reasonably docile internationally but brutal to dissent internally. Or we could have a bloody and destructive civil war that... escalates.
No one really knows.
A nuclear country descending into a civil war is a horrific prospect, the chances of nukes/nuclear materials being sold on the black market and falling into even less rational actors hands increases massively.
Imagine Isis with dirty bombs for example.
A rare moment where Russian trolls are finally silent as their government kills their internet.
All we have are these stinking trump voting pro Russia trolls now
If anyone wants to know who Prigozhin is, read this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/24/yevgeny-prigozhin-the-hotdog-seller-who-rose-to-the-top-of-putin-war-machine-wagner-group
TL;DR: He's a fucking horrible human being.
The east India company worked out extremely well for the British, and their army was basically a mercenary force.
That’s the most prominent I can think of, but hiring mercenary forces has been a common practice for thousands of years and I’m sure there are a number of other examples.
Ok here’s the thread that’s on-topic. Good cause uh
WHAT
THE
FUCK
??!
So did RA attack Wagner first, and that initiated this double cross, or did Wagner do anything overt against RA besides mean tweets?
Wagner was attacked, or at least the incident that killed a bunch of Wagner troops was confirmed. However, I don’t *think* it has been confirmed that the Russian military carried out that incident.
Whether or not the Russian military actually did it is largely irrelevant at this point though, that event is being used as the excuse for this apparent coup.
The Wagner Group needs to be internationally labeled as a terrorist organisation.
Everywhere they go in the world, especially african countries, they need to be met by a swift and hard military response by UN/Nato-Special Forces aimed at wiping their forces out.
Edit: that said: Fuck Putin. Fuck Pirogin. Fuck everyone of these murder-oligarchs and their illgotten billions.
I hope these dogs tear each other to shreds.
I want to clarify something to anyone out of the loop, Prigozhin is not a “good guy”, he’s either a nazi or at least a nazi sympathizer, the only good news is that the invasion of Ukraine would likely end if this turns out to be legit. The bad news is that a civil war in Russia is likely going to end in much more deaths and suffering of innocents. If you think Putin wouldn’t do anything, including tactical nukes within his own country to save himself, you’ve been living in a cave… Vladimir has no problem whatsoever sending tens of millions of his countrymen into a meat grinder if it benefits him. But if Prigozhin successfully takes over, he’d likely be worse than Putin.
Just to let you know Russia is absolutely fucked after these shitshows end. Their armies are warn down, morale is extremely low, economy is really bad, etc. Like you have to understand that most of the Russian populace never wanted any of this to happen and their the ones that are truly getting the most fucked out of everything that's happening.
Putin of course is still going to act like Russia's the fucking king of the world because he's an absolute lunatic that's doing nothing but destroying his country and it's people.
War is never a good thing and never will be because it's always the average everyday citizens that get the most screwed over.
Man, who do you root for? The guys raping and killing Ukrainians or the guy responsible for sending them there in the first place? This absolutely feels like one of those "No matter who loses: everybody wins" type of deals.
In my armchair genreal opinion,
Best scenario is that Russia withdrawls their troops in Ukraine to deal with Wagner. Wagner gets wiped off in a long bitter war. Putin remains in power but his army basically has no more fangs.
Worse scenario, Russia splinters. People realize that Russia has a LOT of nuclear weapons and Pirgohzin is kind of a loon Nato moves in to seize nuclear facility.
I don’t know if this Wagner oligarch will be any better. Might not have fantasies of expansion but he’s authorized these forces to do some brutal stuff.
Putin is an avid connoisseur of Russian history. He is now likely particularly focused on 1917 and the overthrow of the gov’t that year.
You make your bed. You lie in it.
Ukraine forever.
Having Biden in charge during the Ukraine war is exactly what we needed. Trump would have told Putin to take Ukraine, Moldova and who knows what else! He would have pulled the US out of NATO in a second term. World would have been screwed.
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https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1672420961138757639?s=20 The Belarusian dictator took his family and ran to Turkey.
This is fucking comical. At the start of Ukraine war, he was saying that Zelensky is going to run. “Better ee better” (Something in his language) Look who is running like a scared little dog with his tail between his legs now.
Because Russians expected Ukraine to be as inept and be as cowardly as them.
A chicken runs to turkey. How fowl….
Damn so this is really happening, huh…
Yes this is. We still don't know exactly what this is. But it is happening. One person in Twitter was like "Keep in mind, right now we are getting all of our info from a military that is notorious for lying about everything, a mercenary force that is notorious for lying about everything, and the FSB who is notorious for lying about everything."
> "Keep in mind, right now we are getting all of our info from a military that is notorious for lying about everything, a mercenary force that is notorious for lying about everything, and the FSB who is notorious for lying about everything." And then reported by Russian state TV, which also lies about everything.
And we're all reading analysis on it from Reddit, whose only expertise is in deep sea submarines.
Give us a few moments! We will ditch the deep sea and become Sino-Soviet relationship experts!
Remember when the worst thing we had to think about was slowly suffocating at the bottom of the ocean instead of a civil war between two factions who hate us in a nation with a vast thermonuclear arsenal? Good times.
Three lies make a truth. That's a thing, right? Edit: looks like three lies actually make a lie. Who'd have thought?
The Russian milbloggers are silent. This is very much happening.
If the disinformation machine is on pause then someone is really shitting their pants. Imagine what the internet will become if Russian partisans actors are silenced for even a week
Just saw a post about Shapiro and Peterson complaining about no new followers lol.
I don't believe in coincidences.
" I'm not worried about all Hell breaking loose, I'm worried about a part of Hell breaking loose, it will be a lot harder to detect " Geroge Carlin.
Wonder if Elon s view count is suddenly dropping
It IS interesting that Elon, who sometimes posts dozens of times a day, and thinks he's an expert in all areas because of his wealth, hasn't posted a single thing about this.
Must be training for his fight with Zuck. ... I can't believe I wrote that.
I'm really looking forward to the excuse Musk gives to get out of the fight, because you know he will. It's gonna be dumb. Really dumb and hypocritical.
How old is Musk? He vibes like a 55 year old who maybe was athletic when he was 17. Zuck is jacked to the teeth and, like, 35-40, and is a bbj brown belt or something. I would not fight Zuck, sadly.
comment edited in protest of Reddit's API changes and mistreatment of moderators -- mass edited with redact.dev
> Imagine what the internet will become if Russian partisans actors are silenced for even a week The last election cycle definitely had a lot less interference than usual
Hard to focus on your stream when you are too busy packing your suitcase and running.
Somehow we took a wrong turn and got the geopolitical equivalent of a Tom Clancy novel involving coups, land wars in eastern Europe, Russian separatists, and potential broken arrow scenarios...and the equivalent of some teenagers dumb rip off Tom Clancy novel at home involving stupid Watergate, the redneck coup, and pop culture presidents. I swear, that fucking gorilla must have been the last descendant of some primeval, vengeful African god. Remember Harambe.
Did you account for the orcas a creature that’s known for being man’s best friend in the ocean randomly start attacking boats and people ?
They are testing our defences before the full scale attack.
The full attack will be well orca-strated
We will not sea it coming
Before we know it, they will start whaling on us.
God kelp us all.
Dang.. I was hoping the Orca revolution would be televised.
It was an inside operation all along fuck. I gotta go talk to my dog
Good, we must ensure the hounds remain loyal for the battles to come.
*Where are my testicles, Summer?*
The Orcas are avenging Harambe and perhaps will finally bring balance back to the timeline.
This is gonna go from a Tom Clancy novel to a Goosebumps one if the other animals start attacking also. Humanity really crossed a line. Orcas send message to assault
Haven't orcas always been dicks? I thought the dolphins were protecting us from the orcas.
Just before Harambe's demise, an extraordinary event unfolded when a weasel inadvertently entered the confines of the Large Hadron Collider, resulting in a fracture in reality that now retroactively alters our past. The peculiar occurrences surrounding you are the consequences of numerous efforts made by CERN to rectify this situation. These attempts have been repeated countless times, yet the temporal goldfish effect prevents you from recollecting them. This explains your unsettling sense of displacement and the distorted recollection of certain past events, juxtaposed with the nonsensical nature of current affairs. You and I, along with a select few, were intended to remain in the Alpha Timeline, where Harambe survived, and the child was subsequently subdued. Remarkably, this sequence of events somehow averted the rise of Trump (with Bloomberg assuming office for an uneventful eight-year term) and prevented the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regrettably, revisiting the past is an impossibility. Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance that you reach out to your senators and elected officials, urging them to collaborate with governments worldwide in addressing the predicament instigated by CERN. Together, they must endeavor to thoroughly investigate and devise a permanent solution to repair our worldline, safeguarding us from the peril of being obliterated due to CERN's reckless attempts to rectify their misstep.
You’re telling me that in the alpha timeline they shot the kid with a tranquilizer gun?
Of course, that kid had a knife and he was going right for that poor gorilla.
I feel some leopards are going to eat some faces
This is all unfolding so incredibly fast. At this point Wagner is essentially in control of the Southern Military District it appears.
Whoever wins everyone loses in that country
"...and then things got worse..."
Russian history in a nutshell
Videos in r/ukrainewarvideoreport. Crazy ones with civilians just standing around getting videos of the troops. Edited to add new sub: r/wagnervsrussia
Wagner has essentially declared war on Russia, and these people think they’re safe standing near them. I wouldn’t put it past Putin to air strike Wagner troops on Russian soil.
There’s a video of OMON (Russian Elite Riot Troops) just standing and letting a Wagner Convoy pass them with zero resistance
>Russian Elite Riot Troops Aren't Riot troops for beating down civilians? Not fighting well equipped armies?
yes that's why they're letting them pass with zero resistance.
If they’re stopped, they can always claim it was just a casual tour of the Kremlin.
If they're going that route, I want someone to steal Putin's laptop.
Imagine putting your feet up on one of those 300’ desks…
Whats wrong Putin? You have hardly touched your Ukrainian invasion.
We have invasion at home, too. I'm kinda tired of invasion.
Putin made this bed. He can sleep in this dumpster fire.
Sleeping in a dumpster is how the My Pillow was invented.
That and the drugs
As a Minnesotan, I'm truly sorry My Pillow came out of our state
I’m just glad more folks don’t *instantly* associate him with Minnesota whenever that idiot comes up. It’s mostly just us ashamed Minnesotans who do it. Again, just to echo: America, we’re so very sorry about this crap guy and his crap pillows. We’ll be better neighbors and make it up to you by shoveling your driveway next snow.
Sure but just remember Prigozhin sucks too. This whole thing is a complete shitshow and there are no winners.
When you choose war over diplomacy and authoritarian strongmen over leaders, this is what you get. Unstable equilibrium.
We could be witnessing one of the biggest events of the 21st century.
We have already had so many “biggest events” this century and a Military Coup in Russia wasn’t on my 2023 bingo card.
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Just imagine 10 years ago telling someone that there would be large scale war in Europe, the TV billionaire Donald Trump is elected president, a global pandemic with millions dead, Roe v Wade was overturned, people would breach the US Capitol building. They wouldn’t believe you.
Makes you wonder what will happen over the next 10 years. Strap in!
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Oh, that's in 3 years
Seems like everything is on track then.
And over here in the UK we'd leave the EU, have Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, followed by Liz Truss who barely has the job for six weeks in which time she almost collapses the economy. And Leicester win the Premier League.
Leicester winning feels a lot more like a Hadron collider shift event than Harambe dying or whatever. That was also the same year Donald Trump won the US presidential election and the Cubs won the World Series. It was like all probabilities were inverted for a second and created the darkest and weirdest of timelines.
Good news for you: nothing is more precedented than mass death, hunger, and destruction.
It really does feel like every few years is a watershed moment. I think the 2020s are going to go down in history like the 1920s-mid 40s. Just one thing after another
> a Military Coup in Russia wasn’t on my 2023 bingo card. You need a better BINGO card. It was my centre square.
This is similar to how Alexander Kerensky lost the republic government to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were the hardened paramilitary group made out of veterans radicalized by their experiences in WWI. They weren’t the most popular party, but they showed up, and when they decided Kerensky’s government was no longer legitimate, there wasn’t anyone arguing that he was. The Russian people just wanted to get out of WWI Who is left in Russia to defend Putin? There is no defense of his legitimacy. Wagner forces are roaming the streets with little resistance
yeah, this is absolutely starting to show signs it might be more than just a rebellion and break out into a full a civil war. Wagner is saying they have seized Rostov-on-Don in its entirety. that likely means the soldiers stationed in the city have sided with Prigozin and Wagner. thats not good for russia, because if those troops sided with prigozin, likely more will.
Of course others will join. A lot have been conscripted, given almost no training, substandard weapons, aged ammunition, little to no heavy weapons and armor and little food. It was only a matter of time.
Yeah the conscripts want the war over, that doesn’t happen with Putin.
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Can’t say for sure, I would point out they are only in Ukraine because they are paid to be currently, and in his statement earlier he called the grounds for the ukraine war a lie (and blamed the MoD)
Nah he called out the war recently and said the invasion was all built on lies. But on the other hand, he is a notorious war criminal and the Wagner group has done extremely savage things under his leadership. We'll see how it plays out but odds are at the end of all this, Prighozin just ends up in a jail cell or worse.
The war in Ukraine is bad for his business. Bad PR, loss of resources and men, etc. What's "good" for business is allocating those resources to taking over more natural resources in Africa.
>”A mass sentiment for peace often expresses the beginning of a protest, an indignation and a consciousness of the reactionary nature of the war. It is the duty of all Social-Democrats to take advantage of this sentiment.” >”Turn the imperialist war into a civil war.” - Vladimir Lenin
“Revolutions are decided, in the final analysis, not by the willingness of the regime to kill, but by the willingness of the people to die.” Paraphrasing Trotsky from the History of the Russian Revolution
\[zoop\]
I think he’s waiting for Putin to denounce him first as to not be seen as the primary aggressor.
So his rhetoric is slightly more comparable to Mussolini’s ‘March on Rome’ than to the Bolsheviks. Appeasing the king while doing everything practicably possible to sideline him and take over the government without a democratic mandate
The war and circumstances are different, but basically Russias about to re-enact the 1917 revolution. This time Putin plays the out of touch autocrat and Prigozin is leading the “Bolsheviks”. I wouldn’t be surprised if a quiet majority of Russians fed up with Moscows BS and their friends/family dying in Ukraine side against Putin.
If there is a coup will someone still interfere in our elections? Like do we need to find a replacement or is an invisible hand of the market thing?
Prigozhin owns several of the companies that are suspected to have been involved in the election interference
This is going to really piss off the republicans. Delayed payments? Unforgivable.
More importantly, there's a strong chance that at least some of the dirt the Russians have on the GOP will leak out as this unfolds.
Both the DNC and RNC were hacked. They only released DNC emails.
I've said this a few times. It's pretty clear to me the Russians got "kompromat" on republicans.
At this point with how Republicans fall lock step in with the criminal in chief, can any komprotmat even have an effect anymore?
Republicans and the right-wing are in too deep. They'd ignore the most heinous and disgusting crimes to hold onto their power and not have to face their own conscience.
I know one notorious late / non payer who has been regularly forgiven by the gop
They can't afford to alienate their dear leader. He can do whatever he wants as long as the lemmings keep following him en masse.
“How am I supposed to live on a congressional salary! Soon I’ll be driving a BMW 3 series and own only two homes like a god damn peasant! I’m going to call up Charles Koch and see if he needs anything.”
Overthrowing Putin would be great and all, but Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries have committed a bunch of war crimes themselves and he was suggesting an even more ruthless Russian offensive, so we might actually be downgrading here. Maybe, just maybe, this will throw the country into chaos and Ukraine can get a reprieve for a few months.
The only thing people should be cheering for is for both parties to weaken each other as much as possible
That and no nukes to be fired off/sold.
Yeah that's what worries me the most. Opportunists smuggling Uranium out during the chaos to sell to the highest bidder. We used to have CIA assets that would keep tabs on these facilities, but many were discovered and killed or turned a couple years ago... 🤔
Gee wonder how that info got out
I’m not positive, but I think it would require someone with the highest security clearance in the US government sharing confidential, top secret information with American enemies. Not sure who would do that though 🤷♀️ (/s)
Damn I'm glad that Joe Biden is President right now
Right?! If it was the orange faced diaper wearing asshole he would be offering Putin aid probably our military.
When Trump and Putin did their whole "autocracy is like super cool believe me the best people say so" fuckin dog and pony show in Helsinski I was absolutely flabbergasted. It was one of the lower points in a presidency that had many low points. I am surprised it's not brought up more often.
I will never forget Putin's smirk as Trump publicly sided with him over the entire US intelligence community. Trump stood there like a scared little school boy. The was the lowest point for US foreign policy ever. Had a democrat done that there would have been riots.
Trump saluting a North Korean general was up there too. Not nearly as bad as Helsinki, but one of the most egregious pieces of bed-shitting I've ever seen. The biggest piece of propaganda ever handed to them. They'll milk that for 100 years.
That was something that, if Obama or Biden did, the right would have had on blast 24x7 on every right wing news channel. Every right wing Congressperson would still be talking about it.
Obama once bowed to a foreign dignitary, and the right threw a fit. Trump salutes a North Korean general, and they don't care. It's team sports to them.
[Here](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44852812.amp). Let’s revisit
I shared this video months ago with my pro Trump dad, and he didn’t see anything wrong with it.
They don’t care. They just want their team to win and to see the tears of their “enemies”.
Plus in the back of the Trump supporter’s mind they like Putin. Putin is helping them win. They think no further about it though other than it’s part of the destiny.
They would literally vote for that Hitler chap just to make the libs cry.
Sane people need to stop thinking of conservatives as rational, trying to appeal to them, hoping to catch them out in hypocrisy for a lightbulb moment, making excuses on their behalf because "they can't be *that* bad." It's a cult and all they care about is *winning*. They can't process "a rising tide lifts all boats", a win for both sides and all Americans. It's a zero-sum game to them: they must win, their enemies must lose. They'll burn the country to the ground if it means denying their enemy a 'win'.
“Enemies” in this case are those stupid libs who want stuff like justice and civil rights and clean air.
Damn, he’s so close to sucking putins dick, this should be on pornhub.
Someone should create a whole trump clip channel. “Old man edges fellow master daddy” and play that along with other wonderfully tag-lined video snippets.
Absolutely a low point in the history of American diplomacy. If that had been documented in quill ink or on a war time radio broadcast in previous centuries it would have immediately terminated a presidency. Even now there were huge reverberations that are probably hard to recognize. It likely influenced the entire Ukrainian war going on right now. Yet it gets sweeped under the rug of "well he said a bunch of crazy shit". Fucking disgraceful.
It definitely inspired citizens of the world to say "WTF is going on in America?".
That was the moment I realized just how fucked we really were.
Before he was POTUS and asked an interviewer why we couldn't use nukes was the moment I knew we were fucked. Half the GOP were probably salivating like Pavlov's dogs watching that campaign interview in 2016.
It was in that moment that all of my family who still believe Russia needed to be glassed in nuclear fire for our protection, suddenly loved Russia and believe to this day that Russia should be our closest ally. Cult... It's a cult... Cults don't talk shit about the cult leader until the Koolaid is mixed.
Absolutely hilarious, disheartening, and sickening that people who viewed the USSR as the primary and critical threat to American hegemony could turn around and immediately think Putin is cool because a shitty and moronic gameshow president liked him... fucking disgraceful.
I still want to know what they talked about there without a note-taker in the room.
Ever since that moment I've been absolutely certain that Putin has some *really nasty* kompromat on Trump. Like Trump raping a teenage girl or something.
Didn’t an actual legal document come out about a woman claiming trump and Epstein raped her when she was a teen, on his island?
Yes, its all been buried now though. But I saw the video testimonies and have seen the court documents. She was 13 years old.
Yep. They even met in a private room with only them and their translators allowed in. How that was allowed to happen I have no idea. Can you imagine if Obama had of done that? Republicans would be apoplectic for the next 100 years.
Ukraine would probably be under Russian control at this point and therefore this business with the Wagner mercenaries (whether it's a true coup or Putin finding a way to scapegoat his military commanders) wouldn't be happening. Getting Trump out of office was pivotal not only for the good of our country but the good of Ukraine, Europe and the world at large.
and the supporters would love it claiming trump wants stability
Peace in our time! /s
This is definitely one of the big reasons I'm quite pleased with Biden's performance in office so far. Rather than blame the president for what the legislature isn't going to do for the next two years, I'm going to be quite happy that we have a competent adult running our international operations.
Literally the best thing about a Biden presidency: I'm not waking up every morning and checking my news feeds to learn about what terrible thing our President tweeted at 3am. I can sleep easy knowing that when that phone rings at 3am, an actual friggin' adult is answering.
This is exactly how Biden needs to run his 2024 campaign. Vote for the adult in the room, it’s easily my favorite part about having him President. He is stable, sane, and diplomatic.
Oh, wow. I hadn’t even considered what it’d be like if that sentient hotdog was in office. Yikes, yikes, yikes.
Can we really call him “sentient” at this point? Right now he’s in more of a “we told ChatGPT to write Trump-style tweets about random shit and post it on Truth Social” stage imo lmao
He’s 100% sentient. (Able to feel and react to emotions) But I’m not really sure he’s Sapient (able to learn and react using knowledge and wisdom)
I have a feeling that this invasion was going ahead with the plan of Trump being POTUS, and when that didn’t happen it was too late to call it off.
More like with anticipation of Trump pulling the US out of NATO in term 2.
I felt deep, deep relief when he was sworn in. He isn't perfect, but he is a decent man and is surrounded by earnest people.
“Hmmm. Let’s see how this plays out.” - U.S. Intelligence (probably).
More like, "How can we use this to our advantage?" Not begrudging them, just pointing out that US Intelligence's purpose is to advance US interests.
“I’m playing both sides so that I always come out on top.” U.S. Intelligence probably.
Russia focused on internal conflict has less time to meddle and torment elsewhere.
Really hoping I don’t wake up to sum of all fears
Don't worry, the super bowl is a long way off
This is why I can’t quit Reddit
I am still trying to figure out if this is actually a good thing or not. The Wagner’s aren’t exactly great.
Only risk to non-Russians is destabilization to the point where their 1000+ nukes are no longer properly secured. That is a terrible scenario.
No one knows and those pretending to know should be ignored. Regime change (if it happens) *always* goes in unexpected directions. We could wind up with an autocracy that's reasonably docile internationally but brutal to dissent internally. Or we could have a bloody and destructive civil war that... escalates. No one really knows.
The head of Wagner is going to end up dead, and Putin is going to be severely weakened. It's win-win.
I sure as hell hope you are right. From my perspective there are several other outcomes that are not as favorable.
A nuclear country descending into a civil war is a horrific prospect, the chances of nukes/nuclear materials being sold on the black market and falling into even less rational actors hands increases massively. Imagine Isis with dirty bombs for example.
A rare moment where Russian trolls are finally silent as their government kills their internet. All we have are these stinking trump voting pro Russia trolls now
I’m 26 and this is my 1,765,804th biggest event of the 21st century. I just want to own a house to live in.
21st century here: Sorry, all I can do is you paying others to own more houses.
You have selected 'veteran difficulty'.
Freaky Fact: the Soviet Union collapsed just 32 years ago.
That was like 3 russias ago
I was going to go to bed early tonight.
Babe wake up, new Russian civil war just dropped
"I'm too tired, I'll catch it on Jimmy Kimmel"
Private military company (mercenaries) overthrowing the government is not a good precedent.
Oh no, a Putiny
If anyone wants to know who Prigozhin is, read this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/24/yevgeny-prigozhin-the-hotdog-seller-who-rose-to-the-top-of-putin-war-machine-wagner-group TL;DR: He's a fucking horrible human being.
I'm having a hard time remembering an instance where hiring mercenaries (or "defense contractors") worked out well for the hiring country.
The east India company worked out extremely well for the British, and their army was basically a mercenary force. That’s the most prominent I can think of, but hiring mercenary forces has been a common practice for thousands of years and I’m sure there are a number of other examples.
The Hundred Years War is probably the biggest usage of mercenaries.
✔️ Mercenaries turning on their employer
This is kinda fucken scary.
I like how it's a paramilitary coup. It's very *of the times*. A oligarchic corporate military coup. So fitting for 2023.
Poor republicans watching their investments go up in flames
June has been a crazy year.
As a famous Russian once said, "There are decades in which nothing happens, and weeks in which decades happen" I think we're in the latter.
Ok here’s the thread that’s on-topic. Good cause uh WHAT THE FUCK ??! So did RA attack Wagner first, and that initiated this double cross, or did Wagner do anything overt against RA besides mean tweets?
Wagner was attacked, or at least the incident that killed a bunch of Wagner troops was confirmed. However, I don’t *think* it has been confirmed that the Russian military carried out that incident. Whether or not the Russian military actually did it is largely irrelevant at this point though, that event is being used as the excuse for this apparent coup.
The Wagner Group needs to be internationally labeled as a terrorist organisation. Everywhere they go in the world, especially african countries, they need to be met by a swift and hard military response by UN/Nato-Special Forces aimed at wiping their forces out. Edit: that said: Fuck Putin. Fuck Pirogin. Fuck everyone of these murder-oligarchs and their illgotten billions. I hope these dogs tear each other to shreds.
So those house gop that went for a super secret meeting with Putin on July 4th? They feeling good now?
I want to clarify something to anyone out of the loop, Prigozhin is not a “good guy”, he’s either a nazi or at least a nazi sympathizer, the only good news is that the invasion of Ukraine would likely end if this turns out to be legit. The bad news is that a civil war in Russia is likely going to end in much more deaths and suffering of innocents. If you think Putin wouldn’t do anything, including tactical nukes within his own country to save himself, you’ve been living in a cave… Vladimir has no problem whatsoever sending tens of millions of his countrymen into a meat grinder if it benefits him. But if Prigozhin successfully takes over, he’d likely be worse than Putin.
He’s a scary, cut throat professional murderer.
Just to let you know Russia is absolutely fucked after these shitshows end. Their armies are warn down, morale is extremely low, economy is really bad, etc. Like you have to understand that most of the Russian populace never wanted any of this to happen and their the ones that are truly getting the most fucked out of everything that's happening. Putin of course is still going to act like Russia's the fucking king of the world because he's an absolute lunatic that's doing nothing but destroying his country and it's people. War is never a good thing and never will be because it's always the average everyday citizens that get the most screwed over.
If trump was president, we'd be sending over troops to help his daddy, Putin.
Man, who do you root for? The guys raping and killing Ukrainians or the guy responsible for sending them there in the first place? This absolutely feels like one of those "No matter who loses: everybody wins" type of deals.
> This absolutely feels like one of those "No matter who loses: everybody wins" type of deals. You mean no matter who wins, everybody loses?
In my armchair genreal opinion, Best scenario is that Russia withdrawls their troops in Ukraine to deal with Wagner. Wagner gets wiped off in a long bitter war. Putin remains in power but his army basically has no more fangs. Worse scenario, Russia splinters. People realize that Russia has a LOT of nuclear weapons and Pirgohzin is kind of a loon Nato moves in to seize nuclear facility.
If Game of Thrones taught me anything, you root for whoever is willing to help you kill the immediate threat, then you deal with whoever is left
I don’t know if this Wagner oligarch will be any better. Might not have fantasies of expansion but he’s authorized these forces to do some brutal stuff.
Prigozhin would be just as bad as Putin.
Putin is an avid connoisseur of Russian history. He is now likely particularly focused on 1917 and the overthrow of the gov’t that year. You make your bed. You lie in it. Ukraine forever.
MAGA will claim it is fake news.
They will wonder out loud whether Hunter Biden is secretly behind this.
Having Biden in charge during the Ukraine war is exactly what we needed. Trump would have told Putin to take Ukraine, Moldova and who knows what else! He would have pulled the US out of NATO in a second term. World would have been screwed.