This is for topical issues effecting our fair world... you can quit snickering anytime. Note: It is the desire of the leadership of SFDebris Conglomerate that all posters maintain a civil and polite bearing in this forum, regardless of how you feel about any particular issue. Violators will be turned over to Captain Janeway for experimentation.
phantom000 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 4:58 pm
There is all sorts of possible answers concerning 'what happened?' Maybe he let his outrage runaway with him, maybe he thought Putin and the Russian Highcommand would buckle under the threat, maybe he just panicked?
Like 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination we might never know for sure and people will be talking about this for a long time.
Still, to me the big question right now is what is going to happen to The Wagner Group itself?
Well... to add to the conspiracy theories, an army man on the news today was saying that Ukraine needs to be very wary around the Belarusian border in the next couple of weeks. Maybe this is all a (pretty bad) ploy to lure Ukraine into a surprise attack. Especially as Putin did just move a couple of tactical nukes there.
In more real terms, some of them are being integrated into the actual Russian Army. By guess would be the ones who aren't the psychopathic murderers they released from prison.
clearspira wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 7:13 pm
Well... to add to the conspiracy theories, an army man on the news today was saying that Ukraine needs to be very wary around the Belarusian border in the next couple of weeks. Maybe this is all a (pretty bad) ploy to lure Ukraine into a surprise attack. Especially as Putin did just move a couple of tactical nukes there.
In more real terms, some of them are being integrated into the actual Russian Army. By guess would be the ones who aren't the psychopathic murderers they released from prison.
Could be but I'm slightly sceptical about that, it doesn't fit in with Putin ranting in the morning about betrayal and then letting Prigozhin walk away like that. That's very dangerous for Putin, it really does quite significantly weaken his image at home, and wouldn't have been necessary for any clever ploy. If forces get moved to Belarus they'll get moved anyway, can't see it setting up a surprise. Has Prigozhin's ranting been an act all along? Could be but I doubt it, there's too much ego in the Kremlin to tolerate such even as part of a plan.
I'd argue that even the mentally ill have underlying order to their actions, although it might not make much sense to somebody from the outside. Putin's an evil dictator, not a random number generator.
"Believe me, there’s nothing so terrible that someone won’t support it."
— Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
Fuzzy Necromancer wrote: ↑Sat Jul 01, 2023 2:57 am
I'd argue that even the mentally ill have underlying order to their actions, although it might not make much sense to somebody from the outside. Putin's an evil dictator, not a random number generator.
Yeah, I think the idea that a madman is someone acting in a completely random manner is more a trope of fiction than reality.
Frustration wrote: ↑Sun Jul 02, 2023 1:28 am
It doesn't take completely random behavior to be unpredictable - merely sufficiently erratic behavior is enough.
Yeah but behavior is common enough. The historians are usually pretty keen on conflicts and motivations therein.
Biden seems to be pitching this as a gesture of unity with the other NATO members. The total number is not to exceed 3,000 soldiers at any time and strategically what could you do with 3,000 troops? Probably a lot more than one might think given the technology the USA and NATO have access to, then again Russia's tech is almost as good and, despite their losses, they have a lot more men on the ground right now.
