Richard A wrote:Was that in response to the Chechens seizing the theatre?
I refer to October 1993, when Boris Yeltsin had the parliament building attacked with tanks.
It's not the parliament building any more, I think it is part of the Moscow city administration now. In any event, in some of the videos of the military vehicles rolling past the ministry of defence today, this building is visible in the background. It's across the Moscow river from the Radisson Hotel, which is where one picks up one of the more popular river cruise boats these days.
Richard A wrote:Мастер, you know the land of your birth better than most of us.
That is an accident of history, due largely to two fellows with moustaches. I am not ethnically Russian, I am not a citizen (at least according to my interpretation of the law, but I dare not show my face there these days, in case the government has a different interpretation - I'm still under sixty), I have no memories of the place until decades later when visiting. If my first language wasn't English (growing up in an English-speaking country), it was German (but quickly forgotten, and relearned only decades later), not Russian. My Russian language still sucks.
So I don't know that I really know the country better than anyone else.
Richard A wrote:What's your prediction of how this will pan out - for both Russia and Ukraine?
But since you asked - I think they are going to need dental records to identify Prigozhin's body.
He has provided the spark - but I think there is not enough dry fuel lying around for the spark to lead to a large conflagration.
But, even if that is the case, this has got to be good news for Ukraine - just when the news was, the counter-offensive was performing below expectations, the most effective Russian fighting force in Ukraine turns on the government, seizes Rostov-on-Don, and another city on the road to Moscow, and the government takes the whole thing seriously enough to deploy troops in Red Square and on Arbat Square (where the Ministry of Defence is), and to put a senior general on the television asking Prigozhin to stop what he is doing. The government seems to be taking this whole thing pretty damn seriously.
So if Prigozhin is blown apart by a weapon with enough force to sink a battleship, what happens? His forces are brought under the control of the formal Russian military, who will probably make a lot of screw ups and generally not be as effective as Prigozhin was (and hard to believe as it may be, the Russian military may even be more humane than Prigozhin was). So at a minimum, reduced fighting effectiveness of the most effective fighting force Russia has.
And possibly even more damaging - Prigozhin, a Russian who has absolutely no pro-western sympathies, has gone public with the same narrative that nearly everyone in the west has been saying since this whole thing began - there was no reason for this war, Ukraine was no threat to Russia, etc. As the Vulcans say, only Nixon could go to China.
I'll bet Putin's really glad he started this war now.
And, for what it's worth, governments around the world are probably having a rethink on whether using mercenary groups to fight their wars is really a good idea.