Take it with a grain of salt, people, none of the trustworthy sources confirmed any of that - just a couple of Ukrainian outlets (understandable as psyop) and, well, yahoo news and the like.
As a Russian living in Russia and, obviously, closely following all the shit show, it does not seem like Wagner is going to do anything.
Then again, I’m not sure about shit after 24 Feb 2022.
I am curious if you think Putin will allow Wagner Corp to continue operating as it has, or if they will all now fall under his direction. And if it’s the latter, will they be paid and who will be writing the check?
PREFACE: Prior to 24 Feb 2022, I was really skeptical that Putin would start the war at all, though, so I might be really wrong here - I’m no expert, just a regular rusky Ivan with some opinions. Things in Russia aren’t really predictable at the moment.
And if it’s the latter, will they be paid and who will be writing the check?
Unfortunately, all the tax-payers - remember, the government has no money of its own, only the money of its citizen and tax residents.
I am curious if you think Putin will allow Wagner Corp to continue operating as it has, or if they will all now fall under his direction.
Judging by the mutiny in June, I think the mercs will receive offers to join the regular military as contractors or something along these lines. The PMC itself will be probably be manipulated into control one way or another, either via a direct acquisition or some other scheme, all in attempt to smother the beast Putin himself had created.
Then again, Putin is not a smart guy people make him out to be - he’s very prone to mistakes, especially after 20+ years of constant ass-licking from the various abundant yes-men (and the assassinations of the no-men). Look no further than the various regional battalion he’s ordered to conjure, which is supposed to be carried out by the governors, essentially creating local not-so-private militaries. Sure, they’re not mercs and really far from being experienced combatants with all the subsequent traumas like the Wagner mercs are, and most likely have way less sense of freedom and lawlessness because they hadn’t lived that lifestyle before (and won’t know), but it still is an armed group of people that is deliberately put into some separate division based on their region - civil war isn’t any near now, but dividing armed people into areas rather than just putting everyone in the same military power is not a good idea, especially not in the situation Russia finds itself in.
All that being said, the most important point is the following: Russia as a governmental entity has been very carefully engineering a society with as few leaders as possible, and succeeded well enough to make sure that our people just don’t really act on their desires and urges to protest en masse and for long; while it’s one thing for us, civilians, who aren’t armed, aren’t hardened by combat, aren’t used to real violence, the Wagner mercs aren’t really taught to be free-thinking individuals either, so even if they all want to storm Kremlin, I just don’t see that happening unless a figure powerful enough to lead them emerges.
I think the mercs will receive offers to join the regular military as contractors or something along these lines.
That’s what I would do if I were Putin. I would basically dissolve the Wagner charter or whatever the equivalent is in Russia. I would then have a “skills interview and test” (loyalty test) and give the most loyal a pay bump and a promotion, even if in title only. I would basically make everyone an independent contractor so they all get paid different rates and have different performance incentives based off their role. That would basically ensure that they stay loyal to you, as they would be way less likely to join forces if everyone thinks they are special and better then the next guy.
Then if the regular military catches wind of anyone’s pay, you can just say “they are an elite squad, some get paid more due to hazard pay”
Then again, Putin is not a smart guy people make him out to be - he’s very prone to mistakes, especially after 20+ years of constant ass-licking from the various abundant yes-men (and the assassinations of the no-men). Look no further than the various regional battalion he’s ordered to conjure, which is supposed to be carried out by the governors, essentially creating local not-so-private militaries. Sure, they’re not mercs and really far from being experienced combatants with all the subsequent traumas like the Wagner mercs are, and most likely have way less sense of freedom and lawlessness because they hadn’t lived that lifestyle before (and won’t know), but it still is an armed group of people that is deliberately put into some separate division based on their region - civil war isn’t any near now, but dividing armed people into areas rather than just putting everyone in the same military power is not a good idea, especially not in the situation Russia finds itself in.
This is fascinating and the first I have heard of this. You clearly speak English well, do you have an English source I can read more about this?
That’s what I would do if I were Putin. I would basically dissolve the Wagner charter or whatever the equivalent is in Russia. I would then have a “skills interview and test” (loyalty test) and give the most loyal a pay bump and a promotion, even if in title only. I would basically make everyone an independent contractor so they all get paid different rates and have different performance incentives based off their role. That would basically ensure that they stay loyal to you, as they would be way less likely to join forces if everyone thinks they are special and better then the next guy.
I don’t want to sound mean, but that sounds like a massive overcomplication from Putin’s side. To me, what you’re saying seems to make sense, but you and I are not Putin - I think neither of us is a narcissistic psychopath that’s been killing people en masse for at least a couple of dozen years. What makes sense to you or me might not necessary make any bit of sense to Putin - we wouldn’t have seen this war play out, nor the Crimea annexation, nor even Euromaidan, because without Putin’s egoistic attempts to control Ukraine via proxies (Yanukovich and the entire war in Donbass being the prime example) or directly.
If we start talking about this from positions of common sense, we’ll simply go back so far back in time that it’s just easier to assume that everyone would be better off without Putin as a whole in the first place, from the very beginning.
You clearly speak English well, do you have an English source I can read more about this?
First of all, thank you! It’s probably my most cherished skill - really did open a lot of opportunities in my life in many ways. Not really sure I wouldn’t be rooting for Putin if it wasn’t for English leading me to more liberal places, first outside the Russian internet, then - interestingly enough - inside the Russian internet and Russia itself.
As for the English sources, I’m afraid I can’t recommend anything. Things I know and share are mostly courtesy of the Russian-native sources of various kind, complied in my mind over years and years of discourse.
Since links to other social media sites are forbidden by the rules here, I’ll leave a few easily-searchable sources below. Keep in mind that none of them are native English speakers, but all have their content readily available in English one way or another. It’s not as easy as I’d love it to be to share with you, but it’s the best sources I could think of to share with someone outside Russia, helping them understand what’s actually going on.
- Vlad Vexler (YouTube) - I can’t really recall who he is exactly, but it’s safe to say he’s been studying/looking at the Russian politics for many years now, and shares some insights with the English-speaking audience. He doesn’t live in Russia and, from what I can tell, hasn’t lived there for decades, so he is a little rusty and out of touch with things like motivations of the elites, the processes in the society, etc., but it’s a good enough source if you need an English-speaking source.
- Maxim Katz (YouTube) - a Russian-speaking politician, currently wanted by the Russian government and living in Israel until he can come back. Probably the best speaker we have right now. His production has gotten really professional since the beginning of the war in terms of subtitles, the topic coverage, upload frequency (as of yet, it’s daily, so there’s a lot of content if you’re interested) - very easy to follow, very humane, and extremely representative of the Russian society’s current demands and thoughts, despite everything people have to say. The channel covers a lot of topics, both from the liberal perspective and the more conservative/conformist one, trying to reach out to as many people as possible; sometimes they cover some things about the Russian opposition and the challenges it’s facing, which is a great peek into what’s going in Russian minds, too; sometimes they present some analysis on what’s to come in terms of the war or Russia or Putin, also making it very clear that their forecasts are extremely tentative due to the nature of such things in the situation Russia is in thanks to Putin; honestly. there’s so much Maxim and his team talk about that I wouldn’t be able to list everything here, but if you want to have a consistent, worthwhile and sensible insight into the country that Russia is today, this is probably the best option aside from regularly talking to someone inside (speaking of which, feel free to reach out, I’ll be happy to try and answer some questions; sometimes it makes me feel like I’m doing my little part in dissolving the myths about the obedient slavery-loving Russians that just crave to live under some mad dictatorships).
- Ekaterina Schulmann (YouTube) - an extremely experienced and professional political scientist. She does have a channel, but also gives interviews to various media outside Russia in English, so you’ll have an easier time with getting info from her. Her analysis and understanding of Russia are a little more complicated than that of Maxim’s and Vlad’s from above, but if you want a really thorough look across large swathes of content, both from her specifically and just featuring her, this is definitely the woman to follow.
- Ksenia Sobchak (YouTube and Telegram) - quite a big name in Russia in general, and now in more liberal media as well, but I can’t tell you much about her because she cover a wide variety of topics not just related to politics. Still, she’s another great example of someone trying to talk to both those pro war and those against - because, trust me, it’s a very complicated topic and throwing the former aside only helps Putin. Surely worth a few looks, especially over at YouTube with some subtitles.
- Mikhail Khodorkovsky (YouTube) - a bit more radial than the rest, but nonetheless worth checking out. The insights he offers are a little more outdated than that of Maxim’s because Mikhail has been living outside Russia for years now, and spent even more in jail prior - Putin didn’t like him for multiple reasons and dealt with him in a relatively nice way (took away his business and with that, a great workplace for millions of people; I think my father used to work at his company, UKOS, and it was definitely better than today’s Rosneft for him in particular and us as a family as a whole). I do believe he is worth checking out anyway because he brings his experience of being a very active member of the Russian society during the 90s and 00s.
I really appreciate you taking the time to write all this out!
I wouldn’t know what questions to even ask without first going through and watching the videos from what you posted.
I guess my own questions right now would be about technology and access to information.
Like how difficult is it to use the internet in Russia? Have you traveled internationally to have something to compare it to? I heard a lot of people use VPNs, do they worry a lot about being caught? What can’t you do without a VPN?
I am also curious if you consume any western media, and if so what are your favorite and least favorite outlets. I am also curious what western sources have seemed the most accurate to you about Russia in general, if any at all.
You’re welcome! Here’s some more, then!
Like how difficult is it to use the internet in Russia? Have you traveled internationally to have something to compare it to?
It seems easy and straightforward, honestly. We got 4G and previous generations, so even if you don’t have a proper landline, you’ll most likely be more than fine with cellular. That being said, that’s the situation in the cities, and I really have no idea what it’s like in the villages and such, but given that there are dedicated village bloggers of various kind (some of them basically blogging about their remote work from the village), I’d say it’s probably fine overall. Russia may be big, but not entirely in a good way - there are huge swathes of basically unsettled land, some of which is not even likely to be settled because it’s either straight up impossible or doesn’t make any sense at all, so building infrastructure around this part of the globe is a little challenging (especially with rampant corruption running amok for 20+ years with many officials that actually mean anything being basically put in their place by Moscow, not elected by the locals as would be most sensible for a federation of its scale).
As to whether I’ve been outside Russia - no. Technically, there was one time when I was on a train that had to pass through Kazakhstan, but I wasn’t allowed to step out of the train as that would count as trespassing or whatever (because nobody granted me entry in the first place, and from the legal perspective, I was under Russia’s jurisdiction the whole time while on the train). I talk to a lot of people outside Russia, spend most of my time in the English- or German-speaking parts of the internet, so I know that there are places that offer speeds that basically no regular consumer here has; we do have relatively high-speed plans, though, like 1 GBit/s+, but I’ve always seen them a little excessive for my use cases - more importantly, I’m not sure my hardware (the router and the built-in ethernet port on my motherboard) even support that kind of speed. I’m pretty fine with my 100 Mbit/s downloading speed (the upload seems to match).
I heard a lot of people use VPNs, do they worry a lot about being caught?
I don’t think any of them care, to be honest. The VPN has become a necessity for people that use twitter, Instagram, other Facebook/Meta products, and many news outlets, including both Russian and foreign. The vast majority of our VPN users just do for recreational purposes rather than to stay safe, and given that we can’t easily pay for a lot of the decent VPN providers out there, many fall back to the free options - which is, of course, a privacy nightmare, but it’s actually only marginally better than the paid option in that regard, because no matter what they tell you, they, too, can (and likely do) gather your data; they all sell it for some sweet cash from the marketing agencies and such.
What I’m trying to say is that many VPN users in Russia aren’t privacy savvy people in the first place - certainly not like many of the fediverse users, so they barely think about the sheer prospect of being caught because of the VPN anyway. Besides, the Russian government as a whole has become incredibly incompetent over the decades of corruption and some autocratic processes, and is largely led by old men who probably see the internet as some sort of disease or stupid phase of the youth, so they’re not particularly effective at blocking people’s attempts to gain information - anyone who wants to bypass the many bans imposed on various websites and services initiated by Russia can easily do so (and does, at large).
What can’t you do without a VPN?
Kind of a lot of things, actually, but as hilarious as it sounds, most of them are related to politics/news and porn. The latter actually came first when the old men who refuse to keep up with the times tried to make everyone stay in their outdated and long-dead world by going after - brace yourself - hentai and everything similar; I can’t recall the exact date, but it definitely started happening after 2012 when Putin decided that he wanted to stay in power, and as any sorry-ass autocrat that has nothing of value to offer, he invented some enemies to keep people busy - among the ever-evil Americans, the West, and damn liberals, apparently, the people that played with their willy watching pornographic cartoons were deemed evil enough to warrant bans on the many outlets they used to enjoy.
During the last several years, the Russian government has been fighting the news outlets much more rigorously, as you may know, and especially so once they started the war in early 2022. Many Russian and foreign sources are now inaccessible without a VPN, but they’re all kind of lazy bans that would probably work on people that wouldn’t really cause any trouble even if they had all the truth about Putin and his regime from all over the world - the more politically active people, who are much more likely to join protests, resist the war effort and autocracy, and cast their votes in ways that hurt Putin or his image during the elections, virtually never felt the ban because they know how to use VPNs, they’re very accustomed to using VPNs, and more importantly, the bans only concern the official websites of the outlets. In other words, you can just as easily find a mirror, a Telegram channel, some RSS feed (which offers rather short snippets these days, but still), any other feed, or even a YouTube channel that contains all the same news from the same outlet (can even be an official channel), all accessible just as easily as before.
There’s a natural question arising from the last point - aren’t they going to ban YouTube or Telegram? Well, it’s a very complicated matter as I see it, and they even tried (and did) with the latter, but reverted their decision some time later (I can’t remember the full story, though, but I think it should be available somewhere online). As for YouTube… I’m not entirely sure they will, because it’s a place that is frequented by much more people than just VPN-capable youth: it has a much wider audience in every possible regard, including age and political views, so an outright ban of the entire platform is definitely going to cause more hard than good; especially knowing that many older (or even just middle-aged) people have younger relatives who could probably contribute to some anti-Putin informational campaigns with greater ease if YouTube ever goes black.
There are some reports and concerns that YouTube may see some kind of a partial ban in Russia, but to be honest, I don’t trust the expertise of the people talking about this in that particular regard. Worst case scenario - more VPN users, which is not at all what Putin needs.
I am also curious if you consume any western media, and if so what are your favorite and least favorite outlets.
I’ve tried sticking to a few specific ones several times, but always had a little too much going on in my life that it always came down to the simpler option - having a dedicated news feed on reddit at first, then at fediverse, and these days, I realize that I don’t even remember the names of the outlets I see in those feeds.
In general, I know very little about the news outlets available in the West, so I can’t really say which I prefer. My only argument here would be this: German outlets are simply better; I’ve read tagesschau, heise, DW, Handelsblatt, probably some other ones I can’t remember, and it was always that much more better than, say, most of the American outlets, because the latter just seems to focus on driving up the engagement with all the emotion-inducing articles they post, and especially the way their journalists write them - I prefer a more dry relay of the events so I can build my own opinion, not have an opinion cultivated in me, because I’ve lived in a country with massive propaganda rule long enough.
In general, I try to read a little something from many angles, so I follow some Russian outlets as well as some feeds with multiple foreign outlets. I think I gravitate towards liberal/left sources more (although I’m not sure I understand the difference entirely - feel free to explain if you do), but that’s not my main criteria - I just want an outlet to have some respect towards its readers and itself, not post some random news one after the other, farming clicks and comments, and then posting some along the lines of “it wasn’t true actually, we just found out”, because, like, just have some patience and post something that can be verified, have some responsibility and accountability.
NOTE: Here’s the rest of the answers - couldn’t send it all in one piece for some reason. I suspect there’s a 10,000 character limit that just simply wasn’t clearly established for the end user.
I am also curious what western sources have seemed the most accurate to you about Russia in general, if any at all.
Now for probably the most interesting answer - no, they’re all really wrong.
The first few months after the war were really full of all sorts of ideas to explain the Putin’s invasion - some resources hidden in the Ukrainian territory, so the attack is about profits and shit, or that he is trying to conquer the entirety of Europe, or he’s trying to rebuild the USSR, etc., etc. None of these points ever had any bit of truth in them, which is easily verified by the modern history of Ukraine and Russia where Putin has attempted, time after time, to put Ukraine in his pocket, just like he did with Belarus; Euromaidan and another peaceful/color revolution that happened in Ukraine were, in large part, caused by Putin’s attempts to install a pocket president (Yanukovich) that would do as Putin pleases - after Euromaidan, when Yanukovich fled, Putin has had enough and annexed Crimea, probably out of spite and as a “fuck you” to Ukraine, also warranting covert operations to destabilize the more Russia-leaning regions, probably for the same reason more than anything else. As a great bonus to his regime, Putin gained what every dictator loves and craves for - a war, an enemy on the outside, a collective “them” to tell his country to hate and despise and avoid turning into; as an even greater bonus, he managed to sell the annexation as some kind of people’s will to join and be with Russia, but as time went by, the craze died off because despite all of that, the Russian populace didn’t enjoy a better life - somehow things got gradually worse, with pricing coming up thanks to sanctions and counter-sanctions, but salaries haven’t, corruption ate up more and more, and all sorts of relationship with the outside world got worse and worse. A stupid, worthless dictator once again had nothing of value to offer to the country that he usurped - even less than before. Starting a full-blown war is just what this type of people need - an excuse, a distraction, an attempt to divert all attention away from himself; and probably, again, just out of spite, just to make Ukraine and its people suffer for the psychopath he is.
And that’s it, basically. No great ambition, no secret plot, no benefits or profits or great outcomes - just anger and spite that they wouldn’t agree to live under his boot. That’s something that virtually no outlet understands (Maxim Katz, again, being the exception, but he’s not a western outlet either).
Welp, hope it answers at least something! ;)
I wish them the best of luck. Not that they have any chance of success but the more damage they cause to the Russian army, the better
Was there actually anything stopping them before, other than some traffic cops with a grenade launcher, and some excavator operators frantically digging up the motorway?
You forget that Russia had some garbage trucks lined up as well 🧱
We call them tactical landfill launchers.
For everyone just tuning in: This show is notorious for having bad season finales.
I hate how they just kill important characters offscreen.
The old comic book rule of ‘no body no death’ might come into play
I hope they don’t clone the imperator.
Did J.J. Abrams write?
Not enough lens flares.
Behind the Bastards has an episode about Jim Caviezel, and in it they discussed several anonymous and one non anonymous retelling of working with the man. If the allegations are to be believed, he kept being worse and worse not understanding his characters motivations, and they had to adjust some stuff to stop him ruining the show. They mention him doing stuff like actually harming other actors/stunt doubles if he was doing action scenes, a desire to just kill and shoot up enemies, and being really bad later on about following the script.
The podcast QAnon Anonymous has an episode about the same topic, also quoting three people who worked on the show. It’s glorious, Irecommend it wholeheartedly.
