Friday 29th of November 2024
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and the oscar for best performance in a remake of laurel and hardy in russia goes toooooo.....

What if the Prigozhin “Coup” is Maskirovka? I want to explore that possibility. Earlier today (Saturday on the east coast of the U.S.) I was sketching out a piece with the catchy title, “PRIGOZHIN — PUTSCH OR PLOY?” Well, that swell idea was blown away like the Kakhovka Dam when the narrative about the Prigozhin plan to march on Moscow and personally strangle Russian Defense Minister Shoigu went full-on Nadia Comăneci — i.e., back flip. Prigozhin ordered “his” troops back to their bases, cut a deal with the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, to go into exile and will face no judicial punishment. WHAT????? No bloodshed? No miles of burning tanks? And no Mussolini neck tie for Vladimir Putin? What the hell?!!

 

by 

 

Man, you could feel the disappointment and frustration emanating from the Washington establishment. The political equivalent of premature ejaculation. Last night (Friday) you could hear the popping of champagne corks and popcorn as media and intelligence officials huddled around computer screens awaiting images of a distraught Putin running naked away from the Kremlin. Biden and his team remind me of Wiley Coyote in terms of the despair they suffer as they watch their harebrained schemes to catch Putin crash and burn.

While I cannot firmly dismiss the possibility that Prigozhin attempted this coup on his own (or with the encouragement of an outside backer), I want to present the Maskirovka scenario.

Let us start with these facts:

  1. The Wagner Group was established by Russian intelligence organizations and funded by the Russian Government. Many in the West mistakenly believe that Prigozhin has deep pockets and is paying Wagner’s bills and, despite having ZERO military experience, is the commander of the outfit. As the Russians say, NYET!
  2. Russia is considered by the U.S. and the rest of NATO as a dictatorship. Prigozhin has been shooting his mouth off for months spouting threats against the Russian military and, indirectly, at Putin but has suffered no arrest or sanction. Does this mean Russia is not a dictatorship?
  3. Prigozhin ostensibly launched the coup, according to his own words on Friday, because the Russian MOD hit an encampment of Wagner troops training for war with missiles, shells and rockets. But the alleged video of the incident showed no casualties. Today, Prigozhin backed away from that claim and now insists he was just protesting the MOD’s move to bring the Wagner Group into the Russian Army.
  4. The Russian Government waited about 12 hours before sending police/military forces to the Wagner Group headquarters in St. Petersburg. Little sense of urgency.
  5. Prigozhin reportedly ordered a column of Wagner troops to go from Rostov on Don to Moscow to dethrone Shoigu and maybe General Gerasimov. Take a look at the map. That is a distance of almost 1200 kilometers. How was that column of trucks and tanks supposed to refuel and cover that distance in less than 20 hours?

 

How about this as an explanation? The entire coup narrative was generated to allow for the movement of Russian military forces to areas north and west of Voronezh without raising the alarm among NATO planners. Russia was moving forces to stop coup plotters as opposed to building up forces for a new axis of offense. 

It appears that the roots of the narrative that Prigozhin was going to betray Russia starts in 2022. Someone with ties to Western intelligence had a relationship with Prigozhin and began sounding him out about collaborating with the West. Prigozhin let his Russian intel bosses know about the pitch and the Russians decided to build an op that would present Prigozhin as a disgruntled patriot, boiling in anger at the incompetence of Russian leaders. The Russians fed this by letting Prigozhin launch vicious verbal attacks on Shoigu and Gerasimov and, if we are to believe the Jack Teixeira discord leaks, even passed intel on the locations of Russian troops to his intel handler.

Here is the interesting part of this hypothesis — who made the decision to launch Prigozhin? A credible argument can be made that the Prigozhin’s Western handlers decided that Friday was the day and ordered him into action. But I think this was stage managed in the Kremlin. Putin and his intel chiefs knew what the West was trying to foment in Russia and realized that Ukraine and NATO were reeling from their feckless counter offensive and its attendant massive losses in men and materiel. Why not use the coup attempt as a good cover story for the mass movement of troops all along the line between Moscow and Rostov on Don? 

This is a way to move Russian troops to areas north of Belgorod without drawing the unwelcome attention of NATO ISR platforms. Move the troops closer to the border and then disperse them. Which means Russia found a way to reinforce troops on a new potential axis of attack that will create a nightmare for NATO planners.

Think of the coup as rabbit running across an open field. Hungry predators hiding in the forest may be tempted to expose themselves in an effort to snag a bunny. Did some of the reactions in Russia to news of the suspected coup help Russian counter intelligence identify people in positions of authority in Russia who, until now, quietly rooted for Ukraine? Maybe.

I also want to entertain a hilarious possibility. Did Prigozhin scam his western handlers out of millions of dollars? Yevgeny does have a criminal past and is known for sticky fingers. Did he draw on his criminal past and fleece the British or the Americans? Could be a terrific story.

Anyway, after less than 24 hours of drama, we are left with the mournful, but beautiful voice of Peggy Lee singing, Is That All There Is?

 

READ MORE:

https://sonar21.com/russias-academy-award-winning-performance-for-best-coup-prigozhin-scores-best-actor/

 

WE HAD THE SAME REACTION.... SEE:

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BY PEPE ESCOBAR

 

When the lightning of History strikes, better cut to the chase in our first draft.

Here we go.

After the extraordinary events in Russia during The Longest Day, President Putin wins on all counts.

Among other feats, he has made an absolute, inter-galactic ass of the whole collective West MSM – all over again.

He rallied virtually every Russian to end the Special Military Operation (SMO) – or “almost war” (according to some business circles) quicker.

He – and the FSB – amassed a formidable list of traitors and 5th and 6thcolumnists, which will be properly dealt with.

And he now enjoys unlimited freedom to deploy de facto Counter-Terrorist Operation (CTO) martial law powers.

As much as Putin helped perennial Lukashenko in August 2020, preventing regime change in Belarus, good ol’ Luka prevented Russia from sliding into civil war in June 2023.

A complex wide-ranging counter-terror op is now in effect in Moscow and beyond, while assorted Western sub-zoology specimens are stunned, dazed and confused: wasn’t that supposed to be Putin meeting his Czar Nicholas II moment?

A first glance at the chessboard tells us that all the pieces seem to be falling in their right places.

Prighozin gets a golden parachute in Belarus. Shoigu may be about to be sacked, perhaps even Gerasimov (yes, there are deeply dysfunctional layers inside the Ministry of Defense). The Wagner musicians will be incorporated as a regular Army Corps. They may keep doing business in Africa: demand is huge.

So what really happened after The Longest Day? Hefty CIA funds may have changed hands. But in the end the “coup” could turn out to be the Greatest Russian Trolling of the West Ever.

 

The Mother of All Maskirovkas

Once again, facts on the ground prove Putin is the undisputed champion of Russia. After keeping a strategic silence for a few hours, his intervention gathered full support from the civilian population, the FSB, the Chechens, the Army, the Communists, everyone.

The exact terms of the deal between Luka and Prighozin, with help from the governor of the Tula region, Alexey Dyumin, are still unclear.

Prighozin said he was satisfied with the terms. Peskov confirmed on the record that a criminal case against Prigozhin would be dropped. A key Prighozin demand was the twin resignation of Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of Staff Gerasimov. That may – or may not – happen in the immediate future.

And that brings us to the still fascinating possibility this was the Mother of All Maskirovkas. Prigozhin sets up all this circus just to get a meeting in Moscow with Shoigu and Gerasimov.

Talk about an overkill just to go out on a date.

The Mother of All Maskirovkas scenario also implies a move worthy of 5D chess.

On Saturday, Wagner was 200 km away from Moscow.

Yet on Sunday, Wagner was 100 km away from Kiev.

Next level Sun Tzu Art of War, anyone?

 

Between sovereignty and betrayal 

Alexander Dugin correctly points out how this was also an exercise in Sovereignty: “Only Sovereign Lukashenko, together with Sovereign Putin himself, confronted [Prighozin]…It turned out that many can frame the President and the people, acting in the shadows and apparently on his behalf, but saving the Fatherland in a critical situation is not their specialty.”

The corollary is that Russia needs “a sovereign elite, otherwise everything will repeat itself.”

As for the dazed and confused collective West, especially the NATO-Kiev junta, with everyone instantly rebranding Wagner from “terrorists” to “freedom fighters”, getting bogged down in their own swamp is the art they excel in.

Mainstream media spun that the proverbial “Western officials” were “taken by surprise” by the mutiny. That depends on the amount of funds that changed hands, and in which direction, during the preparation.

The SMO, now CTO keeps rolling along. The Russian Army continues to fight, undisturbed. The “counter-offensive” remains teetering over the edge of a cliff, ready to kiss the black void.

Putin winning on all counts implies the whole civilian population – and the military – engaged into preserving him and the Russian institutions, as well as perfecting them. There’s absolutely no nation anywhere across the collective West where we find this level of citizen support.

Russian politics is a special animal. It works at the highest level and also at grassroots level – unlike in the West, where the norm is deep hatred between the elites and the people.

Of course it should always be stressed it’s the less patriotic Russian oligarchs who run away every time something approaching The Longest Day takes place.

For a few hours, the West was betting heavily on the dismemberment of Russia. Not now. And not in the foreseeable future.

The succession is already being prepared, by Team Putin and selected patriotic oligarchs. Among the contenders, there’s a secret name that will stun everyone when it pops up. He’s still invisible in terms of public opinion, and works in the shadows. His name should remain secret for the time being.

As it stands, what matters is that Russia as whole emerged even stronger out of The Longest Day. The man and woman in the street showed himself and herself, once again, as a true patriot, ready to defend the Motherland whatever it takes.

There was no confrontation between those who are pro-Russian institutions and those who are pro-Wagner. People actually support both. People regarded Wagner like the “polite green men” who helped to peacefully retake Crimea in 2014. Facing them, there was not a single policeman or military.

So Putin is stronger than ever. But everyone should always keep this in mind: the one thing he can’t forgive is betrayal.

 

READ MORE:

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/06/26/when-the-lightning-of-history-strikes-better-cut-to-the-chase-in-our-first-draft/

 

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By Max Blumenthal and Wyatt Reed
The Grayzone

 

When Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a supposed revolt against Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, sending his forces on a march toward Moscow following a series of tirades against the country’s defense establishment, Washington’s expert class overflowed with an orgy of regime change fantasies.

 

For just over 12 hours, everyone from former U.S. ambassador to Russia and noted Hitler apologist Michael McFaul to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to neocon pundit Anne Applebaum exploded with seemingly libidinal excitement about a supposed “civil war” that was certain to feature “Russians…killing Russians,” along with “lots of casualties” and Putin “probably hiding somewhere.”

It was as though the Soviet Union was collapsing all over again, and Prigozhin, a character named on the F.B.I.’s most wanted list whom the U.S. government has sanctioned for leading what it described as a “transnational criminal organization,” was suddenly a white knight storming into Moscow to liberate Russia from “the Putin regime” on the back of a tank. Move over, Juan Guaido.

Expecting a bloodbath and seismic political upheaval, corporate networks like CNN had budgeted wall-to-wall coverage of the coup that wasn’t, filling cable news green rooms with rent-a-generals, K Street think tankers, and war-hungry former diplomatic corps hacks.

On Saturday afternoon, however, news broke across the U.S. that Prigozhin had struck a deal with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to end his protest and go into exile. Thus ended a largely bloodless affair that ultimately saw fewer documented deaths than the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot.

Though the supposed revolt in Russia burned out faster than a Leopard tank on the way to Zaporizhzhia, we now know that a number of serious casualties were incurred inside the D.C. Beltway. The Grayzone obtained an exclusive look at the massacre some of America’s top Russia experts carried out against their own credibility.

 McFaul McFails, Again

Ever since he was unceremoniously ejected from Moscow for apparently attempting to organize a color revolution in 2012, Ambassador Michael McFaul has waged a personal jihad against the country’s government. His hatred of the Russian leadership grew so impassioned that he once declared that Putin was morally inferior to Adolf Hitler, embracing a fringe view associated with Holocaust deniers that asserts the Nazi dictator “didn’t kill German-speaking people.”

When the events of Friday kicked off, McFaul could hardly contain himself. The disgraced diplomat immediately took to Twitter to insist without a shred of evidence to claim that Putin “has ordered his army and others to destroy Wagner & Prigozhin.”

“So there’s going to be a big fight,” he promised.

As for the Russian President, McFaul confidently declared: “I am sure that he is no longer in Moscow.” Just after noon on Saturday, he seemed to believe the Russian president’s demise was imminent. “Rats are jumping” from Putin’s ship, he effused, referring to oligarch Arkady Rotenberg taking a flight to Azerbaijan. “This is now a civil war,” the self-styled expert confidently declared.

 

But around 1:30 PM on Saturday the unwelcome news had made its way to Washington: Putin and Prigozhin had reached an agreement. There was to be no civil war in Russia, after all.

McFaul was suddenly forced to reckon with the reality that his predictions of a coup were premature, and that virtually everything he had said hours before was completely wrong. “Can anyone remember a mutiny or coup attempt that lasted 24 hours and no one really fought or was killed?,” pondered the retired diplomat, seemingly coming to grips with the obvious. 

Then, like an alcoholic in denial after yet another blackout, McFaul whimpered, “I was wrong about this. Eager to learn why.”

 

This May, anti-Russian pseudo-scholar and former Iraq war cheerleader Anne Applebaum predicted a decisive Ukrainian counter-offensive that would storm through Russian defenses and not only “liberate” Crimea, but encourage regime change from Moscow to Venezuela. 

In an article co-authored by former Israeli prison guard and The Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, and illustrated by the Davos frontman, Bono, (with apparent help from an Etch-a-Sketch), Applebaum openly fantasized about a madman taking control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. 

“Even the worst successor imaginable,” she wrote, “even the bloodiest general or most rabid propagandist, will immediately be preferable to Putin, because he will be weaker than Putin. He will quickly become the focus of an intense power struggle.”

By Friday, Applebaum seemed to believe her fever dreams were coming true. And it was then that she breathlessly announced, “Russia is sliding into what can only be described as a civil war. ” 

“If you are surprised, maybe you shouldn’t be,” she lectured readers, just hours before the bloodless “coup” came to a conclusion. 

Applebaum’s husband is the former foreign minister of Poland, Radek Sikorski, who infamously tweeted his gratitude to the U.S. government for destroying the Nord Stream pipeline. While Sikorski deleted his tweet, Applebaum’s thoroughly discredited “civil war” article remains on the website of the Atlantic.

On Sunday, Applebaum and McFaul were rewarded for their badly botched analysis with an appearance on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki, which is hosted by the Biden White House’s former press secretary.

 

Zelensky: Putin Is ‘Very Afraid’

“The man from the Kremlin is obviously very afraid and probably hiding somewhere, not showing himself,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proclaimed on Saturday. According to fact checkers, Zelensky did not issue this bold statement from inside a bunker or in front of a green screen. 

 

U.S. Intelligence Claims ‘Surprise’

On Sunday, CNN reported that U.S. intelligence analysts were taken by surprise by “the swiftness of the deal that was struck on Saturday.”

What’s more, they believed that Prigozhin’s march toward Moscow “would encounter much more resistance” than it did.

“I do know that we assessed it was going to be a great deal more violent and bloody,” an unnamed U.S. official reportedly told the outlet.

But D.C.’s disappointment with the lack of carnage on Moscow streets did not end there.

 Kurt Volker Declares ‘The End’ for Putin

Kurt Volker is a former U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations who also operated as a de facto Raytheon lobbyist while serving as the executive director of the John McCain Institute. Volker also functioned as a liaison for U.S. and Ukrainian business interests while presiding over the founding of American University Kyiv.

During a Saturday CNN appearance, Volker declared that the brief moment of disorder in Russia marked “the end for Putin” and “the beginning of the end of Russia’s war in Ukraine.” 

 Christo Grozev: Bellingcat’s Neocon-Stradumus

Christo Grozev is the Russia director of the U.S. and U.K. government-funded website Bellingcat. This April, Grozev celebrated a terrorist attack that saw a Russian war blogger assassinated and a cafe full of civilians blown up in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

With chaos seemingly intensifying inside the Russian Federation again, Grozev suddenly transformed from a glorified OSINT blogger into a geopolitical soothsayer with a unique ability to divine the fate of the Kremlin. 

“Prigozhin says he’s got 25k strong army and he’s going to take power and deal with the ‘traitors’ at the top before returning to the front line,” the Bellingcat commentator claimed on Twitter. “Am old enough to remember how Russia ‘pundits’ said I was talking nonsense predicting a Prigozhin coup attempt this year.”

Having not been born literally yesterday, we at The Grayzone are thankfully old enough to remember when Prigozhin’s “coup attempt” failed to materialize and ended quickly with negotiations.

Our memory is so long, in fact, that we recall when the war prophet Grozev stated that Russia had expended 70 percent of its precision missile stocks back in April 2022. Since then, Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian targets have only increased.

 Ian Bremmer: Peter Hotez of International Relations

As president of the Eurasia Group risk analysis firm, political scientist Ian Bremmer has leveraged his supposed expertise into a lucrative business.

Bremmer recently weighed in in defense of the absurdly double-talking pediatrician and pundit Peter Hotez, defending his decision not to debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Covid-related issues on the grounds that Hotez was a credentialed expert, and RFK Jr. was not. 

“It would be like me debating elon [Musk] on electric vehicles. Or him debating me on international relations,” Bremmer argued, asserting his own superior credentials. “There’s no value added.”

During the events of Friday, Bremmer joined the rest of the Beltway expert class in predicting imminent doom for Putin. “wagner territorial gains in russia dramatically faster than in ukraine,” Bremmer wrote in a viral post seen by more than 1 million Twitter users. 

Moments later, he joked that “ukraine has run out of popcorn,” implying that Kiev was eagerly preparing for Russia’s collapse.

Following the announcement of Wagner’s stand-down on Saturday, an apparently disappointed Bremmer insisted “there’s no environment where [Putin and Prigozhin] hug it out.”

 Top Biden Officials’ Travel Plans Interrupted

Among the most overlooked victims of the brief march on Moscow were high-ranking U.S. officials’ weekend plans.

On Saturday, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that a planned visit to Jordan and Israel by Gen. Mark Milley, the top military officer in the U.S., had been canceled “due to the situation in Russia.”

Biden administration National Security Council director and possible human scarecrow Jake Sullivan was forced to cancel a trip as well. Sullivan had reportedly been slated to attend a conference on Ukraine in Denmark until Prigozhin decided to make a trip of his own toward Rostov-on-Don.

 Stephen King: Lost in Fantasy

Horror author-turned-liberal Russiagate conspiracist Stephen King, who once praised Ukrainian Nazi collaborator and Holocaust perpetrator Stepan Bandera in a phone call with a prankster he believed to be Volodymyr Zelensky, was clearly titillated by Friday’s events. 

When Prigozhin’s forces briefly took over the city of Rostov-on-Don, King once again proved unable to contain his overactive imagination. “Putin sowed the wind. Now he must reap the whirlwind. Slava Ukraini!” he exclaimed.

Noted Online Stalker Idrees Ahmad Predicts ‘The Death of Aaron Mate’s Career’

Idress Ahmad once existed on the margins of the U.K.’s antiwar movement, publishing a book attacking the Iraq war-era neocon cabal, suggesting Senators Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold voted for Iran sanctions because they are Jewish, and openly questioning the West’s narrative of a genocide in Darfur.

After running into financial trouble and escaping deportation to his native Pakistan “against the odds” thanks to a Home Office decision that remains unexplained, Ahmad transformed into the very thing he once condemned. 

Having re-emerged as a rabid supporter of the West’s dirty war on Syria, Ahmad busied himself by stalking The Grayzone, even phoning its editor, Max Blumenthal, to threaten him against publishing a factual investigation of the Syrian White Helmets in 2016. 

While Ahmad’s recent work at the spook-infested Newlines think tank has failed to generate much interest, even among his fellow regime change cheerleaders, we noticed his prophecy on Saturday that Prigozhin’s “coup” would lead to the collapse of The Grayzone, the international committee of the Democratic Socialists of America, and “the death of Aaron Mate’s career.”

At the time of publication, we are still triggering Ahmad’s rage-a-holic personality while his own media career has gone about as far as Prigozhin’s march toward Moscow.

This article is from The Grayzone.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

Max Blumenthal, the editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

Wyatt Reed is a correspondent and managing editor of The Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter at @wyattreed13.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/06/26/casualties-of-russian-civil-war-beltway-experts/

 

 

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MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

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INTERVIEW: The Wagner finale. Cashing out | MOATS with George Galloway Ep 251

 

INTERVIEW: The most obvious answer is usually the truth. The Wagner finale. Prigozhin was guilty of high treason, trying to protect what was his $1bn money-making machine

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kubhd42cxZw

 

 

 

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