Sitll undecided what to make of it, a lot of things suggest maskirovka:
1. Everything from the start gains immediate full coverage in official Russian media. RT, Sputnik, Russian bloggers, they start pumping out news about Prigozhin's coup
2. Coordinated media coverage is accompanied by seemingly coordinated response, FSB basically announces Prigozhin a persona non grata, generals starting with Surovikin start publishing videos begging Chef to stop and so on. Wouldn't the more logical response in an event like this would be keeping silent to not give the enemy fuel, and dealing with it quitely? Am I supposed to believe that FSB didn't have an asset close to Prigozhin ready to simply blow his brains out if he ever gets off the leash? What Russia started immediately doing was broadcasting to the whole world "HEY WE HAVE A COUP LOOK THERE'S A TOTALLY REAL COUP THERE LOOK HERE!"
3. Meanwhile, so far I haven't see any actual fire exchanges or anything like that. I heard talks of some combat taking place but with no visual confirmation
4. The photo ops taken in Rostov look EXTREMELY staged. I mean look at this:
Am I supposed to actually look at this and believe that there is some hardcore urban warfare going on? Couldn't they actually got the guy who directed "Best in Hell" to direct some short clips about this "coup" so at least it looks realistic?
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All of that being said, these are just things that stand out to me as sus, it's not some conspiracy theory that I stand by. After all, Prigozhin is a Jewish CEO of a private military company which is a genre of guy that would be near the top of my list of "Top 10 Guys Most Likely to Agree to Receive a Few Hundred Millions of "Misplaced" NATObucks to Do a Little Trolling"