Moscow Burns / Coup In Progress
POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Monday, August 10, 2026 04:06
VIEWED: 7132
PAGE 7 of 12
THUGR'S wishful thinking.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/10/russia-putin-prigozhin-wagner-ukr
aine-nuclear-weapons/
Russia-Ukraine War: Prigozhin's Failed Coup Was a Blessing in Disguise
By Christopher Clary, an assistant professor of political science at SUNY Albany, and Joshua Shifrinson, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.
July 10, 2023, 2:52 PM
When the Wagner Group’s rebellion against the Kremlin unraveled, many commentators welcomed the prospect of Russian unrest and potential regime change as a way of complicating Russia’s war in Ukraine. In reality, however, the United States likely dodged a bullet when this uprising failed to topple Russian President Vladimir Putin. Though a weakened Russia might struggle to sustain its operations in Ukraine, political turmoil in a nuclear-armed state has historically given Washington good cause for hand-wringing, sparking fears about the stability and security of foreign nuclear arsenals. And even though Russia takes considerable steps to secure that arsenal in peacetime, the sheer size of its nuclear weapon and fissile material stockpile leaves it open to major risks. The Wagner Group crisis may be in the rear-view mirror for now, but as Washington contemplates future challenges to Putin’s authority, it ought to tread carefully. Russian political turmoil might be good for Ukraine today but awful for other U.S. priorities in the near and distant future.
Political instability in nuclear-armed states is more common than one might think. Of the 10 states that have developed a nuclear weapon, seven—France, China, the Soviet Union, South Africa, North Korea, Pakistan, and India—have experienced serious political turmoil in the form of coups or coup attempts, regime changes, civil wars, or other forms of widespread domestic instability. Lest anyone in Washington be too quick to judge others, the recent record of political stability in the United States is far from exemplary.
Domestic instability in nuclear states tends to scare foreign governments—and for good reason. In the nuclear age, no one wants ambiguity over who has authority over decisions to use or deploy nuclear weapons. Most states have announced publicly who has this authority in peacetime and crisis conditions, but domestic instability can render these procedures irrelevant, leading insiders and outsiders to fear the worst.
The canonical example is the Soviet Union. As Soviet political authority imploded in the early 1990s, punctuated by the August 1991 coup attempt against President Mikhail Gorbachev, there were pervasive fears that Soviet nuclear command and control procedures would unravel in chaotic fashion and undermine the U.S. ability to assess Soviet nuclear behavior. Following the collapse of the Soviet state in December 1991, Soviet nuclear weapons and material were scattered across four newly independent states—Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine—leaving U.S. policymakers scrambling to make sense of nuclear decision-making in a fluid security environment and to develop diplomatic, military, and economic tools to minimize the risk of crises.
Even when events threaten to topple an adversary, foreign-policy makers tend to worry that a replacement might be even worse than the leader or regime they know. For example, despite having started the Korean War in 1950 and fighting against the United States, when North Korean leader Kim Il Sung died in 1994, many U.S. officials feared his successor, Kim Jong Il, would be worse. William Perry, then the U.S. deputy defense secretary, went so far as to argue that before the elder Kim’s death, a primary goal of U.S. policy was to prevent North Korea from developing a nuclear arsenal in case a power transition turned violent. “This is a government which has clearly failed and in my opinion is going to collapse sometime in the next few years,” Perry said in 1993. “Our concern is, if it goes out with a cataclysm, we don’t want it to be a cataclysm with nuclear weapons.”
Equally disconcerting is the risk
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
THUGR'S wishful thinking.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
True, I do like the idea of the Russian military rotting. That said, I would point out that if it’s true you live here, and if by some chance your love for Russia and hate for the United States, allowed for America to become more like the authoritarian state, Russia, then your children’s children will have to live there. I wonder if they will remember you fondly for wanting that and preaching that should be Americas' future? It's my guess they would not.
T
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's not an uprising or a civil war or even a coup, since Prigozhin was going after shoigu, not the whole Russian government. it's being called a mutiny.
I've suspected for a while that Prigozhin was off his rocker. the one thing that Russia is being very cagey about is ... how many Wagner fighters are following him? if it's a hudred, no big deal. if it's 20,000 ... well, they're hardened urban warfare specialists.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
T
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin feared dead as his private jet crashes in flames soon after takeoff in Russia
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/23606429/wagner-boss-yevgeny-prigozhin-f
eared-dead-crash/
Yevgeny Prigozhin dies in plane crash
https://www.ft.com/content/812c9da3-80f2-4fe1-8fad-0b4441d1977a
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Wow if true. It isn't like we didn't see that coming though.
T
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Prigozhin's right-hand man in Wagner buried quietly near Moscow
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/prigozhins-hand-man-wagner-buried-112626379.
html
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
It isn't like we didn't see that coming though.
You didnt see it coming, instead you parroted nonsense on the news and said Moscow would burn to the ground and Putin killed
Remember your Taliban fleeting moment of victory prediction as they were over running Kabul?
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME