Prigozhin had gotten out of line by making public statements attacking his rivals in the army and MOD. He fell in love with the sound of his own voice and started to think he deserved a greater official role than he had. He forced the political leadership to make a choice between him and the army. They picked the army and the consequence of that was him losing his private army.
I think that this thing was inevitable basically. When you have mercenary force that replaces the functions of the military it just inevitably becomes a threat to the state. Even if you the mercenary leaders don't plan on seizing power some of your subordinates will want to, also the people currently in power have to be incredibly afraid of it happening. There have been rumors that the real reason Blackwater was prosecuted was because Erik Prince had infiltrated a lot of the special forces and they feared him overthrowing the state.
Is Pringo actually dead though?
The last time he "died" in a plane crash in Africa turned out to be a pile of nonsense.
I think he probably actually is. Though I understand why he was killed if he indeed was. The sad thing though is that two of Wagner's top guys were also killed in this crash. There was a specialist in logistics who managed to pull off some crazy things, as supplying troops in Africa is difficult and an excellent operational commander both killed in the plane crash. Also Surovikin has been placed on leave because of this which was a great loss. He is an excellent commander and has been at least somewhat responsible for many successes Russia has had.
I think it is more likely than not that he was killed by Putin. It could be an accident or maybe someone else killed him but the most reasonable explanation is that Putin did so. I don't consider Putin wrong to do so if he did but he should have had a trial and a public execution rather than this in the dark bullshit.
Things are starting to really look like they are moving in the direction of something like a war panic. But I can't believe that any of these countries have the will to actually follow through with the sort of spending and standard of living reductions that moving to war economies is going to involve.
There is a lot of talk but not a lot of concrete action. I think it is mostly just powerful people realizing that the American Empire is flailing about in death throes with its organs hanging out soon to die.
They will impoverish us in order to make the ships, tanks and drones they need for their World War with Russia and China, and anyone else who joins them. Then they will take all the young men and women and indoctrinate them further so that they will demand to fight Russia and anyone who is aligned with her
I think they are willing and leaving aside if that is even politically possible in the west, you can't magic up factories in a day. Extremely capable people can make factories that run somewhat poorly in the beginning maybe in a couple years. And the people who would be allowed to make these factories are not even barely capable. If you sped up the bureaucratic processes and were really trying you might manage it in a year. But the bureaucracy isn't going to let that happen. This is besides the fact congress tells defense contractors that they will buy a certain amount of equipment and please build it and then the defense contractors do and then congress suddenly is missing the money to actually buy it and doesn't pay for it and the defense contractors lose money a lot of money.
There are economic things you could do to try and prepare to fight a war with China in 3 years or in 5 years or sometime soon. The real world actionable things that could be done are not being done.
Besides the fact that in order to build an industry that could compete with China enough to actually win a war against them would take at least 2 decades. The economic reality just isn't there.
Ukrainian nationalists didn't spring up overnight. The kind that denounces his family and people to side with Ukronazis and then attacks anyone who speaks reason had to be created. Those articles and posts attacking China are also carefully curated, the videos portraying the Chinese as bug people are also crafted to dehumanize Chinese. They are most certainly planning a new world war.
You may be right that they are planning a war and they are trying to get the west ready to fight that war. But the issue is the only thing our elites can do and the only thing that they actually really do is marketing. To them a bit of good marketing is enough to fix any problem. But of course that is not true.
I could see the regime trying to fight a deathwar rather than giving up power. That has worked exactly one time in history to my knowledge. The French Directory managed to actually win the French Revolutionary wars. This happened because even though the previous government was incredibly corrupt, France was still incredibly wealthy and its foreign opponents were poorly organized. The opposite is true of the US and its opponents. The US despite the GDP figures never being higher is actually a poor country. Also interesting to note the French Directory eventually got replaced and the people that replaced them got replaced as well.
I'm not sure the current Regime even has the juice to pull off actually declaring war. But even if it does it won't win and the people that do it will be replaced using violence.
A lot of people could die and probably will die one way or another when the current regime dies. Maybe things will be nice and comfy like with the velvet revolution but almost certainly not. This is unfortunate and sad but that is the way these things go and while the Regime is still barely alive a lot of people are dying continuously.
I don't.
The rest are Banderites or pussies too scared to stand up to the Banderites.
The thing about that is people did try to stop Zelensky. They tried to stop him even being elected because they knew. But they failed. People even tried to stop the events in 2014. Some of them were burned alive.
Also something to consider. It is one thing to stand up to Banderites and face death yourself it is another to doom your family to be tortured to death. If someone has the ability to torture my family to death and will do so if I do something I just won't do that thing.
I feel sympathy especially because a similar thing has happened to America. A lot of the things that happened to the US in the 20th century weren't as much of a choice as the regime would like us to believe. But large chunks of the actually American populace chose what has happened and as a result the nation I love the place I am from, my home has been systematically looted and raped. How could I not feel sympathy for a Ukrainian who had something similar happen to his country?
