This video was recorded by midday, Jun. 24. After we finished it,
we found out that Alexander Lukashenko mediated the negotiation between Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin.
PMC Wagner was allegedly offered acceptable terms and security assurances.
After that, Prigozhin said his troops would make a U-turn 200 km (125 mi) away from Moscow.
If this is true, Prigozhin has just been recognized as the party to negotiations on par with the Russian president.
Therefore, even an aborted rebellion deals a blow, if not a fatal one, to Putin’s infamous top-down power vertical.
But it may be far from over. That’s why our video is still relevant.
“Do you want to know what a special military operation looks like? Let us show you the real deal.”
This line could easily preface Yevgeny Prigozhin’s armed rebellion.
As of this recording, we know the following. In the early hours of the mutiny,
PMC Wagner managed to capture a major decision center — the headquarters of the Southern Military District
in Rostov — without a fight.
Although Wagnerites really control central Rostov, saying that Prigozhin is now in charge
of the city with a population of over 1M wouldn’t be an overstatement.
When your enemy has dug in within the city limits, destroying them can be next to impossible even if you outnumber them.
(The truth is, we talked about it here prior to the 2022 invasion, but it fell on deaf ears.)
Russia’s official reaction to the rebellion is worth mentioning, too.
Wagner offices are being searched, the Investigative Committee has launched a criminal probe,
and ads of PMC Wagner recruitment are being ripped off the billboards nationwide.
Political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann was right when she said the regime reacts to a crisis not the way
they need to do it, but the way they’re used to doing it.
They’re used to dealing with legal organizations and treating every woe with a criminal investigation.
They keep doing it. Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced a day off on Monday.
The red tape will maintain its red hue. If Moscow’s government is under attack,
they’ll keep yelling into a bullhorn: Ladies and gentlemen, this event is illegal!
Please leave the premises and observe public order.”
It looks just as weird as it sounds. But this is how things are done.
The paper-pushers and the inhabitants of a parallel world of laws, decrees,
orders, reports, and guidelines are trying to use these as their ammo.
But before we dig deeper into Prigozhin’s special operation, here’s a warning for the residents of Rostov
and other Russian cities. Don’t you ever act like this! Remember the rule of thumb:
if you’ve seen a cute cub, walk away — the farther, the better.
There’s always a vicious mama bear shuffling around close by.
If you’re itching to take a picture with a battle tank, book a tour of a museum.
Any battle tank, APC, or armed man on the streets of your town is a hot target for a shell or a missile.
Ammo doesn’t care if there are women or children nearby.
The person who pulls the trigger, however noble, may qualify you as acceptable collateral.
Stay away from any potential target, and share this survival tip with your family. Better safe than sorry.
It’s illustrated by what happened in yet another city with a population of over 1M: Voronezh.
It’s now clear neither side is instructed to avoid using their hardware in densely populated areas.
This footage shows a shell hitting a residential complex in Voronezh. It escalated further.
A fuel depot caught fire in Voronezh. One version claims it was hit by a Ka-52 helicopter.
The other version asserts the helicopter was the target. The shell missed it and hit the fuel tanks.
This or another army helicopter was targeted by Wagner’s surface-to-air missile system.
The chopper used its IRCMs to dodge the strike.
In the morning hours of Jun. 24, an explosion within the city limits is a rare occurrence.
But I can’t be sure if one-off explosions will still be newsworthy once you’ve checked out this video.
Back to Prigozhin’s special operation. Currently, Yevgeny Prigozhin is following the blueprint outlined
by the Russian army on Feb. 24, 2022, more successfully but on a smaller scale.
Prigozhin’s troops are zooming toward Moscow at a standard vehicle speed.
Save for Rostov where they’re saving up their resources to dig in, Wagnerites are pushing hard
to reach Moscow after they loaded tracked vehicles onto flatbed trailers.
This video was reportedly shot in the Lipetsk Region, which is closer to Moscow than their previous stops.
The distance between Rostov and Moscow is a 10- to 15-hour drive.
By midday, Jun. 24, Wagnerites covered at least half that distance.
Voronezh, by the way, is the midpoint of this route. Pace seems to be crucial to them.
As of this recording, some reports placed Wagner in the Moscow Region,
the only obstacle between them and Moscow being the Oka River.
The makeshift checkpoints set up along Wagner’s route can easily be the butt of the joke.
Armed with as little as handguns and assault rifles, both the cops and the Russian Guard are powerless
against this private army with heavy equipment and real combat experience.
Chances are, they won’t even try to put up any sort of resistance.
But even if they do, you just can’t put together security checkpoints on every back road and access road.
What’s the real threat to Wagner, though?
The army aviation. This is about the only antidote that can be shipped back from
the battlefield in a bid to catch up with Prigozhin. But there’s a big fat but, too.
Parallel to these events, the Ukrainian army is stepping up its offensive.
The fact that they haven’t had a resounding success doesn’t mean they’ve had none at all.
The Ukrainian army is inching forward. The big driver of the Russian defensive effort is airpower.
You can’t just deactivate multiple attack helicopters, strike aircraft, and bombers without compromising your front.
Nibbling away at the airpower deployed in Ukraine in a bid to stop Prigozhin with just a handful of choppers
and jets isn’t the brightest idea, either.
Wagner has its own surface-to-air missile systems that can be used against army aviation.
Currently, Wagner claims to have hit or downed several helicopters and a military transport aircraft.
And that information can be credible.
Moreover, they can’t deactivate land forces to combat Wagner, either.
A mere glance at the map will help you understand why.
The Ukrainian army will instantly ake advantage of this move.
Not just that, they’ll be hard-pressed to find military units that are 100% loyal to the top brass.
Then, they’ll spend multiple hours loading the hardware onto the railcars and shipping it
to the rear camps on a freight train. No battle tanks will ever cover this distance.
In theory, wheeled armored vehicles can venture a ride. But whether they’ll catch up with Prigozhin is unclear.
But then again, what if they will? A wheeled armored vehicle doesn’t stand a chance against a main battle tank.
Prigozhin does have main battle tanks, including modern and hard-to-find T-90s.
Another hypothetical scenario is deploying airborne forces against Wagner. But this move will have serious limitations.
Besides, most of the airborne units were lost in Ukraine last February.
The remaining troops were used as assault forces, which added to the death toll.
We’ve recently found it that in March, Lt. Col. Dmitry Lisitsky, a famous airborne trooper, committed suicide.
If Prigozhin reaches Moscow — which he may have already done as we were creating this video —
the first real challenge his troops may face will be the Separate Operational Purpose Division.
This is a unit of over 10,000 that is believed to be super-loyal to President Putin.
Coming to Putin’s rescue is literally the job description of this division scattered across Moscow’s satellite towns.
Military hardware may have well been transported to this division.
Modeling a potential standoff between the Wagner Group and the Separate Operational Purpose Division
would be an exercise in futility.
I the division identifies their itinerary, they’ll dig in and will be hard to whack.
On the other hand, it’s a smaller unit than Wagner, and isn’t as experienced.
The division’s motivation can also be questioned. Wagnerites have burned all the bridges.
It’s either go all the way or die for them. The division has a good backup scenario, too.
Should Prigozhin win, they’ll partake in his glory.
Should Putin win, will he really wreak havoc on his own guard for some petty flaws?
Back to the pace of Wagner’s advance.
Not only can an active-duty military unit not catch up with him — we can’t, either.
When we started shooting this video, we still weren’t sure if Yevgeny Prigozhin had captured
Voronezh or just breezed past it.
Now this one is settled. But a different one sprang up.
Did Wagnerites pass the town of Kashira or is this account overblown? Kashira is a two-hour drive from the Kremlin.
If Wagner has passed Kashira, it means they’ve cross the Oka River. This is important.
The Oka could be a natural obstacle if the bridges were blown up.
This picture shows a drawbridge in the city of Kolomna.
The fact that it’s been raised won’t be a hassle for Wagner.
Unless they changed their minds and opted to take a guided tour of Kolomna. This photo proves precisely nothing.
Hence a pro tip to the Moscow government and other institutions. Skip work for the next couple of days.
Seriously. A real-time flight tracking tool shows that Vladimir Putin and Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov
have jetted off. The latter has touched down in Turkey.
Oligarchs along with the comparably influential crowd have set sail, too.
So, why would you show up? Just take a couple of days.
IN VIVO EXPERIMENT
16 months ago, Vladimir Putin basked in his omnipotence.
He treated the neigboring country as a bungling state and felt free to dish out the threats.
16 months later, part of that cockiness has worn off. We didn’t attack them. In fact, they struck at us!
Our homeland is facing trouble.
History is a merciless creature. It’s a string of repetitions.
First, a king, an emperor, or any other supreme leader decides to unleash a reign of terror toward somebody else.
It’s followed by a drawn-out and seemingly endless war.
During this time, the front collapses, which sparks internal mutinies.
But a mutiny is the logical next step. A big war fuels a potential revolution. Firearms are spreading like the plague.
The next thing you know is that there are hordes of armed people with a grudge who are no strangers to bloodshed.
But there’s a fundamental difference between the 1917 revolution and the events of 2023.
The former was triggered by a chain of justifiable circumstances and by the course of history itself.
Our current reality, though, is an in vivo experiment that could’ve been averted.
Was there any chance Putin didn’t start the “special military operation”? There sure was.
Could Putin ever stop contemplating various designs of the map of Russia: with and without Crimea,
with the DPR, LPR, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia?
He sure could. How in thunder could it occur to him that he could create a bizarre reality
where his own spokesman wouldn struggle to furnish an answer to the simple question:
“Where’s the Russian border?”
Could Putin avoid transferring mortars, armored vehicles, and artillery from the regular army to a private one?
Or rather private ones. The neo-Nazi Rusich Group has also pledged loyalty to Wagner.
What if he didn’t entrust those opportunists with the army arsenal?
This litany of questions is akin to asking, “Can you avoid jumping off the roof to make sure gravitation is a thing?”
Over the centuries, our country has seen a string of weirdos but the present-day experimenter is one-of-a-kind.
He has a mindset of a 5-year-old who sets poplar fluff on fire, only to be shocked
that the flame starts spreading to the playground.
On Jun. 24, the first phrase millions of Russian uttered wasn’t a good morning, but rather “I told ya.”
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See you tomorrow!