Awoo

Oh I apologise I forget sometimes everyone here isn't a marxist now after the reddit waves, marxists would just pick up the intention from context and keeping up with news via parties and groups they're in. The "they" here is generally western aligned think tanks and forces. In particular the Atlantic Council which is largely responsible for a lot of US policy has been pushing it around in the media recently.

And how in the world do you get from here to there? Because all i see now is a fractured and demoralized military that’s lost all momentum, a weakened Putin, a shocked Russian public, and Prigozian and Lukashenko (and who knows who else) lurking in the wings. A lot has already changed, and uncertainty abounds.

A marxist understanding of the war in Ukraine is as a war that was created by the west, led by the US, that benefits quite a significant number of MIC forces with large influence over US policy. Part of the narrative that maintains support for the war is the ongoing belief that Russia can be defeated, and the method of Russian defeated that has been drummed up is "Russia will collapse" as everyone with any sense can see that there is no military means of victory. If the "Russia will collapse" narrative is destroyed by the reality of a rebellion demonstrating massive support that makes any collapse obviously impossible then the entire house of cards that has been constructed falls down. Thus the result is pushing in the media the notion that it wasn't a real rebellion but instead a grand scheme by devious clever russians.

If you have questions about how the left interprets the war I'm happy to answer.

You're expecting the main opposition - the communist party - to beat him then? Zyuganov?

If that fantasy happened it would split the communist party between the half that is controlled opposition who would see it as "the wrong time" for it to happen and the half who truly want socialist power again. The election would then be redone with a 3 way split between the two factions and Navalny's fascist coalition supported by the euro liberals.

I mean, I would want that outcome as it would result in a real left communist opposition emerging but I think it's incredibly unrealistic. Not to mention that you're expecting the population to boot a leader during the middle of a war? I am not sure how often that has happened, populations understand you keep the same leader during wartime. You would need the population to become against the war for that to occur and uhhh I hate to break it to you but absolutely the support the war and it would take a huge change in the frontline situation to change that - one that I do not think is coming judging by the failures of the counter offensive so far.

Will you reassess this thought in 3-4 weeks if/when nothing else happens? I think it's extremely unlikely that this is a grand scheme and that the reason this is being pushed comes from the fact that they have to keep the idea alive that Russia could collapse at any moment. If it isn't a grand scheme then its failure forces the acceptance that Russia isn't going to collapse and that the war is therefore entirely unwinnable, so it is much easier to present this as not having been a real coup/rebellion at all in order to keep that belief alive.

The Russian government’s internal security apparatus appears incompetent because it did not consider Wagner a threat, even though Prigozhin had been telegraphing his intentions for days (and probably planning it for months). The Russian military appears weak and overstretched, because it could not protect its operational HQ by force. Putin appears weak because he disappeared at the crucial moments, and large parts of Russia appeared sympathetic to Prigozhin even if they weren’t prepared to directly take part. The image of Putin being the supreme ruler in charge of everything looks pretty suspect at this point, and Russians know it because most of the events happened live on Russian state TV.

This is all "appears" "appears" "appears". You are hung up on appearances. You seem to think that if they just appear a certain way to people then that will magically change the balances of factional power in the country.

Liberals have this bizarre idea about where power comes from. You all seem to believe that the population of the country has power, that if the government simply appears weak then it will magically result in the population doing.... Something... And then the government will be overthrown and the war will be won!

Power is derived by those in hierarchical positions in a country to command various things within their positions to occur. And when enough people all align alongside one another and command things to happen together, if the related organisations follow those commands, they hold power.

I acknowledge in my other comments that this is embarrassing (which is quite a similar interpretation to you saying it hurts appearances). But the bottom line is how it affects power in the country. What factions exist and who those factions are aligning themselves behind.

This attempt did not result in anything like a weakening of the state or Putin. It consolidated all the sources of power in the country behind Putin, into statements of support and actions that back it up.

Putin has a long history of wriggling out of difficult situations, and he might still pull things out of the bag, but I think this is the beginning of the end for him.

By what mechanism?

I think you're doing Lukashenko discredit. While he's certainly not a nice man he's one of the very few people whose political careers survived the end of the soviet union, not only that but he prevented shock therapy from happening in Belarus, keeping much of the industry. More recently he managed to avoid the US attempts at regime change and successfully crack down on NED funded NGOs that existed to achieve those ends. All the potato memes should be seen as just that - memes. Lukashenko was the obvious party to go to as capable of being trusted by both Prigo and Putin, able to provide security and assurances to both. Very few others could have done it, Erdogan perhaps but Prigo is wanted for conspiracy to defraud the US in the west, he's on the FBI lists, so he couldn't go to a country with any extradition treaty with the US.

As for the Russian public they seem to view both sides of this disagreement positively, which is the complicated part of it. From their perspective this is two sides that they like having a disagreement. They love Wagner as war heroes but also love the Russian army as heroes too. So this whole situation is a "please stop fighting we like both of you" issue, how much of that is motivated by not wanting it to affect the frontlines is uncertain.

I mostly agree with the rest.

Rule 1: Be civil and nice.

Do you have a constructive response? Like evidence to the contrary showing this isn't happening?

Given how the west has behaved in the middle east since 2001 is it really surprising to you that they would look to the rival instead?

This is good for the middle east. They have been destabilised, crushed and treated like subhumans by America for 20 years. Gaining autonomy and improving stability in the region post-US is a positive thing.

Reports on casualties and aircraft shootdowns are a bit of a mess.

All sources were essentially shadey videos that were posted by telegram accounts and then regurgitated elsewhere. Unlike a lot of aircraft downings I haven't seen one video or photograph of a crash site, and in particular no bodies or confirmations of pilot names. This is unusual because typically civilians are first on scene to crash sites and take pictures/video.

It's also notable that Prigozhin claims to have killed nobody, Wagner claims to have killed nobody, and the Russian state via Peskov (press secretary) also claimed no casualties.

If Putin were aiming to turn people against Wagner for this, the killing of Russian service men ought to be a very easy way to do so. We're kinda lacking explanations for why both Prigo and the Russian state are claiming none of these actually happened, that nothing on the convoy was shot despite videos of bombings claiming that's what the videos were of, and that the videos of attacks on aircraft were false too.

Weird scenario really. I wonder if Russia will concede these happened and walk back claims to the contrary later though, it does seem that a lot of the pro-russia accounts are not letting go of them as having actually happened, even people like Strelkov keep raising the deaths of the pilots as "tragedies". Will be interesting to see what's real and what isn't when the dust settles.

I think he simply grossly overestimated his support, believing that something more would come of it that did not.

I just don’t agree that this strengthened the state/Putin. In a way, if someone like Prigozhin without any realistic chance tries a coup and gets away with his life (at least for now) doesn’t this show how weak Russia currently is?

It has embarrassed Russia for sure, the global south in particular supports Russia a lot and there will be some respect lost through it but that's not going to change much about why they support Russia (serves their interests to see a multipolar world emerge) so they'll continue to do so.

While it may have caused foreign embarrassment that's not really important in terms of "strength" of the state. The strength of a state is determined by the political and military powers within it supporting it and its institutions. Literally all of them did so which has ultimately served to resolve the question "is it possible for Russia to collapse?" with a resounding "No" at this time.

By comparison and to do a big whatabout - I would say that the US has a greater amount of division and potential for political and financial factions to attempt to tear it apart. I however don't think that there is anyone quite as bold or stupid as Prigo to overestimate their support or underestimate the size of the support you need to tear apart and successfully coup a country like that though.

Like I keep pointing out, the gang of eight were an incredibly powerful coalition that failed. They serve as an example of the kind of coalition you really need to pull this shit off and they make Prigo look like a bit of a joke by comparison. Part of me wonders if members of the Russian intelligence community deliberately led him on into believing he had support in order to create this outcome, but that's pure speculation. The man isn't entirely stupid though, so I have to wonder what exactly made him think he would have more support.

A lot of the people that have come over aren't people who want decentralisation. They are people who don't give a shit but are unhappy with reddit.

They haven't learned WHY reddit is making this decision. They have no understanding of why IPOs and privately owned companies will always lead to this. They do not understand.

They are just people that want their content slop, but are also mad. They don't actually care how the slop is delivered to them they just know they want it and know they're mad at reddit.

The result is that they want to come somewhere else and behave exactly like it is reddit, when it is not.

Of course he called it off lmao. He had NO SUPPORT. He was totally isolated.

Compare this to the gang of eight when the communists attempted but failed a coup and you'll see what a real powerful coup attempt looks like. That failed.

Look at who supported and took part in that and compare it to Prigozhin's isolated attempt with absolutely no support, no allies, nothing, while every single other political and military force in the country backed the state.

Prigo grossly overestimated his position. He thought he would get supporters once it was launched, he got absolutely nothing and he backed out at the earliest opportunity with a guarantee of his life being protected in Belarus. This was accepted by state because the alternative would have been a disaster for Russia with thousands of dead in a battle for Rostov and defence of the outskirts of Moscow.