Personal Story: How Russia Deals with Mutinies
Back in spring 1980 I was a Russian linguist in the U.S. Army stationed at a listening post east of Hamburg and just west of The Wall with East Germany. Not the Berlin Wall. This was The Wall that stretched from the Baltic Sea southward and separated East from West Germany. We used to listen to the Soviet Army practicing launching their nuclear missiles. One day I calculated the target position: Our position.
Another day we listened over a couple of hours as a group of Russian soldiers mutinied, got in a truck and drove around robbing people. They were chased into a barn on a farm. The military police entered the barn and killed all of them without asking for a surrender.
I bring this up because of the mutiny of Yevgeniy Prigozhin and his Wagner Group of mercenaries. Early reports say they seized a military HQ in Rostov. Some reports say the military and people are rallying behind President Putin. But it’s hard to know what’s going on.
But, based on my admittedly anecdotal experience, I suspect the mutineers will be dealt with harshly. Any resistance will be met with immediate execution. The rest will be rounded up and either executed, or sent to the Gulag.
As to the war in general, U.S. and NATO officials have been panting for this for years. But remember what I always say: What about the nuclear weapons? If Russia broke up, who would control them? Would there be “loose nukes”? Will one end up being exploded in the parking lot down from your home?
Breaking up Russia and stealing its vast commodities resources has been the goal of the neocons in charge – Biden, Graham, Blinken, Sullivan, Bolton, Nuland, the late John McCain reporting from hell, et al. – all along. Let’s revisit what neocon kingpin John Bolton actually wrote in the Wall Street Journal in on April 13, “A New American Grand Strategy to Counter Russia and China”:
Third, after Ukraine wins its war with Russia, we must aim to split the Russia-China axis. Moscow’s defeat could unseat Mr. Putin’s regime. What comes next is a government of unknowable composition. New Russian leaders may or may not look to the West rather than Beijing, and might be so weak that the Russian Federation’s fragmentation, especially east of the Urals, isn’t inconceivable. Beijing is undoubtedly eyeing this vast territory, which potentially contains incalculable mineral wealth. Significant portions of this region were under Chinese sovereignty until the 1860 Treaty of Peking transferred “outer Manchuria,” including extensive Pacific coast lands, to Moscow. Russia’s uncontrolled dissolution could provide China direct access to the Arctic, including even the Bering Strait, facing Alaska.
Why would China risk disrupting vital commodities supply lines with Russia in a war, when Russia already is selling them at a discount, while its advanced arms industry is helping China modernize?
This crisis is in its early phases. But it only will embolden the Biden regime and its NATO puppets to extend the war instead of working for peace, which is the only path out of this madness. Even as the threat of nuclear war, as Biden also has said, is high. This is the insanity the Biden regime and the neocons have brought us to.
This evening tuck in your children and say prayers with them because tomorrow we all might spend in eternity.
John Seiler blogs at johnseiler.blogspot.com
I have never been to the former Soviet Union/Russia, and was one of Tom’s Balkan hacks. I was shocked to see in the first week of Russia entering the one-sided civil war in Ukraine, the unprotected 40km column, the initial thrust towards Kiev, the fact that they didn’t go through the Donbass ro protect ethnic Russians, and that Russian soldiers — however brave many are — proved so unprofessional, poorly led, and ill-equppied for this battle of national survival. Just like the Americans did with Yugoslavia, it looks tragically that they may yet have their way in destroying Russia. I pray this ride will reverse.
The 40km column, consisting of Russia’s oldest, most outdated equipment (why risk the best for the purpose?), parked near Kiev in the beginning stages of Russia’s official involvement in this nine year long war was an obvious and brilliant feint to keep much of Ukraine’s forces from being moved at once to the east. It was fantastically effective. The Ukrainians were too busy shoveling out their shorts to even attempt to attack this sitting duck force. Meanwhile, Russia was able to engage in the area that was most important to them without having to take too many unnecessary casualties.
My instinct on the current fracas involving Prigozhin and Wagner is that the West has, once again, had its collective shorts pulled well up and over its head, super atomic wedgie style. No-one has been killed or arrested. Thousands of troops from the north and east have been moved up into the theater of war ostensibly to meet Wagner (it’s very difficult to move large numbers of troops unnoticed in these days of satellite surveillance) putting them in position to effectively push their advantage as the Ukrainian “summer offensive” ends in disaster. Wagner is back to their R & R camps and the rebel Prigozhin sits “in exile” in Belarus laughing while the ruthless dictator, Putin, who put up with Prigozhin’s very public, foul-mouthed rants for months, turns purple with rage. “Drat! Foiled again!”, he roars. “Those Russkies! What a bunch of incompetent boobs!”, laugh the malicious infants of Neo-con central. What next, exploding cigars. You can be sure that every suspect oligarch left in Russia had their communications closely monitored throughout the entire situation, but such people are often very shrewd and not given to showing their hands too quickly. Still, the operation might have been useful in picking up some low-hanging rotten fruit.
Then again, maybe, even after having seen the effectiveness of Russian air power daily over the past year and some, and without any useful countermeasures at hand, the Wagnerites really did believe that their gas and bladders would hold out long enough to invade Moscow, which certainly would have risen as one to welcome them. Cue raised eyebrow emoji.