*** Official Putin Started Shootin' Thread ***

[OngBonga]

But to turn his troops toward Moscow? C'mon. That's suicide.

I would have agreed with this before he seemingly marched on Moscow and didn't die. The Kremlin responded by telling people not to go to work, instead of sending the army out to greet the approaching convoy. Any strong regime would respond to such a threat with immediate force. That didn't happen. So for whatever reason they were unable to deal with this threat.

This Wagner group are apparently 50k strong, which isn't huge by state standards. It's a very large private army but miniscule compared to Russia's. And Wagner are deployed around the world. So why didn't Russia respond with force? Are their military resources so stretched that they couldn't deal a simple convoy? That suggests they haven't got much fighting left in them in Ukraine. Is Prigozhin influential enough and Putin weak enough that Putin was concerned that his forces would disobey him or even defect to Wagner? That suggests a revolution is inevitable.

There's really no way that Putin emerges from this looking like the strong leader he was viewed as before.

[Poopadoop]

This Wagner group are apparently 50k strong, which isn't huge by state standards. It's a very large private army but miniscule compared to Russia's.

It's a big problem if it suddenly turns up in your rear though.

Russia can't just pull 100k out of the front lines to deal with some rogue dude, unless they want Ukrainian troops in Moscow too. Even if it has reserves, chances are they're spread around the country and it's going to be very hard to concentrate them, especially in three days. Reserves in central Asia and Siberia are out of the equation, it's basically whoever is sitting around the Moscow area and is kitted up with ammo and fuel, etc..