(Oct 9, 2022 08:40 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Is Russian army in a position to commit full mutiny against the motherland and govt right now?
I doubt it.
Quote:How about Putin allies turning against Russia?
Hard to imagine that happening. The Russians are exceedingly nationalist, so I don't see them turning against Russia. What does seem to be happening is a growing awareness of the failure of Putin's war.
Up until now, Putin has seemed more or less necessary as far as the Russian people are concerned. When the Soviet Union fell apart, it looked like Russia was going to follow suit during the Yeltsen years in the 1990's. The Russian economy was collapsing and the fear was that Russia would come apart as remote regions declared their independence.
Then along came Putin who (to some extent) restored Russia's strength and cohesiveness. Just look at the photos of Russian street scenes, the Russian people live far better today than they did in Soviet or post-Soviet times. And it's all due to Putin and his strong leadership.
So up until now, the Russian people loved Putin. He restored their country, he improved their lives.
And most of them loved his invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine's flirtations with the US and with NATO was perceived by Russians as an intolerable provocation, like Canada joining the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. Obvious justification for war.
Russians from Putin down to the man on the street expected their army to slice through Ukraine like a hot knife through butter. (US observers in the Pentagon expected the same.) To the Russians, the invasion was supposed to be Russia's coming out party, their announcement to the world that they were back as a super-power. And most Russians liked that idea too.
But despite Russia's huge advantage in numbers and in equipment, the invasion has been one failure after another. The mood in Russia is very dark and Russians are all asking what went wrong and who is to blame. Obviously the generals and military leadership who clearly botched everything. And I'd be willing to bet that the rank-and-file of the Russian army feel much the same way about their own generals. So I don't see much chance of a military coup, since the generals that would organize it are too unpopular, even with their own men who probably wouldn't follow them in an attack on their own country.
Where does that leave Putin? I think that we are seeing the first signs that people are starting to blame him as well. The people are starting to turn on him. The strongman who restored their country has seemingly screwed up so royally that he's dragging it back down.
Putin is badly in need of scapegoats right now, people he can (rightly or wrongly) blame the debacle on. So he's probably going to join the people in excoriating the generals and the spy agency leadership who lied to him about the Russian military's readiness, who lied to him about Ukraine's weakness, pro-Russian sympathies and unwillingness to fight.
So my guess is that we won't see a coup, but we will see a wholesale reorganization of the Russian government and military, with the rise of people who are much more hard-line than those currently there. People who are perceived as being tough enough to stop the rot, win the war and save the nation. There might be something like a coup, but it will probably be engineered by Putin and his trusted circle like Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group. And that will bring the danger of nuclear escalation much closer.
I hate to agree with Biden about anything, but I agree with him that the threat of nuclear war is very real right now.
Oct 9, 2022 04:41 AM
(This post was last modified: Oct 9, 2022 04:51 AM by Zinjanthropos.)
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