Get ready for the flood of kompromat
As Vladimir Putin sits thinking in his bomb-proof office, he may come to regret the fact that the entire world is sure that he ordered the death of the mutinous mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. The Kremlin is a Camorra, a mafia style parliament, running a gangster operation to fill Putin’s pockets and those of his oligarchs and elites. But as the Japanese found in Burma in 1944, if you prosecute a war with terror you will likely come unstuck against a well led, motivated and moral organisation like General ‘Bill’ Slim’s ‘Forgotten Army’.
Putin may in fact have signed his own death warrant. His fingerprints may not have been on the firing button when Prigozhin’s jet was brought down, and may not have been on the Polonium or Novichok which killed some of his other opponents, but his DNA is all over the orders. He now has two very powerful groups to worry about – quite apart from the International Criminal Court, which no doubt has so much evidence that if he ever gets to the Hague he will never leave.
Firstly, Putin must worry about his oligarchs who have now been holed up in their dachas in Moscow for over 18 months, unable to use their superyachts or villas in the Mediterranean. As their leader is further vilified around the globe over this latest murder, the oligarchs may come to see that their only chance to break out of Russia, now so diminished economically and socially, is to dispose of Putin.
Secondly, the Wagner Group might have lost their ‘cowboy’ leader and his deputy, but they remain a large force of thugs and murderers. Prigozhin was no military commander, but the Wagner Group is the most successful military outfit that Russia has managed to put into the field, no matter that they are paid mercenaries, many of them recruited out of Russian jails. To control such a rabble, you need some very hard ‘lieutenants’ running the show and these men will now be considering the future in Belarus and Africa. How ironic it would be if somebody showered them with riches to go and create mayhem within Russia. My experience of mercenaries is that they are not too picky about whose money they take.
archive link: https://archive.is/mMry3
I think you are mistaking fictionalized narratives around mercenary armies for how real mercenary armies act and behave.
What has your experience with mercenaries shown?
That I should not speculate on the motives or incentives of groups that I don’t have direct experience with. It causes me to make assumptions that aren’t validated by reality.
Edit: To be clear, I didn’t write the article. My bona fides don’t have any bearing on this because I’m not the one writing articles for the Telegraph suggesting I can predict the actions of mercenary groups. My read is that the author shouldn’t be speculating either (without providing additional information).
You’re just doing the same thing in the opposite direction. Calling his take “fictional” is making a claim, not ‘just asking questions’.
Dude has a problem with his question being answered.
The guy who wrote the article has experience in a combat zone and has seen more military action than he will ever have.
By any standard these are speculations but they are presented by someone who has direct knowledge about these kind of groups, therefore they might be slightly more reliable than the average person’s point of view.
If you are not happy with this explanation I’m afraid I cannot provide you with anything else
There’s also probably a lot to be said for his 3 or so years at HQ Land Command as assistant director intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. While I don’t have any personal experience to speak of in this regard either, “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance” at his level seems like he would have seen a lot of paid informant sources on the ground and been involved in analysis in terms of both intelligence and counter-intelligence of those sources. That could have been both sources being paid for information and to give misinformation, evaluation of who might be paying those sources to give you misinformation, and reports on a variety of mercenary activities. That experience might be doing the heavy lifting here.
And, there’s always the chance that he’s still involved in some capacity post retirement. If that continuing relationship did exist, it could mean he has information he’s been asked to speak publicly from or it could be he’s asked to spin public narratives.
What he has to say probably means something, but there’s probably no way to tell what exactly that is. I mean, there’s a wikipedia page about this guy’s career. That’s not true for most people.
Thank you for expressing so well a simple thought that seems to be complicated to some of the people intervening in this thread!
Kudos!
I served in the US military around the same time period this guy did. I was on active patrol. I worked with contractors. Does that make me qualified to discuss the potential leanings of a private mercenary army in Russia?
No. It sure as fucking shit doesn’t. I could comment on signal propagation or beam formation, or heterodyning, or many other things. But I would be unqualified to speculate on all things ‘military’, such as relationships with mercenaries. The author made a speculative point that I think warrants criticism, and based on the limited information about their background, I don’t think is particularly well informed.
Its make a critical reading of things because its too easy to make colorful or convenient assumptions.
While you were on active duty and patroling the streets this dude has been (and I quote) “from 2007 to 2010, he was based at HQ Land Command as assistant director intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance”.
Do you think in this timeframe and under this qualification he might have had the chance to gather information and intelligence on some of the most well-known paramilitary and private mercenary armies such as Wagner?
IMHO I reckon he had more knowledge about these issues than a grunt on the groun so, if you aren’t qualified to speak about these issues, I don’t see the same situation with Mr. Gordon.
Then again these are just speculations on his side but they are far more informed than what you are trying to sell me with your (willingly?) limited and inaccurate analysis of his career.
I wonder what your experience with mercenaries is.