Prigozhin Declares Plans to Expand Wagner, Create An "Army With An Ideology", Imprison Oligarchs and Chinovniks
A new era dawns
So much for “no political ambitions”.
Political theatrics aside, the more interesting Prigozhin news was this:
Prigozhin wants to expand his own private army and is now looking for an ideology to justify its existence. “Justice” is certainly the most in-vogue term of our times. I think I wrote about how the term “Justice” would almost invariably be used in any new Russian “ideology” should it come to be adopted at some point. Can’t remember where though. Let’s just say, I get how these people think and the political lexicon that they are comfortable with.
Of course, “his” private army is a bit of a misnomer. There are other people running this operation too. Prigozhin’s the guy with Moscow connections and Putin’s ear on occasion. This is probably because Putin seems most comfortable associating himself with people like Prigozhin. Take that as you will. Also, I would be remiss if I did not share Strelkov’s (the patron saint of this blog) misgivings about Prigozhin.
A “noviop” is a term that refers to Moscow mystery-meat mongrels in power used by right-wingers in the Slavlands. Ex. Shoigu, Lavrov, Mishustin, and well, the list is quite long.
I have argued that Bakhmut was a political battle first and foremost with no real strategic significance multiple times. It was launched because Russia did not have the capabilities for launching a large, “big arrow” offensive. So, they had to settle for something close to the contact line where artillery and infantry could be used. And no, this is not “attrition warfare” because the Russians are losing plenty of men for every inch of territory that they take as well.
Now, despite its lack of greater strategic significance, it has become significant for other reasons. For one thing, it is a massive PR battle. It is now also part of a greater internal political battle between Wagner and the MoD and parts of the Moscow ruling elite. It is a point of contention between the US, Kiev and within the Kiev government. as well. Bakhmut now also has military significance because of the aforementioned factors leading Ukraine to continue to commit reserves to its defense thereby possibly delaying their planned offensive to the south. An offensive that literally everyone is talking about now, which they weren’t when I wrote my prediction about it.
As far as I’m concerned, my prediction is halfway fulfilled.
Anyways, Prigozhin.
You gotta hand it to the guy:
His message: “I’m out there getting things done, facing the enemy head-on while the bureaucrats sell the country out!”
He definitely knows how to to play the populist media game. There’s something very Trump-like about him, especially his preferred tactic of taking the offensive in the media. Unlike the Kremlin that is always on the defensive and trying to respond to Western targeted media attacks, Prigozhin forces the enemy media to talk about him on his terms. All of these media stunts are also designed to bolster his public profile and, despite the media blackout by Russian state media (and 5D Russia bloggers by extension) on him, he is making progress with building a powerful popular image for himself.
Now, I don’t think that he will run for president of Ukraine. But, I do think he will run for office in Russia.
Putin remains quite popular, but the other shoe has not fallen yet on this whole Ukraine thing. Should Ukraine win back more territory, or another backroom deal be struck concluding an unsavory and temporary peace, his popularity will plummet. But this all remains speculation for now. We know that Putin will run again, and barring admittedly foreseen and very predictable possible developments, he will win handily and fairly by a large margin.
As for the expansion of Wagner, well, they certainly have their opponents in Moscow who would see the group’s growth throttled. Prigozhin thinks that they should be imprisoned.
Amazingly, the idea of creating several feudal armies all over Russia appears to be acceptable to the Kremlin in general. There seem to be private armies popping up in Russia all the time now. At this point, I’m waiting for Sberbank to announce the creation of the SberKut Expeditionary Forces any day now.
“Why is this happening,” you ask?
Simple: the Kremlin doesn’t have any desire of nationalizing key sectors of the economy, because they are in private hands of a tightly connected web of Kremlin-aligned oligarchs. So, instead of taking Gazprom away from Miller, they instead ask him to use some of his money to help in the fight. A short-term, make-do compromise. One that couldn’t possibly have any blowback effects in the years to come.
As for me, I am content to remain a part of my current outfit: the Terrorgram Battalion - Cyber Warfare Division.
DISCLAIMER: “Terrorgram” is not a real group. I simply spliced the words Terror and Telegram together because it was funny, googled the term and found the above pic on some Liberal’s blog complaining about lack of censorship on Telegram. I do not engage in any kind of terrorism on Telegram or any other place. I mostly just share memes.
Bakhmut has symbolic meaning because Ukra chose it as the local HQ to fight the separatists. It was chosen because it is located between the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk. It also made a good military HQ because it was a good transport hub.
>>>the Kremlin doesn’t have any desire of nationalizing key sectors of the economy, because they are in private hands of a tightly connected web of Kremlin-aligned oligarchs.
But that would be communism, wouldn't it? And it would be such an abominable, horrible, disgusting thing. Didn't we already leave that in the dustbin of history for good?
One thing to note: back in the aftermath of WWI, communists took power in Russia, but they failed everywhere else in Central and Western Europe, even though the ideological foundations had been laid precisely in Central and Western Europe. Why those differential outcomes? They had been a rather marginal group in Russia, not a major political force in any way.
Because in the West you had these large networks of economic dependencies, with what we would now call oligarchs in the center (of course that term is only ever to be used for the former Soviet space, there has never been, there isn't, and there can never be such a thing under "proper capitalism"), but also a very sizable bourgeoisie class that also benefited from the system. Plus the church, which is often forgotten in these discussions.
So it proved very hard to dislodge these entrenched interests that had established their iron grip on society over centuries.
In contrast, in Russia the autocracy had the unexpected effect of suppressing them -- there was the aristocracy of course, but it was a lot less independent than the megarich in the West, and the size of the support class was much smaller. And the church had also always been subservient to the state, not a powerful independent actor, so the autocrat being the singular point of failure affected it too.
So there was much less accumulate baggage to clear out, more popular support for a radical alternative, and thus communists succeeded in the subsequent civil war.
But modern Russia has now built such a network over several generations (it arguably started forming already in the later decades of the USSR, and that was a direct reason why it was blown apart from within).
How do you clear that, even assuming someone would actually take on that daunting task, which does not look likely at all right now?
It isn't just a matter of taking out the oligarchs, there is a very large number of people invested in maintaining the current system -- managers, submanagers, economists, academics, media figures, bureaucrats, etc. During Stalin's purges something approaching a million people were physically disposed of. Physically. Cleaning out the current mess may well require analogously brutal methods, but the size of the corrosive and unreliable elements group is larger now.
In that context oligarchs are now encouraged to create private armies...
WTF???