Scott Ritter: Prigozhin's Gambit - Treason by any other nameArchived Message
Posted by sashimi on June 24, 2023, 6:44 pm
In the 1997 Disney animated musical fantasy film, Hercules, there is a particularly catchy number, Zero to Hero, which describes the rise of the star of the film from a clumsy boy into a strong and capable man. In the span of less than 24 hours, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the public face of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military contractor with shadowy ties to Russian military intelligence, has flipped the script of this ashes to diamonds tale, transforming an organization that had, through virtue of its impressive battlefield performance, become a legendary symbol of Russian patriotism and strength, into a discredited band of disgruntled traitors seeking the violent overthrow of the constitutional government of Russian on behalf of nations who seek the strategic defeat and ultimate destruction of Russia.
If Disney were to write a song about Prigozhin and Wagner today, it would be called Hero to Zero.
Let there be no doubt in anyone's mind - Yevgeny Prigozhin has become a witting agent of Ukraine and the intelligence services of the collective West. And while there may be those within Wagner who have been unwittingly drawn into this act of high treason through deception and subterfuge, in the aftermath of Russian President Vladimir Putin's address to the Russian nation on June 24, and Yevgeny Prigozhin's impolitic reply, there can be no doubt that there are only two sides in this struggle - the side of constitutional legitimacy, and the side of unconstitutional treason and sedition. Anyone who continues to participate in Prigozhin's coup has aligned themselves on the wrong side of the law and have themselves become outlaws.
Having taken Wagner down this unfortunate path, one needs to examine the motivations - stated and otherwise - that could prompt such a dangerous course of action. First and foremost, Prigozhin's gambit must be looked at for what it is - an act of desperation. For all its military prowess, Wagner as a fighting force is unsustainable for any period without the logistical support of the Russian Ministry of Defense. The fuel that powers Wagner's vehicles, the ammunition that gives its weapons their lethality, the food that nourishes its fighters - all comes from the very organization that Prigozhin has set his sights on usurping. This reality means that to succeed, Prigozhin would need to rally sufficient support behind his cause capable of not only sustaining his gambit but offsetting the considerable power of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Russian Federation which, if left intact, would be able to readily defeat the forces of Wagner in any large-scale combat.
In short, Prigozhin is looking to create a so-called "Moscow Maidan" designed to replicate the success of the events of early 2014 in Kiev, where the constitutionally elected government of President Victor Yanukovych was toppled from power through violence and force of will that was orchestrated by Ukrainian nationalists supported by the US and Europe. The fantasy of a "Moscow Maidan" has been at the center of the strategy of the collective West and their Ukrainian proxy from the very start. Premised on the notion of a weak Russian president propped up by a thoroughly corrupt oligarch class, the idea of creating the conditions for the rise of sufficient domestic unrest capable of bringing down the Putin government like a proverbial house of cards was the primary objective of the sanctions regime imposed by the West after the initiation of the Special Military Operation (SMO) on February 24, 2022. The failure of the sanctions to generate such a result compelled the collective West to double-down on the notion of collapsing the Russian government, this time using a military solution. The British Prime Minister pressured his Ukrainian counterpart to forgo a negotiated settlement to the conflict that was ready to be signed in Istanbul on April 1, 2022, and instead engage in a protracted war with Russia fueled by tens of billions of dollars' worth of military and financial assistance designed to inflict military losses on Russia sufficient to trigger domestic unrest - the elusive "Moscow Maidan." -- Cont'd at https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/prigozhins-gambittreason-by-any-other