When Vladimir Putin came to power, there was no state oil extraction and processing.
That's what we'll start this video with, and it's not about oil!
Rosneft was a barely alive facility with half-privatized capacities which had been almost destroyed by constantly
changing “red” directors.
Something belonged to the regions, but those were just rusty towers and drunk locksmiths.
Anyway, this is all children’s stories. The real oil business was a developed and competent private market.
Today we have just one big and formally independent oil company – Lukoil.
The rest of the oil business is not just in the government’s hands,
but in the hands of two state companies – Rosneft and Gazprom.
The same applies to media, infrastructure, transport, communication, and banking.
By the end of the 2010s it turned out that the government can’t leave alone even such
a basic market branch as retail trade with cheap food. VTB bought the net Magnit.
But the government hasn’t just absorbed all the branches of human activity,
but it also became incredibly centralized from the inside.
By the end of the 2000s the tax system and the management vertical were designed
in a way that municipal and regional power became pointless and acted just as big accountant departments.
It wasn’t a bug, it was a goal – we won’t just forbid the citizens of any small town to elect their own mayor.
Also, we won’t give the mayor any money to do anything of value.
Because every town should comply with the federal program, and nothing else.
School food, the choice of textbooks and programs, garbage disposal, fighting with fire –
there should be no local issues within putinism.
Everything needs a Ministry or a facility, a state company, a standard or a federal law.
It’s a paradox but Putin managed to build a system more centralized than a Soviet one was.
Even the Soviet power with its overpowering State Plan in the branches which were really important,
like the defense industry, space, nuclear power and weapons, understood that there shouldn’t be just one helicopter,
aircraft or tank design bureau. There shouldn’t be just one missile research institution.
The Soviet power understood that there must be a competition of ideas, approaches, concepts,
departmental interests and personal ambitions.
That Tupolev’s design bureau should know that there are Ilyushin’s, Antonov’s, Yakovlev’s design bureaus.
That the government won’t approve and produce his project automatically.
With such conditions there will be motivation for new good-quality developments.
Vladimir Putin, however, created Rostech, and now everything from a machine gun bullet
to a tank or Superjet is made by Chemezov.
That’s why it’s so astonishing that different military groups were created.
It contradicts everything Putin has been building for 25 years.
He has built verticals and monopolies and was suspicious about any unauthorized and non-centralized activity.
And now, all of a sudden, he let radical libertarianism happen, and not just that –
even something revolutionary and anarchic.
He let it happen in the violence sphere, where even the most liberal market
democracies support centralization and total monopoly.
FIGHT FOR THE RESOURCES
There were a lot of wars in the history of Russia – occupying, unjust and bloody, liberating and defensive.
But since the centralized government emerged on this land, there haven't been such questions as
"How many armies does Russia have?
What relationships do they have and whom do they obey?"
The Russian army, the National Guard of Russia, the Chechen troops which are simultaneously
a part of the National Guard and Kadyrov’s personal troops.
“People’s Militia” of DNR and LNR which were national armies of quasi-independent governments half a year ago,
and after the annexation they joined the Russian Ministry of Defense or they didn’t.
Governor’s battalions were created and then disappeared. And of course, private military companies.
The word of the year. The word of the epoch.
It looks like there hasn’t been a country which gave the monopoly for violence to anyone who wanted it.
For example, young Soviet power was happy to attract chieftains and different field chiefs to their side.
On the verge of 1910-1920 while the Bolsheviks’ power wasn’t strong enough, you could really organize a gang,
arm it up and go and fight as a free shooter.
But as soon as the new regime got stronger, first of all, it strangled all those self-made people chiefs.
Because even the Bolsheviks’ management, who never graduated in political science, understood that those
guys were much more dangerous than any royal supporters.
That their soldiers are loyal just to themselves and their commanders.
The private military company “Wagner” has a special place.
It’s no longer a gang of adventure-seekers, or some voluntary battalion, but a real private army.
It has armored vehicles and aviation, and now it has exclusive power inside Russia.
There is a special legal regime for Wagner with no rules.
And this will have short-term consequences for the war itself, and long-term consequences for Russia.
Consequences for the war itself are obvious – the existence of Wagner creates an internal conflict
which will intensify and develop with time.
Constant conflict between the Ministry of Defense and Wagner is unavoidable.
Not because of the people there but just by definition.
Wagner is pumping resources out from the army.
The army should provide the military company with weapons, machinery
and ammunition while having serious bureaucratic troubles.
All this is completely illegal – a convict who should be imprisoned can never get a machine gun from the stock.
And the scale doesn’t allow them to solve it on the level of verbal requests.
50 thousands of people, and 5 divisions is not a joke, there should be a whole system of double accounting.
If a base commander gives Wagner soldiers 20 infantry fighting vehicles, and tomorrow an audit comes to him,
he must show them something, some paper justifying the shipment. Where are those infantry fighting vehicles?
He can’t wink or something – like everyone understands everything.
The machinery should go to certain military units, ammunition should be given to certain soldiers with certain military numbers.
And all of them should be reviewed separately in order to find out that no armored vehicles came to this battalion.
That they came to the private company Wagner.
Anyone who has tried to manage a group of more than 10 people understands that this is a management nightmare.
What kind of domino effect this double system creates.
When we write one thing in the paper with a seal, another thing in an unofficial paper, and something else in the database.
Even in a structure where all the participants can be put together in one office,
where anyone can talk to anyone – even there this mess will result in uncontrolled havoc.
One person will mix up something – he’ll get tired, or skip it, or forget about it – that we write unofficial numbers on pink paper,
official numbers on white paper, and numbers for investors on yellow paper.
If one tiny number gets in the wrong place once, that’s it – this snowball will never stop.
The Russian army is hundreds of thousands of people unacquainted with each other.
And they have to violate their own laws, rules and regulations to serve some shady guys with no official status.
It’s a management collapse.
Besides, the private company should be supported on the battlefield.
We don’t know how Wagner hired guns fight in the trenches. But judging by the situation in Bakhmut
when they’ve been hitting the same wall for 6 months without any success,
their notorious reputation is more of a PR rather than the reality.
It doesn’t matter how they fight, they might be supersoldiers from the American action movies of the 80s,
they need artillery and aviation support.
Rear units should give them supplies, automobile battalions should bring new people, weapons, food and machinery.
The army should share intelligence data with them.
Long story short, that part of the war which happens outside the frontline,
the logistics – all that is supported by the Russian army. It demands loads of resources which are not endless.
If this howitzer shot in favor of the hired guns, it doesn’t mean it shot in favor of a regular unit.
If this convoy brings criminals to the front, it doesn’t bring some military unit to another place or brings them ammunition.
FIGHT FOR INFLUENCE
Apart from the fact that the army should work hard for some criminals,
they should also provide them with resources to their own detriment and underfeed
their own units for the sake of hired guns.
And meanwhile the private company is constantly disparaging the army in public.
This is one more reason to hate each other.
To the commander of the General Staff.
You (obscene words), we've got no shells, guys are dying there for us, and we're sitting here and not helping them.
We need shells, we should (censored). Here, under Bakhmut, we are fighting against the whole Ukrainian army.
Where are you? Help us, please. Where are you when our guys are dying?
Imagine a situation, you are a General of a great rank, you couldn’t solve the task and barely saved your own forces
from encirclement because your cannons and trucks were given to Wagner.
You have no artillery, supplies and evacuation, you are in a situation when there is no sensible choice other than a retreat.
And after that some goblin is telling you, a man of great rank and ambitions,
through his dirty media that you are just a useless piece of sh*t, and only he and he alone can fight in this country.
The Russian army and a lot of quasi-armies which are in a situation where they need to fight for resources can’t be friends.
They have a fundamental conflict.
WHAT THE RESULT IS GOING TO BE
This fact on its own might not be even a bad thing.
An idiotic decision to lead the war with dozens of armies creating an inevitable conflict between them
prevents Putin from achieving his goals.
Whatever those goals are. Because conflicts for resources and influence will definitely lead to conflicts on the battlefield.
You can act differently when Wagner soldiers demand supplies and artillery support.
You can do it all at once, or you can wait a little bit when there might be no one left to help.
And when you are totally sick of goblins’ orders you might hint to the enemy where your command
post is to ensure they aim right.
We don’t know if anything like this is happening on the front or not.
But when we try to imagine ourselves in the shoes of a General who has to endure such insults
from another Telegram-channel and follow the orders of some orcs with no rank or status,
it’s an easy thing to imagine that at least small sabotage is possible.
Like, we’ve sent you howitzers, but they are stuck in the field – it’s a slush.
What can we do about it? And in the war such sabotage can cost hundreds and thousands of lives.
The Russian army is not very effective in the fight for the sake of the whole humankind.
But the format of war chosen by Putin turns this ineffectiveness into chaos.
If this ended just this way, it would be alright.
It is OK if a fake emperor decides that all the management, political and social laws aren’t written for him.
Let him think this way.
But everything that is happening now has more bloody prospects.
Current war (not a victory but a war as a lifestyle) has beneficiaries now.
For them it’s not important if Putin stays or leaves, if Patrushev or Navalny replace him.
Neither old power, nor new power will tolerate those armed guys who are trained and have real combat experience
and who have already felt their impunity.
They think they are at least equal to the government and have an ambition to be its competitors.
And what’s worse, they can act together.
When the war ends, any power will arrange a night of sharp knives for Prigozhin and his copycats.
And the chiefs of those military companies along with Prigozhin surely understand it very well.
That the very same government which was crazy enough to involve them will get rid of them at first opportunity.
Just like Mao abandoned the Red Guards.
I mean all those Fathers Makhno (independent army chiefs)
which have become very confident for the last year are the only ones who don’t want this war to ever end with any result.
The government will stop needing them whatever the result is.
It’s dangerous because any situation becomes more stable when a lot of people are interested
in it and when those people have enough resources.
From the information available to the public we can conclude that the situation is developing very dangerously
for Vladimir Putin’s regime.
The longer the war goes, the more resources private military companies have – more people, weapons, money.
The more dependent the government becomes from them.
And the more the government depends on them, the less chance it has to arrange that night of sharp knives.
When we talk about stress points inside the system, we usuall mean people who have physical access to Vladimir Putin.
And we often forget about people who have the most invincible resource – armed people.
No police or FSB can handle this. Classic dictators (Stalin is the best example) have always understood this threat.
They tried to prevent it en masse and destroyed everyone who could have such political ambitions.
Putin, on the other hand, doesn’t destroy them, he even lets them breed and prosper.
The elites’ split might not happen because of economic reasons, or sanctions,
or the overall political situation in the country.
It might happen because some General decides that to obey some goblin is not what he wants and anyway,
powerful empires look differently.
That the Tsar doesn’t look real if he allows such disgrace. We can see just public flares of the conflict.
When Prigozhin publicly disparages the generals that they don’t want to serve him or that they are not loyal enough to him,
a criminal, what happens behind the scenes is unknown but we might suggest that the conflict is just beginning.
It can’t help it because people are in the situation where just a conflict is possible.
It’s a significant thing and we’ll follow it next year.
Till tomorrow!