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UNLOCKED: Radio War Nerd EP #384 [REPOST] — Prigozhin's Mutiny, feat. Anatol Lieven (Patreon)

Published:
2023-06-26 20:05:23
Imported:
2023-06
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Guest: Anatol Lieven, author & journalist

Originally recorded: June 25, 2023

Free unlocked repost of our emergency episode with Anatol Lieven on Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's failed Russian coup-slash-mutiny, Kremlin succession, class warfare in the trenches & the stalled Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Would you like to know more? This unlocked repost of RWN Episode #384 comes to you courtesy of our Radio War Nerd subscribers, who make our weekly podcast possible. Freedom isn't free, and neither is Radio War Nerd...Sign up here on the patreon page for the Radio War Nerd podcast, the newsletter, the RSS feed, and more...

Recent articles by Anatol: "Prigozhin erupts: Has a Russian succession struggle begun?" "Lieven inside Ukraine: some real breaks, and insights" "Ukraine’s paradoxical lessons for the future of warfare"

Buy Anatol's books, including his latest "Climate Change and the Nation-State: A Realist Case". Follow Anatol on Twitter.

Sound production by Telescope Audio Studios

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

*NEW!! Buy John Dolan's comic memoir "Pleasant Hell" now available in both audio and ebook format.

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Comments

HarshMalarkey

Do I, a patron of many years, get any thanks for this episode being unlocked? No, of course I don't.

SocraticGadfly

Like that BOTH the hubristic AND the simplistic takes of the MSM and the Nat-sec Nutsacks over the Prigozhin mutiny are taken down here.

J P 3

Great, clarifying interview.

Aditya V

Not sure if Lieven mentioned this part of Prigozhin which signals pro-NATO inclinations: "incredible statement that the raison d’être of the special military operation in Ukraine since February 2022, was all baloney." "bizarre conclusion that Kiev or Nato had no mala fide intentions toward Donbass or Russia" https://www.indianpunchline.com/fsb-spooked-the-cia-on-prigozhin-coup/

dmitry myaskovsky

Amazing interview/show- thank you for unlocking it!

Mark Ames

Thank you for your service!

David Andrews

Great interview and guest. All that was missing was a map or two. Where the heck is Rostov On Don? I'll never know!

Doug Cartel

given that the AFU is in a really bad strategic position at the moment, it seems like Zelensky is fucked no matter what happens, because total victory is impossible, and that was the only scenario where Zelensky didn't get air-holed in his sleep. Speaking of prisoners as soldiers, I feel like every Juneteenth we'll be discussing the loophole in the 13th amendment that makes slavery legal so long as it's convicts, but we'll never see that amendment get, uh, amended.

cl

Seems like there's been little discussion of the implications of this weekend for the state of the war. If Ukraine was capable of major offensive operations, surely this would have been a perfect moment? When will a better opportunity arise for creating panic and a disordered collapse of the Russian lines (the supposed "plan" for the mythical counteroffensive)? This has me convinced that we're locked into stalemate/attrition for the long term; no idea whether this conclusively favours one side or the other, though.

Mark Ames

doesn't bode well for Ukraine's offensive that they couldn't adapt/take advantage of that level of turmoil in Russia

PW

god bless you for diving on that hand grenade anon

PW

This honky's finally talking some sense. Sheeee11111t.

SB

Good discussion that mostly stayed away from or even dispelled some of the typical cliches. Russian society is clearly sensitive to war casualties, which seems to be the biggest weakness of their side, and attracting convicts at storm troops was a practical and shrewd move. It was great to hear Lieven shedding some light on the level of the crude racist russophobic hatred in the Ukrainian society. It started in 2014 en masse with the notion of ‘vatnik’, meaning ‘cottonwool instead of brains’ directed towards the South-Eastern population, and it got into overdrive after the invasion. Although there’s an important distinction there. Mark said that Zelensky had started speaking Ukrainian. This is only in official public messages though. The crazy irony is that pretty much all of the Ukrainian leadership behind closed doors speaks Russian between themselves! Even most of Azov fighters appear to speak Russian in their frontline videos. As for the reasons for the mutiny, there appear to be two main versions at this point. 1. Prigozhin didn’t want to lose control Wagner on July 1st. 2. He was compromised by a Western intelligence (MI6?) for his revolt to coincide with the second phase of Ukrainian counteroffensive. Here’s a good and detailed description of the first theory - https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-the-wagner-uprising. However, a couple of Prigozhin’s claims are at odds with it - a clearly false statement about the successes of Ukrainian forces in the South and his very odd rant about the ‘true reasons’ for the invasion that denied even the existence of the 8-year civil war in Donbass. These two claims can be explained by the second theory. But it still seems less plausible than the first one to me. Here’s Larry Johnson’s speculations about it for a comparison - https://sonar21.com/a-working-theory-on-prigos-coup/.

SB

It looks like they are preparing to cross Dnieper in several places as the second phase of the counteroffensive to try to achieve something before the NATO summit. The 'Prigozhin got compromised' theory suggests that it was meant to be synchronized with the mutiny. We'll see...

Karl Childers

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/26/2177730/-This-Russian-Ruse-is-Clear-as-Day interesting take -- the idea is, Prigozhin and Putin are still working together and have been this whole time tbh this makes sense to me, even if it does seem absurdly galaxy-brained at face value its the only way i can really explain the fact that all of Wagner was not entirely converted into meat soup in the first 48 hours and Prigozhin fleeing to Belarus, if true, would seem to conclusively prove that he still has at least some degree of sanction from Putin

Doug Cartel

yeah, I think the reason they talked up the mobilization with a lot of "don't worry everyone we just want the most recent guys to re-up, this isn't a draft" was because Russia is just not interested in bleeding out over this. I would chalk it up to the fact that Russia doesn't find war as fun as americans do, as they tend to be nastier and much closer to their borders. I imagine Chechnya is still a sore point. Aside from the popular mood though, Russia also knows the entire point of this war is the same as it was for the pro-nazi factions in western governments in the 1930s as well as the Carter-era guys who concocted the afghanistan war; Russia's biggest asset, from outward appearances, is its military, and if you and break its back, Russia doesn't have much else up its sleeve, and beating them with a proxy like Ukraine or Germany or Afghanistan is even better than a NATO/Russia slugfest. so they've been limiting their federal army to fortifying the territory they took during last years' land grab while letting paramilitares as well as LPR/DPR forces do the offensive work, for the most part. This is just how it appears to me, I'm way too far away to say that any of this is true.

SB

Nah, sounds like a total BS IMO. Anybody who thinks that a human-based system can be orchestrated to perform such elaborate 4D chess operations never tried to manage even a small and trivial human organization.

Karl Childers

im sure as hell not betting any money on it, but that kind of reflexive "nah all people are always incompetent" response always strikes me as glib and unserious

Christopher Price

Ha, all I saw from Rostov was videos bitching out Wagner for holding up traffic

Christopher Price

Very true. Russians aren't fantasizing about war in the same way as Americans.