6 ms·

Prigozhin starts armed insurrection in Russia

96 points by webnrrd2k 3y ago

asats 3y ago
They have already entered Rostov on Don (a major city in the south, million+ population) and took over a whole bunch of administrative buildings in the city center. Apparently there's another column of his moving towards Moscow. Absolutely insane.
zgluck 3y ago
There have been many, many posts about this for 5+ hours. All successfully flagged away from the front page by you know whom. Disgraceful. Ah: now this thread is flagged away from the front page. This site is a fucking joke.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  The reason is that there is a lot of noise and as of now all articles posted are regurgitating the same bits of "he says" with no hard evidence. Everyone has the same facts: there are some green men with guns and there are some green men with guns that just arrived. Some people are quick to call some of them Wagner. (Which by itself would also not mean much, thinking the entirety of Wagner group supports the coup is just as much of a leap with no evidence.) There is indirect evidence pointing to takeover of Rostov to piece together, but it exists mostly in the shape of fragmentary telegram posts. There seems to be a lot of that evidence, enough that it seems plausible, but even people on the ground next to those green men have no idea. The most striking bit of evidence I saw so far seems a screenshot (but of course without a link) of Russian TASS captioning a photo of some of those green men as "Wagner troops". Just because it's such a detail it would be hard to come up with it as a fake. But that is still assuming this is not an editorial mistake because the photo must have been taken just minutes prior. (Edit, now there's a video that seems to show Prigozhin indeed in Rostov giving ultimatum to military: https://t.me/nexta_live/55212 https://t.me/nexta_live/55212)
  - zgluck 3y ago
    Yeah sure. (edit: haha, now this comment is flagged.. clown country)
    - dang 3y ago
      Would you please stop posting these unsubstantive flamewar comments? You've been doing altogether too much of this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- vba616 3y ago
  If it were true, it would make no sense to try to censor it, so I'm going to bet on it being a joke? I really have no idea who would care specifically about censoring it on HN, anyway. I always thought everything he said was on orders from the highest, either to troll Western media, or else to make the regular military nervous so they wouldn't start a coup.
  - almost_usual 3y ago
    It’s definitely not a joke. https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-russia-nuclear-647a545db4e4628676ff7db5b1bded34 https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-russia-nuclear-647a54...
    - vba616 3y ago
      CNN is much maligned, but at least they mentioned Rostov is a long way from Moscow. If CNN and others are covering it, I think it reinforces my point, that censoring HN is irrelevant.
      - almost_usual 3y ago
        > censoring HN is irrelevant How is censorship irrelevant? Yes there are other news sources but it’s not a good look for HN.
        vba616 3y ago
        It's not a news source! And increasingly nearly everything that is mainstream news or clickbait shows up on HN anyway, despite the Guidelines page saying it's off topic. If CNN, Reuters, the AP, the NY Times, are covering something, it will show up 5 minutes later if a given item disappears.
  - vba616 3y ago
    Just to follow up on that last sentence, I read this, today, confirming I wasn't the only one thinking it: "So accustomed are we to viewing Putin as a master tactician, that the opening salvos of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s disobedience were at times assessed as a feint – a bid by Putin to keep his generals on edge with a loyal henchman as their outspoken critic." https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/24/europe/russia-putin-wagner-prigozhin-analysis-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/24/europe/russia-putin-wagner-pr...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- eimrine 3y ago
  > This site is a fucking joke. This site is not about politics. I do not flag/downvote such topics but I do not want to see them among science/programming news anyway.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - almost_usual 3y ago
    This isn’t politics, it’s a rapidly unfolding military situation in a state with nuclear weapons.
  - calf 3y ago
    Political science is a science shrug
- dang 3y ago
  Users are flagging them. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I don't think it's so hard to guess: this is a sensational, politicized story, it's too early to tell how significant it is, and there isn't a lot of intellectually curious conversation to be had here. We sometimes turn off flags, but in this case I'm inclined to side with the users. "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic" - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (I don't watch TV news, but I'd be very surprised if this one wasn't all over it) p.s. Sometimes it's really good for HN to be the place that you don't come to for coverage of something sensational. We just had a ton of threads about the submersible that imploded; not to mention the shit-ton of threads about the reddit that imploded. I don't think it's good for HN to do every implosion. Edit: after looking things over in the morning, I found myself persuaded by the arguments in favor of this story, so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460937 is currently on the front page. That's probably still frustrating to people who wanted a heat-of-the-moment thread, but that's not really what HN is about.
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    > it's too early to tell how significant it is, no it isn't. this is definitely significant. even if putin crushes prigozhin and consolidates his power, that is still significant. there is no way this isn't significant. unless you believe that it is literally all made up, but russian media is reporting on it. that seems idiotically unlikely.
    - dang 3y ago
      It isn't made up, but the story isn't even a day old. HN isn't a site for tracking sensational stories hour by hour. We want more reflection than that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... There are certain stories where it's better for HN to not be about that. This feels like one of them to me; I'm happy to be wrong if the story turns out otherwise, but the current reports are far too politicized to evaluate objectively. Edit: after looking things over in the morning, I found myself feeling persuaded by the arguments in favor of this story, so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460937 is currently on the front page. That's probably still frustrating to people who wanted a heat-of-the-moment thread, but that's not really what HN is about.
Flatcircle 3y ago
Someone mentioned that this could counter intuitively make Putin stronger like a coup in Turkey in 2016 where they purged the opponents of the government after a failed coup. But I have a hard time believing that. Hard to see how Putin can handle too much of this sort of thing.
- Eldt 3y ago
  I think Putin has an easy enough time purging without an excuse like that
  - Flatcircle 3y ago
    Exactly!
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    Which actually somewhat creates the inverse problem (and not unknown in Russia, Soviet or otherwise): competent generals have largely been purged already, hence the reliance on the W.G. and its chef.
mupuff1234 3y ago
I'm guessing it's just a negotiation tactic, for what exactly I have no idea. Interesting times.
- almost_usual 3y ago
  No deal now, it’s war.
  - mupuff1234 3y ago
    Unfortunately looks like I was right :/
polishdude20 3y ago
What this may be is an allowed or planned rebellion which targets the military and actually helps Putin.
WheelsAtLarge 3y ago
A divided Russia is a mess for the World. All those nuclear weapons in the control of who knows who. Scary...
- MrFoof 3y ago
  Indeed. The increased possibility of a “Broken Arrow”, “Empty Quiver” or other scenario is what’s always going to be really spooky.
patrec 3y ago
Putin is toast. I'm not sure what Prigozhin's chances of successfully pulling off a coup are (nonzero?), but Russia has been heading for an unambiguous military loss for a while already and now is looking at a complete military disaster (loss of Crimea is on the table), even if Putin manages to bring Wagner under control. I don't see how this is politically survivable. What's the spin? "Ok, I sacrificed tens of thousands of Russians on a catastrophic invasion, but at least I managed to stop a coup from my career-criminal personal cook (whom I also outsourced a good part of the war effort under his blatantly unconstitutional private military outfit to)."? I have long thought the West should be a lot more scared about what it's going to look like if the country with the world's largest nuclear arsenal becomes completely destabilized. Seems like we're going to find out.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  Posts by Prigozhin are censored in Russian social media but those who access uncensored media like Telegram knew everything for very long time already. It is likely that Prigozhin will be taken care of, but if not this does not bode well for Russia or Russians. Or for Ukraine and Ukrainians. Note how he is always careful to say he does not mean to distract Russian forces from attacking Ukraine. And if he takes over chances are he can actually improve military, which no thanks
  - gdy 3y ago
    Everyone in Russia can read him on telegram [0]. [0] https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      This is a fake. Another proof that random Telegram posts and channels are not to be trusted.
      - gdy 3y ago
        You are right [0], here is official Prigozhin's channel [1] with twice as many subscribers (1.2M). [0] https://bloknot.ru/politika/prigozhin-telegram-kanaly-kepka-prigozhina-i-evgenij-prigozhin-v-telegram-ne-imeyut-ko-mne-otnosheniya-1010305.html https://bloknot.ru/politika/prigozhin-telegram-kanaly-kepka-... [1] https://t.me/concordgroup_official https://t.me/concordgroup_official

96 points by webnrrd2k 3y ago

They have already entered Rostov on Don (a major city in the south, million+ population) and took over a whole bunch of administrative buildings in the city center. Apparently there's another column of his moving towards Moscow. Absolutely insane.

zgluck 3y ago

There have been many, many posts about this for 5+ hours. All successfully flagged away from the front page by you know whom. Disgraceful. Ah: now this thread is flagged away from the front page. This site is a fucking joke.

throwaway290 3y ago
The reason is that there is a lot of noise and as of now all articles posted are regurgitating the same bits of "he says" with no hard evidence. Everyone has the same facts: there are some green men with guns and there are some green men with guns that just arrived. Some people are quick to call some of them Wagner. (Which by itself would also not mean much, thinking the entirety of Wagner group supports the coup is just as much of a leap with no evidence.) There is indirect evidence pointing to takeover of Rostov to piece together, but it exists mostly in the shape of fragmentary telegram posts. There seems to be a lot of that evidence, enough that it seems plausible, but even people on the ground next to those green men have no idea. The most striking bit of evidence I saw so far seems a screenshot (but of course without a link) of Russian TASS captioning a photo of some of those green men as "Wagner troops". Just because it's such a detail it would be hard to come up with it as a fake. But that is still assuming this is not an editorial mistake because the photo must have been taken just minutes prior. (Edit, now there's a video that seems to show Prigozhin indeed in Rostov giving ultimatum to military: https://t.me/nexta_live/55212 https://t.me/nexta_live/55212)
- zgluck 3y ago
  Yeah sure. (edit: haha, now this comment is flagged.. clown country)
  - dang 3y ago
    Would you please stop posting these unsubstantive flamewar comments? You've been doing altogether too much of this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
vba616 3y ago
If it were true, it would make no sense to try to censor it, so I'm going to bet on it being a joke? I really have no idea who would care specifically about censoring it on HN, anyway. I always thought everything he said was on orders from the highest, either to troll Western media, or else to make the regular military nervous so they wouldn't start a coup.
- almost_usual 3y ago
  It’s definitely not a joke. https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-russia-nuclear-647a545db4e4628676ff7db5b1bded34 https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-war-russia-nuclear-647a54...
  - vba616 3y ago
    CNN is much maligned, but at least they mentioned Rostov is a long way from Moscow. If CNN and others are covering it, I think it reinforces my point, that censoring HN is irrelevant.
    - almost_usual 3y ago
      > censoring HN is irrelevant How is censorship irrelevant? Yes there are other news sources but it’s not a good look for HN.
      - vba616 3y ago
        It's not a news source! And increasingly nearly everything that is mainstream news or clickbait shows up on HN anyway, despite the Guidelines page saying it's off topic. If CNN, Reuters, the AP, the NY Times, are covering something, it will show up 5 minutes later if a given item disappears.
- vba616 3y ago
  Just to follow up on that last sentence, I read this, today, confirming I wasn't the only one thinking it: "So accustomed are we to viewing Putin as a master tactician, that the opening salvos of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s disobedience were at times assessed as a feint – a bid by Putin to keep his generals on edge with a loyal henchman as their outspoken critic." https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/24/europe/russia-putin-wagner-prigozhin-analysis-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/24/europe/russia-putin-wagner-pr...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
eimrine 3y ago
> This site is a fucking joke. This site is not about politics. I do not flag/downvote such topics but I do not want to see them among science/programming news anyway.
- civilitty 3y ago
  [flagged]
- almost_usual 3y ago
  This isn’t politics, it’s a rapidly unfolding military situation in a state with nuclear weapons.
- calf 3y ago
  Political science is a science shrug
dang 3y ago
Users are flagging them. We can only guess why users flag things, but in this case I don't think it's so hard to guess: this is a sensational, politicized story, it's too early to tell how significant it is, and there isn't a lot of intellectually curious conversation to be had here. We sometimes turn off flags, but in this case I'm inclined to side with the users. "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic" - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (I don't watch TV news, but I'd be very surprised if this one wasn't all over it) p.s. Sometimes it's really good for HN to be the place that you don't come to for coverage of something sensational. We just had a ton of threads about the submersible that imploded; not to mention the shit-ton of threads about the reddit that imploded. I don't think it's good for HN to do every implosion. Edit: after looking things over in the morning, I found myself persuaded by the arguments in favor of this story, so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460937 is currently on the front page. That's probably still frustrating to people who wanted a heat-of-the-moment thread, but that's not really what HN is about.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  > it's too early to tell how significant it is, no it isn't. this is definitely significant. even if putin crushes prigozhin and consolidates his power, that is still significant. there is no way this isn't significant. unless you believe that it is literally all made up, but russian media is reporting on it. that seems idiotically unlikely.
  - dang 3y ago
    It isn't made up, but the story isn't even a day old. HN isn't a site for tracking sensational stories hour by hour. We want more reflection than that: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor.... There are certain stories where it's better for HN to not be about that. This feels like one of them to me; I'm happy to be wrong if the story turns out otherwise, but the current reports are far too politicized to evaluate objectively. Edit: after looking things over in the morning, I found myself feeling persuaded by the arguments in favor of this story, so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460937 is currently on the front page. That's probably still frustrating to people who wanted a heat-of-the-moment thread, but that's not really what HN is about.

Flatcircle 3y ago

Someone mentioned that this could counter intuitively make Putin stronger like a coup in Turkey in 2016 where they purged the opponents of the government after a failed coup. But I have a hard time believing that. Hard to see how Putin can handle too much of this sort of thing.

Eldt 3y ago
I think Putin has an easy enough time purging without an excuse like that
- Flatcircle 3y ago
  Exactly!
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Which actually somewhat creates the inverse problem (and not unknown in Russia, Soviet or otherwise): competent generals have largely been purged already, hence the reliance on the W.G. and its chef.

mupuff1234 3y ago

I'm guessing it's just a negotiation tactic, for what exactly I have no idea. Interesting times.

almost_usual 3y ago
No deal now, it’s war.
- mupuff1234 3y ago
  Unfortunately looks like I was right :/

polishdude20 3y ago

What this may be is an allowed or planned rebellion which targets the military and actually helps Putin.

WheelsAtLarge 3y ago

A divided Russia is a mess for the World. All those nuclear weapons in the control of who knows who. Scary...

MrFoof 3y ago
Indeed. The increased possibility of a “Broken Arrow”, “Empty Quiver” or other scenario is what’s always going to be really spooky.

patrec 3y ago

Putin is toast. I'm not sure what Prigozhin's chances of successfully pulling off a coup are (nonzero?), but Russia has been heading for an unambiguous military loss for a while already and now is looking at a complete military disaster (loss of Crimea is on the table), even if Putin manages to bring Wagner under control. I don't see how this is politically survivable. What's the spin? "Ok, I sacrificed tens of thousands of Russians on a catastrophic invasion, but at least I managed to stop a coup from my career-criminal personal cook (whom I also outsourced a good part of the war effort under his blatantly unconstitutional private military outfit to)."? I have long thought the West should be a lot more scared about what it's going to look like if the country with the world's largest nuclear arsenal becomes completely destabilized. Seems like we're going to find out.

throwaway290 3y ago
Posts by Prigozhin are censored in Russian social media but those who access uncensored media like Telegram knew everything for very long time already. It is likely that Prigozhin will be taken care of, but if not this does not bode well for Russia or Russians. Or for Ukraine and Ukrainians. Note how he is always careful to say he does not mean to distract Russian forces from attacking Ukraine. And if he takes over chances are he can actually improve military, which no thanks
- gdy 3y ago
  Everyone in Russia can read him on telegram [0]. [0] https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    This is a fake. Another proof that random Telegram posts and channels are not to be trusted.
    - gdy 3y ago
      You are right [0], here is official Prigozhin's channel [1] with twice as many subscribers (1.2M). [0] https://bloknot.ru/politika/prigozhin-telegram-kanaly-kepka-prigozhina-i-evgenij-prigozhin-v-telegram-ne-imeyut-ko-mne-otnosheniya-1010305.html https://bloknot.ru/politika/prigozhin-telegram-kanaly-kepka-... [1] https://t.me/concordgroup_official https://t.me/concordgroup_official