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    Scott Ritter: Prigozhin's Gambit - Treason by any other name Archived 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

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