Monday 26 June.
Russia and Ukraine
The World this Week is coming from somewhere in the Arctic Circle this week as I am off on another travel experience, but what a week.
Let me give some thoughts on the events in Russia and Ukraine, as these are the events that have been surrounded by a huge amount if misreporting, wishful thinking by western media and indeed western governments .
Ok, so, there has been an attempt at a coup in Russia, or at least that is what all the western media outlets so joyfully pounced upon a few days ago when a force of Wagner mercenaries headed in the general direction of Moscow in a convoy of mixed vehicles.
They stopped in a town called Rostov. I am pretty sure that is as far as they ever intended going in the first place and here is my reasoning. Firstly , if ever a coup was planned in a country at war, at the most appropriate time to still protect the country in which it was taking place then this was it.
Wagner ( a virtual private army of mercenaries) had been fighting on behalf of the Russian government in Bakhmut for several months and had very successfully taken the city, allowing the Russian army to set up good defenses in expectation of a much-advertised Ukrainian counterattack. This supposed ”spring counteroffensive had eventually taken place at the beginning of June and had been a disaster for the Ukrainian army with huge causality figures and massive destruction of NATO supplied equipment. Therefore, the Ukrainian army were not in a position to take advantage of any disruption caused by a coup.
Ok, so let’s look at what happened over the last few days. Prigozhin ( commander of Wagner forces) made various statements regarding his dissatisfaction at how certain Russian Army commanders had cooperated with him in the battle for Bakhmut, but probably the main bone of contention was that the Russian constitution bans the employment of mercenaries fighting alongside regular forces and the Wagner employees were being required to sign contracts with the Russian ministry of defense. So, he then led a convoy consisting of probably somewhat under 100, various types of vehicles, from their field camp towards Rostov.
Now for a successful insurrection to take place there are a few necessary ingredients. The first is money, normally, in a case like this supplied by the CIA compliments of the US government. The next ingredient is latent or better still, patent, unrest in the general populace and thirdly and probably the most important element of any successful coup is general support in the armed forces.
I do not think that the first of these conditions was in question as the US/.NATO have been losing this proxy war and are desperate for some form of success.
The second ingredient, general unrest would have manifested itself during the supposed “ march on Moscow “ which was the convoy from the base camp to Rostov. Rostov being a convenient check point where the future of the coup could be assessed and tailored to circumstances. I believe it was at this point where an assessment was made and a decision to abort was seen as wise, as there had been no spontaneous uprising in the streets of Moscow and no defections in the armed forces, in fact, on the front lines in Ukraine, the Russian army continued to make advances against the failed counteroffensive by NATO supported Ukrainian forces.
I believe that from the word go when the Wagner convoy left base camp, heading for Rostov, negotiations were underway via Alexandre Lukashenko, the president of Belarus and Prigozhin, and my reasoning is this. A convoy on an open road without air support is a sitting duck and one just needs to go back to the gulf war in 1991 and the massacre of a convoy out of Kuwait on what was called the Highway of death.
Now the convoy was not attacked on the first leg of the so-called march to Moscow, if it had been, it would have been destroyed, but remember, it was mainly made up of Russian nationals, soldiers who had recently taken Bakhmut after a long battle. That would have been the last outcome that Putin would have wanted.
So, Rostov was important from both camps. It gave time for negotiations to take place. It gave the Wagner group a chance to re-supply, if need be and it gave them civilian cover, in case negotiations did not go according to plan. It also gave the Russian forces time to plan the demise of the Wagner group, because, make no mistake, if negotiations had failed and had the Wagner convoy set off from Rostov to Moscow, then hardly a single one of them would have been alive today.
So overall a good outcome for Russia , a good outcome for Prigoshin, as he now has safe residency in Belarus ( I would however advise him to stay away from open balconies for a while and enjoy the pay off from the CIA) a good outcome for Putin and a good outcome for the soldiers of the Wagner group as they now have contracts with the Russian ministry of defense.
As for the US and NATO, well they have an extremely large amount of egg on their faces and their best course of action from now on would be to reign in that clown Zelenskyy, get around the negotiating table with Russia and stop these stupid sanctions that are harming the economies of every country in Europe except Russia as the Ruble has never been higher on world markets and when BRICS gets going the almighty dollar will disappear as the fall back world currency.
Bob Costello 