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To me the Prigozhin manoeuvrer was a redeployment of Russian forces in broad daylight, in front for everyone, from the Donbas region to Belarus, now within 100kms of Kyiv I think? You’ll notice nobody important spoke about this. No comment from senior US officials, or NATO officials. They knew this was a psyop from Russia. The media and also to some extent Ukranian forces, were fooled.
I doubt it, if it was then it must be the most sophisticated psyop in history . Prigozhin threw a hissy fit because the Russian MoD were forcing all Wagner troops to sign contracts with them, he backed down because him and his troops would have been massacred. The West said nothing about it because backing the overthrow of Putin could have been seen as an act of war. If only they were that cautious about sending billions of $ of weapons to Ukraine.
what was the alternative?
encourgare a negotiated settlement. funny how the talks in turkey last year collapsed just after boris visited kiev.
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that’s a really naive outlook. Crimea was taken from Ukraine in 2014, there was little blowback from Ukraine. Once Russia moved in force in Feb 2022, it was a declaration of war. You’d just have Ukraine give up thousands of square KM of land without a fight?
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I’m still very disappointed that the Wagner wankers didn’t carry on to Moscow and start breaking things. About time the Russians felt some pain for supporting their terrorist kleptocracy and some discomfort and bloodshed might just finally rouse them from their drunken stupor.
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Problem is that if anything goes bangy on Russian soil, Putin will use it as an excuse to break out the big guns. That, in the words of Klopp, would not be cool.
That’s too simplistic. NATO membership has already ‘crossed the line in the sand’ threat re nukes and Putin can’t realistically do anything about it.
Not if its their own rogue forces like in his example. They would likely respond with nukes to a Major NATO attack on Russian soil, but that is different.
There have already been incursions into Russia proper (Belgorod) with barely a whimper in reply.
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So in your honest opinion, what do you believe would have been the outcome of this negotiated settlement….?
So, lets relate it to everyday life. You live in a neighbourhood and your next door neighbour decides he hasn’t got a big enough garden, so he rips down your fence, and reinstates a new fence line. You appeal to the rest of the neighbourhood and they are like, just leave it, we don’t want to create an issue here. So you lose part of your land. A few years later they are at it again, you fight back, everyday you and your neighbour are moving the fence line. Your neighbours ask you to negotiate, give him a bit more land for a bit of peace and quiet. Guess what happens in a few more years time?
I am sure you would be very comfortable with that…why would you be when it is affecting your family and livelihood. Now multiply that by a million or so families.
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“Whether we like it or not, people want to see a bit of gratitude,” Wallace said at a briefing in the margins of the Nato summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, when asked about the Ukrainian president’s comments that it was “absurd” for Kyiv to be told it would be welcome in the alliance but not given a date or exact conditions.
“Sometimes you are asking countries to give up their own stocks [of weapons],” Wallace said. “Sometimes you have to persuade lawmakers on the [Capitol] Hill in America.”
Arrgh. This war is costing only Dollars, Pounds and Euros for the West to fight a proxy war against a foe they are desperate to reduce. For Ukraine, they are paying for it through blood from tens of thousands of men, women and children.
NATO is about delivering security in the region, which means helping smaller states against larger aggressors that never asked for war. Countries shouldn’t be in it for thank yous and pats on the back.
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Surely Ukraine should be sending their fighters to pick fruit and veg in the UK, no?
let’s put the cards on the table now. money does not grow on trees in most countries. “The West” doesn’t have huge oil reserves which are being leveraged against the war chest.
The billions of dollars of armaments and munitions and vehicles being shipped over are being paid for our of civilian tax coffers (regardless of which branch of the government it comes from).
I have no doubt that this is being taken out of context of conversation, and it does sound a bit cold of Wallace to say something like this. But the optics of shipping billions of dollars overseas when there is such a disparity of wealth is something else.