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There's no way everyone in the free world saw this coming and Prigozhin did not. I'm still scratching my head about what he thought his endgame was going to be

There's no way everyone in the free world saw this coming and Prigozhin did not. I'm still scratching my head about what he thought his endgame was going to be after the coup.

petertodd 3y ago
Easy: he thought the coup would be the action with the highest chance of success at the point when he had committed himself to going ahead with it. He was going to lose control of Wagner if the coup didn't succeed, whether or not he tried. So no surprise he made that attempt. You don't get to where he did in life without being bold, taking risks, and being lucky. And it's likely that at the point where he had already committed himself to the coup, it looked more likely to succeed than it does now with the benefit of hindsight. As for why he kept hanging around Russia... where else is he going to go? He was a wanted man everywhere. Wanted by both the civilized world, and Russia. There are no good options in that circumstance.
- legitster 3y ago
  Still, if your options are ending up in The Hague or getting fired by your murderous boss, internationally embarrassing your boss in order to get a better severance package seems to be so much, much worse than either option. But again, we are talking about a literal mafia boss. He probably was dumb enough to think he had actual leverage.
  - Gud 3y ago
    What makes you think a mafia boss would be stupid? Wouldn't street smart be exactly the kind of trait that would put you in the upper echelons of a mafia state such as Russia. I think there is a lot more to this story than what has come to light. I suspect they were threatening to kill his family and had the means to do so.
    - civilitty 3y ago
      > What makes you think a mafia boss would be stupid? Wouldn't street smart be exactly the kind of trait that would put you in the upper echelons of a mafia state such as Russia. What makes you think a mafia boss would be smart? Their defining features are ruthlessness and brutality, not intelligence or "street smarts". Putin for example is known for bombing civilian apartment buildings to get into power and very publicly poisoning traitors with polonium and nerve agents, not to mention entering a disastrous war and tanking the Russian economy. Those upper echelons are only there as an accident of history. They were in the right place and the right time to loot the Russian state during privatization while killing, imprisoning, and controlling all their opposition.
      - anthony_d 3y ago
        > Those upper echelons are only there as an accident of history. That seems like an awfully bold assertion. Mafia bosses have a different set of rules than most of us, but to think they survive by repeatedly flipping a coin and being lucky is preposterous.
        civilitty 3y ago
        That’s literally how all the Russian oligarchs got their power. By being in the right place at the right time to buy up all the privatized industries for a tiny fraction of what they were literally worth. Those that flipped tails are dead or in prison.
        ethbr1 3y ago
        If you pick 100 people off the street, line them up for a race for a million dollars, and fire a starting pistol... the one who crosses the finish line first doesn't do so by luck.
      - Gud 3y ago
        So you do not believe intelligence played a role? It was inconsequential how smart a person was?
  - culebron21 3y ago
    I think you're judging him by values of "normal" people and weigh the average outcomes of choices. But criminals are known as people willing to take risks and would bet on low-probable but very lucrative outcome. A route in Hague was a guaranteed lifetime sentence, while playing some role in the elites gave some low-probable possibilities.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  > Easy: he thought the coup would be the action with the highest chance of success at the point when he had committed himself to going ahead with it. From some of the post-coup reporting (Washington Post?), there were comments from the US intel community that the coup had much wider support past Wagner, but was set to launch several days later. Russian intelligence caught wind of it... and decision was made to launch it prematurely. Granted, the US intel community is far from an unbiased party, but it would explain Prigozhin's calculus is a more believable way. And oligarchs being upset at Putin for upsetting the business-as-usual applecart for no good reason isn't unreasonable.
x0x0 3y ago
It almost certainly wasn't a coup, nor was it intended to be. It was a boyar making a pilgrimage to Moscow to petition the king for help. Specifically, with Shoigu and Gerasimov's takeover of Wagner. See Mark Galeotti's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Galeotti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Galeotti ) writings. I can't find where he discusses this in his podcast, but https://www.patreon.com/posts/prigozhins-plot-86895135 https://www.patreon.com/posts/prigozhins-plot-86895135 > When it comes down to it, Prigozhin was not trying to supplant Putin so much as petition him. This formulation was suggested by Anatoly Pinsky in a very interesting article in the War on the Rocks (https://warontherocks.com/2023/07/prigozhin-as-petitioner-making-sense-of-the-march-for-justice/ https://warontherocks.com/2023/07/prigozhin-as-petitioner-ma...). It was disruptive, it may even have seemed dangerous, but the perverse irony is that it came from a place of a kind of loyalty. Prigozhin was not in any way, questioning Putin‘s right to rule; he was simply trying to influence his policies. In the quasi-mediaeval political environment of Putin‘s court, this is not necessarily personal disloyalty. Putin was clearly viscerally angry when he recorded his first message on the Saturday morning. He may also have been scared. But as he came to realise what was going on, he seems to have become less personally affronted. In other words, he not only came to understand what Prigozhin was doing, he excepted in a way, the fundamental systemic legitimacy of what he was doing. > > We do not have to start speculating about compromising material, or that Putin still fears Prigozhin, and his maybe 15,000 - although the figure is likely to be is rather smaller - Wagner fighters. Rather that Putin acknowledges Prigozhin was engaging in the sharp-elbowed politics that he himself has encouraged. After all, we have seen Igor Sechin set up a minister and get him imprisoned, Kadyrov repeatedly blackmail the federal centre for money, and security agencies frame, detain and possibly even defenestrate officers of their rivals. Horizontal conflict is at the heart of Putin's system. > > Of course, Prigozhin overreached. He needed to be punished, he needed to lose the opportunity to repeat this exercise, and he needed demonstratively to be banished from the blessed confines of Putin's circle (not that he was ever that close to the personage in reality). However, so long as he’s useful and so long as Putin accepts that he is true to the fundamentals of today’s neo-mediaeval Russian politics, then there may be a place for Prigozhin after all.
- legitster 3y ago
  Okay, but as high-minded as this prose is, it ignores a pretty crucial thing - the only reason Wagner existed in the first place was to give some amount of plausible deniability between Russia and their foreign policy interventions. So countries like Germany could have a legal precedent to trade with Russia so long as all of the war crimes were technically off of the books. So not only was this a huge miscalculation nationally that deeply embarrassed Putin, Wagner was supposed to look independent. So beseeching Putin for help only made it worse. The irony is that Prigozhin probably thought he had leverage, but the only real thing of value to Moscow about Wagner's sad little army was the independence.
lamontcg 3y ago
> I'm still scratching my head about what he thought his endgame was going to be after the coup. It isn't a contradiction for smart people to fuck up and do dumb things. Sometimes people just miscalculate and make mistakes. Through the use of power and connections, some people manage to fix their mistakes and synchophants start claiming it was "4D chess" all along. Really they just screw up like everyone else, but their resources often allow them to recover. When they screw up big enough, you're left with "how did they not see it coming" "paradoxical" situations like this.
- yreg 3y ago
  He also had much more information and experience than any of us. Perhaps his decision wasn't that ridiculous from his point of view even though it turned out the way it did.
pvaldes 3y ago
Options Remaining in Bahmut = sure death Leaving Bahmut = disobeying orders, judged by desertion. He had executed desertors before and had a very public speech than desertors deserve to die and will be executed. result: jail (and death) or death. Coup = Free card out of the Bahmut tomb, and maybe live for one couple months more as long as he don't try to return to Moscow. A todo Prigozhin le llega su San Martin I suppose. Africa can breathe with relief today.

There's no way everyone in the free world saw this coming and Prigozhin did not. I'm still scratching my head about what he thought his endgame was going to be after the coup.

petertodd 3y ago

Easy: he thought the coup would be the action with the highest chance of success at the point when he had committed himself to going ahead with it. He was going to lose control of Wagner if the coup didn't succeed, whether or not he tried. So no surprise he made that attempt. You don't get to where he did in life without being bold, taking risks, and being lucky. And it's likely that at the point where he had already committed himself to the coup, it looked more likely to succeed than it does now with the benefit of hindsight. As for why he kept hanging around Russia... where else is he going to go? He was a wanted man everywhere. Wanted by both the civilized world, and Russia. There are no good options in that circumstance.

legitster 3y ago
Still, if your options are ending up in The Hague or getting fired by your murderous boss, internationally embarrassing your boss in order to get a better severance package seems to be so much, much worse than either option. But again, we are talking about a literal mafia boss. He probably was dumb enough to think he had actual leverage.
- Gud 3y ago
  What makes you think a mafia boss would be stupid? Wouldn't street smart be exactly the kind of trait that would put you in the upper echelons of a mafia state such as Russia. I think there is a lot more to this story than what has come to light. I suspect they were threatening to kill his family and had the means to do so.
  - civilitty 3y ago
    > What makes you think a mafia boss would be stupid? Wouldn't street smart be exactly the kind of trait that would put you in the upper echelons of a mafia state such as Russia. What makes you think a mafia boss would be smart? Their defining features are ruthlessness and brutality, not intelligence or "street smarts". Putin for example is known for bombing civilian apartment buildings to get into power and very publicly poisoning traitors with polonium and nerve agents, not to mention entering a disastrous war and tanking the Russian economy. Those upper echelons are only there as an accident of history. They were in the right place and the right time to loot the Russian state during privatization while killing, imprisoning, and controlling all their opposition.
    - anthony_d 3y ago
      > Those upper echelons are only there as an accident of history. That seems like an awfully bold assertion. Mafia bosses have a different set of rules than most of us, but to think they survive by repeatedly flipping a coin and being lucky is preposterous.
      - civilitty 3y ago
        That’s literally how all the Russian oligarchs got their power. By being in the right place at the right time to buy up all the privatized industries for a tiny fraction of what they were literally worth. Those that flipped tails are dead or in prison.
        ethbr1 3y ago
        If you pick 100 people off the street, line them up for a race for a million dollars, and fire a starting pistol... the one who crosses the finish line first doesn't do so by luck.
    - Gud 3y ago
      So you do not believe intelligence played a role? It was inconsequential how smart a person was?
- culebron21 3y ago
  I think you're judging him by values of "normal" people and weigh the average outcomes of choices. But criminals are known as people willing to take risks and would bet on low-probable but very lucrative outcome. A route in Hague was a guaranteed lifetime sentence, while playing some role in the elites gave some low-probable possibilities.
ethbr1 3y ago
> Easy: he thought the coup would be the action with the highest chance of success at the point when he had committed himself to going ahead with it. From some of the post-coup reporting (Washington Post?), there were comments from the US intel community that the coup had much wider support past Wagner, but was set to launch several days later. Russian intelligence caught wind of it... and decision was made to launch it prematurely. Granted, the US intel community is far from an unbiased party, but it would explain Prigozhin's calculus is a more believable way. And oligarchs being upset at Putin for upsetting the business-as-usual applecart for no good reason isn't unreasonable.

x0x0 3y ago

It almost certainly wasn't a coup, nor was it intended to be. It was a boyar making a pilgrimage to Moscow to petition the king for help. Specifically, with Shoigu and Gerasimov's takeover of Wagner. See Mark Galeotti's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Galeotti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Galeotti ) writings. I can't find where he discusses this in his podcast, but https://www.patreon.com/posts/prigozhins-plot-86895135 https://www.patreon.com/posts/prigozhins-plot-86895135 > When it comes down to it, Prigozhin was not trying to supplant Putin so much as petition him. This formulation was suggested by Anatoly Pinsky in a very interesting article in the War on the Rocks (https://warontherocks.com/2023/07/prigozhin-as-petitioner-making-sense-of-the-march-for-justice/ https://warontherocks.com/2023/07/prigozhin-as-petitioner-ma...). It was disruptive, it may even have seemed dangerous, but the perverse irony is that it came from a place of a kind of loyalty. Prigozhin was not in any way, questioning Putin‘s right to rule; he was simply trying to influence his policies. In the quasi-mediaeval political environment of Putin‘s court, this is not necessarily personal disloyalty. Putin was clearly viscerally angry when he recorded his first message on the Saturday morning. He may also have been scared. But as he came to realise what was going on, he seems to have become less personally affronted. In other words, he not only came to understand what Prigozhin was doing, he excepted in a way, the fundamental systemic legitimacy of what he was doing. > > We do not have to start speculating about compromising material, or that Putin still fears Prigozhin, and his maybe 15,000 - although the figure is likely to be is rather smaller - Wagner fighters. Rather that Putin acknowledges Prigozhin was engaging in the sharp-elbowed politics that he himself has encouraged. After all, we have seen Igor Sechin set up a minister and get him imprisoned, Kadyrov repeatedly blackmail the federal centre for money, and security agencies frame, detain and possibly even defenestrate officers of their rivals. Horizontal conflict is at the heart of Putin's system. > > Of course, Prigozhin overreached. He needed to be punished, he needed to lose the opportunity to repeat this exercise, and he needed demonstratively to be banished from the blessed confines of Putin's circle (not that he was ever that close to the personage in reality). However, so long as he’s useful and so long as Putin accepts that he is true to the fundamentals of today’s neo-mediaeval Russian politics, then there may be a place for Prigozhin after all.

legitster 3y ago
Okay, but as high-minded as this prose is, it ignores a pretty crucial thing - the only reason Wagner existed in the first place was to give some amount of plausible deniability between Russia and their foreign policy interventions. So countries like Germany could have a legal precedent to trade with Russia so long as all of the war crimes were technically off of the books. So not only was this a huge miscalculation nationally that deeply embarrassed Putin, Wagner was supposed to look independent. So beseeching Putin for help only made it worse. The irony is that Prigozhin probably thought he had leverage, but the only real thing of value to Moscow about Wagner's sad little army was the independence.

lamontcg 3y ago

> I'm still scratching my head about what he thought his endgame was going to be after the coup. It isn't a contradiction for smart people to fuck up and do dumb things. Sometimes people just miscalculate and make mistakes. Through the use of power and connections, some people manage to fix their mistakes and synchophants start claiming it was "4D chess" all along. Really they just screw up like everyone else, but their resources often allow them to recover. When they screw up big enough, you're left with "how did they not see it coming" "paradoxical" situations like this.

yreg 3y ago
He also had much more information and experience than any of us. Perhaps his decision wasn't that ridiculous from his point of view even though it turned out the way it did.

pvaldes 3y ago

Options Remaining in Bahmut = sure death Leaving Bahmut = disobeying orders, judged by desertion. He had executed desertors before and had a very public speech than desertors deserve to die and will be executed. result: jail (and death) or death. Coup = Free card out of the Bahmut tomb, and maybe live for one couple months more as long as he don't try to return to Moscow. A todo Prigozhin le llega su San Martin I suppose. Africa can breathe with relief today.