Prigorzhin's rebellion started out like a Wagnerian opera, but immediately turned to farce. Like an opera, it was full of costume and backgrounds, overblown grand gestures, and a lot of unintelligible noise. But, even as the Valkyrie, began their ride, their horses were pulled up lame, and they limped home to obscurity. Zelensky, Prigozhin, and Putin, became Larry, Curly and Moe, taking comedic swings at each other. Rather than the Ring Cycle, it had more the duration and character of a rinse cycle, washing out scum.
And, indeed, that may not be a bad description of what it was really about. The day began with Prighozin claiming that his forces had come under attack by the Russian military, and was the spark for the rebellion. In fact, Prighozin makes many such claims, few of which are backed by any evidence of being true. Analysis, by western experts, of the video he provided in relation to this claim shows it was crudely doctored. Then, he walks with some of his mercenaries into Rostov, with no fighting, and sits in the Russian military HQ, for most of the day, talking to low level members of the Russian general staff. The soldiers in the town neither surrender to Prighozin, nor join his rebellion.
Following this, he puts out further notices that some of his forces are marching on Moscow, which is 1,000 miles from Rostov. In fact, rather than marching, they seem to take a leisurely drive, unobstructed, again with no fighting, surrender or forces joining him, along the M4. That is if it actually happened at all, because there was no video evidence of any such movement, which nowadays is fairly routine, and required.
Prighozin made several demands about the heads of the Russian army coming to meet him in Rostov, along with demands for their removal, changes in the way the war is fought - again as a warning to those in the West who see any rebellion as somehow favourable to their cause - requiring it to become more brutal, with a full mobilisation and so on. Not one of those demands was met, and yet, a few hours after it began, Prighozin told his mercenaries to turn around and return to bases "according to plan", which itself is an interesting turn of phrase.
Of course, sections of the western media, always ready with their chosen hyperbola, and ridiculous and inappropriate comparisons, talked about this being the equivalent of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, or Mussolini's march on Rome. All total nonsense, because despite Prighozin's claims of having 25,000 men, the large majority of them are spread across Africa and other countries, with at most only about 10,000 in Russia, and only a fraction of them available to march on Moscow. That is a totally insignificant number compared to the forces of the Russian army, even just those available to defend Moscow, let alone those that come have swatted such a tiny force like a fly, at any point on the road from Rostov.
What is surprising is that Prighozin, unless he's gone mad, and that would require some of his senior commanders also doing so, would know that his forces were totally incapable of doing anything other than being swatted. The only other explanations for that would be that he was seriously misguided about how many regular troops would join him, which is unlikely, or else, he knew that he would be able to undertake this farce unimpeded. Why would that be the case? It reminded me immediately of the fake coup undertaken in Turkey in 2016 that enabled Putin's mate Erdogan, to clear out opponents, and strengthen his position.
Of course, despite the fact that this rebellion had all the hallmarks of a farce, that Prighozin got none of his demands, and has now had to relocate to Belarus, the UK media in its headlines talked about Putin on the brink, and so on. All weird conclusions in the extreme, until you remember that that media, as well as needing always to talk in apocalyptic hyperbole, is also simply the mouthpiece, the propaganda arm of the capitalist state, and, thereby, of NATO imperialism. Freedom of the press in western society means freedom for 99% of it to talk total bollocks, in support of the ruling class.
The idea that the total capitulation of Prighozin, in hours of launching a rebellion, without getting any of his demands, and with Putin only having to threaten a response, amounts to anything other than a victory for Putin, and strengthening of his position, can only flow from the false narrative that NATO/Ukraine has tried to present from the start that Russia intended to occupy the whole of Ukraine, and its failure to do so is a military failure, causing internal fracturing inside Russia. But, Russia never intended to occupy the whole of Ukraine, any more than it intended to occupy the whole of Georgia in 2008, although it easily could have done.
NATO would like Russia to have as its goal the occupation of the whole of Ukraine, because were it to try, it would inevitably fail, and be destroyed. But, Putin and his generals know that. Its why they never mobilised even a fraction of the forces and materials required for such a task to begin with, and only enough to occupy and annex the majority Russian areas of Eastern Ukraine, just as they did with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in 2008. As former, NATO secretary General, George Robertson said, NATO had goaded Putin into invading Ukraine, whereas he would probably have preferred to have negotiated another Minsk Agreement. Now, they are trying to create a narrative to goad him, or his generals into that further invasion.
They need to do that for the simple reason, as I've set out before, that, so long as Russia sits put in Eastern Ukraine, where its had about nine months to embed itself, and prepare its defences, and where, it also enjoys, now the 3:1 defenders advantage, there is little chance of Ukraine making the long promised counter-offensive, or if it does, its forces, including those NATO provided weapons, would get minced. The promised Ukrainian Spring offensive, turned into a Summer offensive, and all accounts of it show it to be a rather lame and ineffective affair. Zelensky admits his best forces and equipment have been held back, meaning he dare not commit them, because already, with even a limited offensive he's lost hundreds, if not thousands of troops, and more than a dozen of the much vaunted Leopard II tanks provided by EU countries, some of which have been captured.
If Ukraine makes no headway in an offensive, and even the leaked US Defence Department papers show that NATO itself believes it can't, over the next year, then, with the Autumn and Winter months arriving in several weeks time, again, deferring any further offensive, Russia will have had time to make Eastern Ukraine impregnable to Ukrainian attack. That means that NATO will have failed, yet again, following its defeat in Afghanistan, and before that in Iraq, Syria, Libya and so on. So, NATO requires Russia to invade the whole of Ukraine, hence its current narrative, but Russia is unlikely to do so.
In fact, there is another possible reason for the theatrics of yesterday. Again some western propagandists have suggested its about Putin using it to remove the top generals that Prighozin demanded be removed. Unlikely, if Putin wanted to remove military top brass, he would just do it, as he has in the past. But, the move could have been a feint. In martial arts, fighters will distract from their real intention by using a feint. For example, a slight drop of the left shoulder, suggests an imminent left jab, but is used to disguise the fact of a right hook, or ridge-hand strike. A well signalled front kick to the stomach, can be turned immediately into a round kick to the head, by simply opening the hips, and pivoting on the supporting foot.
Prighozin's day out could have been a similar feint. Perhaps Putin and the GRU wanted to see what response came from inside Russia, to weed out opponents. There seemed to have been none, with Chechen leaders offering to go to put down Prighozin and so on. But, it might also have been designed to provoke a hasty attack from Ukrainian forces, turning the tables on NATO's tactics, drawing those Ukrainian forces into a trap, given that they have been reluctant to engage in any kind of significant offensive for fear of suffering further fatal losses. Prighozin and his forces are now relocating to Belarus, unless things have changed in the last few hours. From there, he might be used for another feint, launching commando style attacks into norther Ukraine, perhaps attacking Patriot missile sites, and so on. But, it will again, be simply a distraction from the main event of Russian consolidation of its position in the Donbass. Once that is achieved, its really game over for NATO's strategy.
Come Winter, there can be no further chance of a Ukrainian offensive, and as Autumn approaches, the EU will again be looking to build its gas stocks ahead of Winter. Its unlikely to be lucky enough to get two successive mild Winters. It has not, and could not have been able to build the infrastructure to switch to more expensive supplies of imported LNG, and now, following NATO blowing up the Nordstream pipelines, it cannot easily resume Russian gas supplies, without a major climb down, and rapprochement with Putin. With the global economy growing, and energy demand in China, India and elsewhere in Asia growing, energy prices are set to rise sharply, especially as the US and its allies need to also restock their hugely depleted Strategic reserves. In Europe, some North Sea gas production is also shut down, for necessary maintenance work.
So, the window for NATO and its allies in the EU is extremely limited. They needed to goad Russia into the invasion of Ukraine they had planned on happening, but they are not going to get it. The F-16's are no more use to Ukraine than are the Leopard II tanks, and so on, so long as Russia simply adopts a defensive position in the Donbass. They will just get shot down, if they are used in any kind of offensive role, whether in the Donbass, or more dangerously in the Black Sea, in a more aggressive attempt to step up the war by attacking Russian ships. So, as I wrote at Christmas, the likely outcome is going to be some kind of truce, and peace deal recognising the reality that the Donbass and Crimea are now part of Russia, allowing negotiations with Russia, and for the EU to be able to resume Russian energy supplies.
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