Prigozhin Drops A Truth Bomb …

[ichkeria]

… and the Kremlin retaliates?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-65996531

It’s one thing mouthing off about how awful your defence ministry is, but telling the truth about Donetsk, and slaying the myth swallowed by so many even in the west about Ukraine attacking civilians there since 2014?

And now on his Telegram channel tonight he’s claiming that his camp was hit by a missile from the direction of Russia, with “many dead”.
Pondering how to react.
Great news?

[Untitled]

do you honestly think ukraine would do well out of a civil war in russia ichkeria? i don't!

[naomi24]

If civil war in Russia means the end of the war in Ukraine and all the knock-on problems that's caused for the world, let them get on with it.

[Untitled]

that strikes me as rather bloodthirsty naomi... i don't think it is anyone's interests for a country with nuclear weapons to plunge into civil war... not least because it will kill millions of russians who have absolutely nothing to do with putin's war.

[naomi24]

You think they're going to drop nuclear bombs on themselves, untitled?

[ichkeria]

"Wagner is a mercenary force. Mercenaries are paid to fight. My assumption is that Putin/Russia was doing the paying. If so, why now has Wagner switched sides and who now is paying? "

Wagner aren't really mercenaries as such, although I referred to them as that. Mercenaries are people hired by an army to fight for them. Wagner is probably in effect a series of companies funded by criminal activity around the world, notable in Africa. They have it is suspected been used by the Kremlin to do it's dirty work there and in the Middle East when it suits the Kremlin to deny direct involvement.
During Russia's war on Ukraine Prigozhin stepped in to recruit prisoners by the tens of thousand to bolster the Russian army's flagging manpower. These recruits were largely used in the assault on Bakhmut (Donetsk region) to create human waves of cannon fodder, drawing Ukrainian fire and exposing their positions, before more competent forces would then engage their enemy.
Tensions have come to a head since Wagner withdrew from Bakhmut, with a war of words - most of them coming from Prigozhin - denouncing the Kremlin's prosecuton of the war, with Prigozhin claiming that basically the main army were useless without him, and bemoaining the sacrifice of so many of his dead men (pretty appalling hypocrisy really given these were Progozhin's own tactics).
Recently the Kremlin announced that it would be taking over the issuing of Wagner's military contracts, to which Prigozhin responded defiantly.

[Ellipsis]

That may cover the why, thank you Ich, but still ... who is paying?

[ichkeria]

"do you honestly think ukraine would do well out of a civil war in russia ichkeria? i don't! "

In case you hadn't noticed, there's a bloody war being waged by Russia in Ukraine just now, out of which Ukraine is already not doing very well. If they turn the guns on themselves, those are guns not being fired at Ukrainians, and while I don't say "bring it on" I also say that I'll lose no sleep over it if it happens. Not through anguish, anyway.

[ichkeria]

"but still ... who is paying?"

As I explained, they fund themselves though criminal activity: so Wagner pays. I mean, whether they receive a grant from the russian govenment too who knows :-)
But that's basically it.

[ichkeria]

And in fact it's thought there's been a flood of hard cash in rural areas as surviving criminals, many of them murderers and rapists, return to their godforsaken home villages to "boost the local economy"/wreak hacoc however you look at it.

[Khandro]

Don't forget the Ukrainian children who were abducted to Russia.

[LadyCG]

That was horrendous, Khandro. I hope and prey they are all recovered. What they and their families have gone through is too heinous to imagine.

[LadyCG]

Pray*

[Untitled]

"You think they're going to drop nuclear bombs on themselves, untitled?"

i think i'd rather not find out naomi... certainly if it gets anything like the last russian civil war they will use chemical weapons

[Untitled]

"In case you hadn't noticed, there's a bloody war being waged by Russia in Ukraine just now, out of which Ukraine is already not doing very well."

bit of a flippant answer ichkeria as if it gets to a point where multiple factions are going to war with each other in russia then i doubt very much that ukraine will get left alone and in fact it could end up even worse

[ichkeria]

Some parents have been able to retrieve their kids after hazardous journeys to Russia.

But yes: this is one of the worst crimes of the war: and that’s saying something: and it’s what Putin and the ridiculously named Lvova-Belova have been indicted by the ICC for. I hope in a way Putin survives this to face justice.

[tomus42]

A Russian civil war couldn't be any worse than what's already happening.

[Untitled]

oh yes it could

[ichkeria]

“bit of a flippant answer ichkeria as if it gets to a point where multiple factions are going to war with each other in russia then i doubt very much that ukraine will get left alone and in fact it could end up even worse”

A very serious answer actually.
Here comes the flippant one:
On a scale of 1 to 100 by concern about ruzzians poisoning themselves with chemical weapons is somewhere around minus 20 :-)

[ichkeria]

How could it be any worse?
Towns and cities shelled to rubble. Woman and children - some only toddlers - raped. Schools hospitals homes deliberately attacked.
Vast areas of fertile land burned and flooded.
Ports blockaded.
Worse??

[Untitled]

it's easy to write bloodthirsty things ichkeria but russia is full of people who have no responsibility at all for what has happened to ukraine... even putting that aside though the idea that ukraine's position will be at all improved by multiple armoured factions fighting each other in russia does not sound very convincing to me