A WORKING THEORY ON PRIGO’S COUP

 

27 June 2023 by Gaius Baltar

Speculating without all the facts or proper insight is pretty stupid, especially about important issues. Still, people do it all the time. Why do they do it? Well, because it’s fun and a good exercise in inductive and deductive reasoning. This is the sort of activity people engage in when drinking beer with friends. It’s also a compulsion of many people, including mine. I can’t stop thinking about certain problems, and the more unclear they are, the more interested I become. It’s a character flaw, or a character virtue. I’m not sure.

This brings me to the recent events in Russia with Prigozhin’s Wagner PMC coup/mutiny. What a delicious buffet of mystery meats that is. Facts are unclear, rumors abound and nothing makes sense. It’s absolutely irresistible and therefore, against better judgment, I’m going to engage in some speculation – just for fun of course. It’s not like I know anything about what really happened.

Many theories have already been put forward about the Prigozhin coup attempt. This was a real attempt but Prigo acted alone out of desperation. This was a real attempt but it was engineered from abroad. This was a fake operation carried out by Russia to mess with the West and perhaps to move troops. Perhaps it was a real attempt which the Russians knew about and used to their advantage.

In the spirit of irresponsible speculation let’s take a look at a few facts, rumors and speculations – and then speculate further on what they might mean. Let’s start with these seemingly unrelated facts and rumors from the past:

Prigo’s ammo feud: The origin of Prigo’s feud with the Russian MoD was ammo shortage. Prigo even posed with a number of dead Wagner soldiers while screaming at Defense Minister Shoigu, blaming him and the ammo shortage for their deaths. From that point on, Prigo used every opportunity to escalate the feud and to blame Shoigu and the MoD for both incompetence and malice toward Wagner PMC.

The ammo shortage accusation was obviously bogus. The MoD had assigned certain supplies of ammunition to Wagner and was not willing to increase them because it needed to send a lot to the south to prepare for the Ukrainian offensive. Remember that Wagner PMC controlled the operational tempo in the battle of Bakhmut and was supposed to limit it in accordance with available ammunition. Instead, Prigo increased the tempo far beyond what the ammo supplies allowed, resulting in a lot of unnecessary casualties. In other words, Prigo purposefully drove a large number of Wagner soldiers to their unnecessary deaths and then blamed the MoD for it. Perhaps he even did it specifically to be able to blame the MoD for it. It’s not surprising that Shoigu and Gerasimov weren’t pleased with Prigo.

The brainwashing of Wagner troops: As Prigo’s crusade against the Russian MoD progressed, he increasingly circulated rumors that the MoD and the Russian Army were out to get Wagner. The ammo shortages were on purpose because they hate and envy Wagner; Russian soldiers have orders to shoot Wagner troops on sight; Wagner is superior and therefore the Russian Army hates us. This culminated in the fake missile strike carried out by the Russian Army on Wagner positions right before the start of the coup attempt. In other words, Prigo did everything he could to turn Wagner troops against the Russian Army and the MoD. Wagner was a victim of corrupt, malicious and envious forces in Moscow and the only solution was direct action against all this corruption – for Russia of course.

Victory through paralysis: Remember the reasoning behind the expected success of the Ukrainian offensive? The Russian command structure would be paralyzed and the Ukrainians with their brand new, high tech, invincible, 40 year old Leopard tanks would steamroll their defense lines. This was a talking point all over the West and in Ukraine. It seems clear that NATO and the Ukrainians were counting on this paralysis to happen. All kinds of analysts thought this was ridiculous because Russians are stoic people and not prone to paralysis through panic. Well, unless something specific would be engineered to elicit that paralysis of course, like an armed coup inside Russia.

Big plans in June: There was a rumor in Ukraine that something big would happen in late June, probably between June 20 and June 30. I heard this rumor some weeks ago and it was apparently widespread in Ukrainian circles. The rumor was true; something big indeed happened.

Counterterrorist operation in Moscow: At the absolute beginning of the Prigo coup – back when Wagner and Prigo were releasing the fake missile strike video and heading for Rostov on Don, a major antiterrorist operation was initiated in Moscow. This was apparently before Wagner troops started driving to Moscow. Perhaps this was just a standard contingency being activated, but there was news that the FSB had captured a Ukrainian intelligence operative in Moscow. The news said that he had rolled on a network of Ukrainian or Ukrainian-aligned terrorists in Moscow who were about to initiate a major terror campaign in the city. There was little subsequent news about this and I don’t know if this is true – but something clearly happened.

Color revolution branding: All Western-engineered color revolutions and destabilization plans include branding. In fact, you can almost always spot Western fingerprints by looking for the branding they feel compelled to use. They use colors a lot, seasons of the year, and even smell like in Lebanon in 2015. Prigo also used branding to communicate his message. First it was corruption, but then he settled on “justice.” It was further refined and culminated in the “March for Justice” – which is what he called the drive up to Moscow from Rostov on Don. That is clear branding, just like “Black Lives Matter.”

Offensive rumors: During the night when the Rostov drama unfolded, there were rumors that a major offensive was about to take place in the south. The Ukrainian Army was, according to these rumors, ready to attack the Russian lines in greater force than ever before. There were also news that the Russian Air Force had carried out the biggest bombing offensive of the war on Ukrainian positions and assembly points. I don’t know if this is true, but this was the word on the street. If this was planned, it was obviously canceled, perhaps due to lack of Russian paralysis.

If we assume that the points and conclusions above are all true and valid, what do they tell us? As I said before, I don’t know what happened but I can see what this looks like based on events and it ain’t pretty. Let’s go completely off the reservation and construct a sequence of events based on the points above and other information we have. It is going to sound crazy but bear with me.

Prigo was bought and recruited by Western and Ukrainian intelligence during or before the battle of Bakhmut. During the battle he and/or his handlers decided to use Wagner PMC as a tool against the Russian State – to weaken it and to create command paralysis at the right moment.

The first step was to split Wagner from the Russian Army and create among the troops hatred against the MoD and the Russian General Staff. To do this, Prigo increased operational tempo in Bakhmut beyond ammunition resources and that way basically started killing his own troops in large numbers. He then turned their attention to the carnage he himself had engineered and started blaming the “corrupt Russian system” – apart from Putin who was too popular to go after. The goal was to alienate and anger Wagner troops and to turn them into willing tools for the plan.

After Bakhmut, Prigo followed the plan concocted by his handlers. He escalated the corruption accusations and created victimhood and persecution mentality among his troops. He also tried to create doubts among Russian troops in general by articulating Ukrainian talking points and outright lies about the situation on the battlefields and the origin of the conflict. According to him there was never any Ukrainian aggression toward Donbass and the Russian leadership was lying about battlefield progress. These talking points and their aims have clear Western and Ukrainian fingerprints.

While this was going on, the Ukrainian offensive wasn’t going well and Russian lines hadn’t been breached. It was, nevertheless, decided (perhaps a month ago) to carry the coup out between June 20 and June 30. Ukrainian forces would be assembled and prepared for the great paralysis offensive, in case the coup was successful. The constraining factor was the increased pressure on Prigo from the Russian MoD. They insisted he signed a contract which would essentially remove him from Wagner. Prigo stalled and basically went into hiding to prevent the Russian authorities from arresting him or simply killing him.

The coup started according to plan and, as Prigo and his Western handlers had expected, the Russian Government was hesitant to fight them all-out on Russian soil. Prigo went to Rostov on Don and talked love and justice like a sixties hippie – and demanded to have Shoigu and Konashenkov brought to him to give them a stern talking-to. The Wagner troops were polite and avoided any confrontation. They were there for justice, peace and love – unless the evil Russian Army attacked of course.

While this was going on, the Russian Army noticed significant movements of Ukrainian troops in the south during the night and started bombing them vigorously. The Ukrainians kept preparing and waited for coup success and Russian paralysis.

The color revolution branded “March for Justice” started when Prigo sent a significant number of his most brainwashed Wagner troops toward Moscow. These troops were expendable and were, if the plan succeeded, all going to be killed or captured. Their only purpose in (what remained of) their lives was to force the Russian Government to engage in battles in the Moscow area, simulating a civil war.

As the Wagner suicide columns approached Moscow, the Ukrainian terrorist cells in the city would be activated. They would carry out a number of attacks all over the city to engineer massive confusion and the impression that the Government had lost control. Chaos in the city and battles in the outskirts would create disbelief and shock among the Russian people and Russian soldiers, and hopefully total chaos in the command structure, resulting in paralysis. At that point the big Ukrainian attack would start.

Then things went bad. The chaos in Moscow didn’t materialize and the Russian government avoided all out attacks on the columns. Perhaps they knew what the plan was and acted accordingly, who knows. Chaos and uncertainty in both Russian society and the Army also failed to materialize as Russians decided not to panic, and instead supported their Government. Seeing this disaster unfold, with no paralysis visible, the Ukrainian NATO army cancelled their big offensive.

At that point Prigo realized he had failed and a theater production starring Lukashenko was arranged to wind things down. Prigo went into exile in Belarus and the Wagner suicide troops went back to their barracks. I don’t see a bright future for Prigo, unless he can bust out of Belarus and get to the West.

So, in conclusion, this wasn’t necessarily a coup. Maybe there were traitors waiting in the wings to seize power, but it is more likely that the objectives were simply to weaken the Russian State through chaos, and to enable command paralysis so that the Ukrainians could break through the Russian defense lines – thereby weakening the Russian State further.

I have no idea if this is the correct interpretation of events or not. It’s just idle speculation, but who knows…

https://sonar21.com/a-working-theory-on-prigos-coup/