This is kind of a garbage article. The link to the actual interview provided by Yahoo only gives a brief summary focused on the attempted assassination of Budanov and one vague byline about how he believes Russia is ready for civil war.
Further detail shows that these assumptions are couched in the context of 4-5 years, which isn’t really “on the edge” - so I’m rating this link clickbait.
That being said, as other commenters have mentioned, this is pretty obvious to everyone that the Russian Federation is headed towards a major economic collapse, which will be the best driver of political change. If sanctions continue to impact their economy for that long, they’ll reach a critical mass point where they won’t be able to support their war machine, which will fragment into regional power bases, similar to what we’ve seen with Wagner. This could happen quickly with Putin’s absence, or it could be drawn out depending on how much longer Putin lives and what lengths he goes to to maintain control. It’s very clear that without his presence or a similar dictatorial figure, Russia will collapse into infighting as its economy implodes. The only figure I can think of, that has that kind of clout in Russia after Wagner’s disgrace is Kadyrov, but his power base is entirely regional, Moscow would never accept him due to Russian racism and cultural biases, and he just doesn’t have the intellectual capacity or political savvy that Putin does.
I think it’s wishful thinking or propaganda. Putin still has a lot of popular support. He’s in a more tenuous position than he’s ever been in his time in power, but he still seems to have firm grasp of the levers of power for now.
Yeah, I would not get my hopes up. This dude is prolly just trolling.
That being said, Russia has been know to collapse overnight lol
That’s the thing. We have never had particularly good spy networks in Russia. During the cold war, it was nearly zero. It was easy for them to get an american to sell out for cash, and it was a lot harder to get a Russian to sell out since their families would be killed.
There’s a great book by Anne Jacobsen called The Pentagon’s Brain that discussed in depth the nonsense that we paid for as “studies” on the cold war and Vietnam. Basically, the generals would direct studies and funding to scientists who supported the arms race war narrative, with nearly no ability to get good information. So most of our “intelligence” was speculation. And turned out to be completely wrong once stuff was declassified.
Please read “The Spy and The Traitor.” Interesting nonfiction on a Russian that spied for Britain during the cold war.
I’ll check that out. Thanks for the recommendation!
Isn’t this why some of the US technology became so good? They would hear the new MIG aircraft could do some incredible new things (it couldn’t) but they went off designing and building aircraft in response to counter these just in case.
It sometimes went the other way as well - see the Buran
For sure. The arms race was real…we were just sprinting the whole thing and had more manufacturing capabilities still spun up from the war, while Russia was decimated and we just didn’t know.
The number one requirement for a civil war would require either the military or the populace to rise up against the government. We sorta had the first thing happen and it definitely revealed some major cracks in the Russian dictatorship but the Russian people are still largely compliant. I’m not saying it’s completely far fetched, but “on the edge” really does seem a bit exaggerated. On the other hand, it’s definitely the closest it’s been since Putin came to power. Maybe it’s all relative.
a lot will rely on wether or not the army will continue to support the war as ukraine slowly regains their territory, they gain more and more western tools and russian vehicle attrition continues
You can be ousted with a lot of popular support if you really piss off a small number of people. A leader has more wiggle room with high popular support and a strong military and police force, but if those institutions weaken, then the possibility of a violent overthrow increases.
Russia’s population is ~143 million. If even 1 in 1000 people take up arms, that’s a 143,000 strong army. If 1% participate in a general revolt, that’s 1.4 million people, which could easily overwhelm institutions and bring an already weakened economy down.
I’m just a dumbass on the internet and I could’ve told you that. There’s already been an attempted mutiny for fuck sake.
Coup is the word you want. Attempted coup. The wagner group are mercenaries so they can’t really mutiny.
“mercenary” is a strong word to describe what is a essentially a “deniable” arm of the state
Coup is definitely not the correct word. They weren’t trying to overthrow the government and Putin, just get concessions.
I am not sure coup is the right word either because it didn’t seem to me they had a plan on overthrowing Putin. While RF may have had trouble stopping Wagner’s advance, what could Wagner actually do if they made it to Moscow?
While they may be mercenaries they are paid and directed by RF, so I think mutiny is probably more accurate even if not technically correct.
Coup is the right word. They might not have wanted to depose Putin himself, but sure as hell seemed to want to take over the government. Putin would then have been a ceremonial figurehead, one accident away from being out of the picture completely.
The entire play looked like an “evil chancellors” gambit. The king is painted as good and pure (because they’re popular) but the advisors are the ones who are pained as being at fault, so the usurpers come in to replace the advisors, and then speak for the king as well.
The coup seemed to fail for two reasons,
A, the Wagner group expected some support from the regular military that never materialized, because they’re fucking mercenaries and no one in uniform actually likes mercs.
B, Putin had people threaten the families of the Wagner leaders.
I don’t know but I will go with this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP8VPkWXOfU (Wagner’s Mutiny - what it means for Putin’s Russia (and Coups 101) Perun)
But but but I was told by yogthos on lemmygrad.ml that Russia is stronger than ever now.
I’d say that over the last year we’ve seen some cracks in Putin’s regime, but we may be getting ahead of ourselves on the Russian Federation downfall predictions
