“Prigozhin to be sent to Sudan: What fate awaits Wagner leader?”

The recent statements by Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder and leader of the Wagner private military company, reflect his fear for his own skin as he has lost Putin’s trust and is attempting to evade retaliation, according to NV’s “What Awaits Prigozhin” exclusive.

The current hysterical actions and statements of Prigozhin are a consequence of his attempt to save himself from the anger of the Kremlin’s top leadership. “The public activity of Prigozhin is associated with the fact that at some point he realized that his privileged position as Putin’s favorite ‘grandson’ was shaken,” said Lev Kadik, a journalist specializing in foreign affairs at the Latvian portal Delfi.lv and former political editor of the Russian newspaper Kommersant.

Experts surveyed by NV are convinced that the only function the Wagner Group leader served during the large-scale invasion was to issue calls and mobilize prisoners, followed by their deployment on the front lines. Now, Prigozhin’s services have become unnecessary, as the Russian army has learned since last August to independently carry out the same tasks since last autumn, said Kadik.

The Wagner Group chief was also unable to capture Bakhmut after months of fighting, despite receiving Putin’s approval to recruit criminals strictly for the purpose. So, Prigozhin’s recent statements about withdrawing his group from Bakhmut and his extensive interview on the topic of how “we can f**k up Russia thanks to the Kremlin elite” are nothing more than an attempt at self-defense.

Prigozhin is a product of the Putin system, but now his position as “Putin’s chef” has weakened within it, as he is no longer fighting against Ukraine but for his own skin, Maxim Reznik, former member of the legislative assembly of St. Petersburg, told NV. “You see, Prigozhin is a patriot of his own hide,” said Reznik.

Figures similar to Prigozhin have already emerged in the history of Putin’s Russia, said Fyodor Krascheninnikov, a Russian political scientist living in Lithuania, in an interview with NV. For example, after the annexation of Crimea, the “popular mayor” of Sevastopol Alexei Chaly and former prosecutor Natalia Poklonskaya received their share of popularity from the Kremlin, but their influence quickly waned without Putin’s support.

As an example, the political analyst uses Ramzan Kadyrov, the “leader” of Chechnya. He was previously one of Prigozhin’s main public allies, supporting the Wagner Group in its conflict with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. However, once the Wagner Group leader began his own game and crossed a certain line in his criticism, Kadyrov’s support dissolved. Krascheninnikov explained that within the Putin system of power, alliances or coalitions are impossible as they are shattered from above.

It is most likely that Prigozhin will be removed, not physically destroyed, but sent into a kind of exile, such as Africa, where the Wagner Group has several ongoing “missions,” concluded the journalist from Delfi.lv “Prigozhin will go to Sudan, and what will happen to him there is anyone’s guess. In any case, he will be removed from the stage where everyone dances, sings, and shouts.”

https://english.nv.ua/nation/prigozhin-to-be-sent-to-sudan-what-fate-awaits-wagner-leader-50327827.html

Comment: Prigozhin hasn’t been shy about speaking his mind for quite some time. A lot of people noticed this and have written about it. He’s even accused Shoigu of mining the roads his Wagner mercenaries used to withdraw from Bakhmut. He’s angling for something, but I’m not sure what it is yet. But pulling his mercenaries out of the line for rest and refit is a military necessity. They’ve been fighting and dying at Bakhmut since the beginning. Beyond that need, I doubt Prigozhin wants his boys to be part of defending against a Ukrainian counteroffensive. If that counteroffensive proves wildly or even moderately successful, there is no glory to be had in being among the losing defenders. It would be better for Prigozhin’s position in whatever game he’s playing to be on the sidelines haranguing Shoigu and Gerasimov for losing more men, equipment and territory.

This story suggests Prigozhin will soon head to his forces in Africa. I think that’s a real possibility, maybe not Sudan, perhaps to his diamond mines in the CAR. He would be among his people safe from the palace intrigues that could arise from a less than stellar defense in Ukraine. He could focus his efforts on his real money making endeavors in Africa and even line up supplies and support for his forces regenerating back in Russia.

Months ago, Colonel Lang said that Wagner must be dealt with in Ukraine. They took a beating, but their certainly not destroyed. Now Shoigu, Gerasimov and maybe even Putin may be thinking that Prigozhin and his Wagner Group must be dealt with either in Russia or in Africa.

TTG 

https://themessenger.com/opinion/the-curious-case-of-yevgeny-prigozhin

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-28-2023

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/explained-the-wagner-groups-actions-in-africa/article66775177.ece

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40 Responses to “Prigozhin to be sent to Sudan: What fate awaits Wagner leader?”

  1. Fourth and Long says:

    I guess they discontinued those poker and pinochle games down in South America where William Casey, Dr Josef Mengele, Martin Borman and the guy with the funny moustache used to play. A pity, we have an ex-president or two who would love to play. Hmm, come to think of it – three or four at least. I have an idea where that game has been relocated to, but prefer not to say.

  2. Smedlers says:

    Backed by Russian fire power, Wagner and Prigozhin won the largest battle of the 21st Century, and did this against a professional military backed by NATO, the Pentagon, US intelligence services, and the entire coproate media establishment. In other words what what Col. Lang used to call that the Borg.

    But at least in Star Trek the Borg was competent. But this bunch, losing to a force of mercenaries? Perhaps a more appropriate term might now be “clownshow.”

    How far back in US military history must one go to find a leader willing to subject himslf not only to enemy fire to the same degree as Prigozhin, and/or stand up for his men against incompetent superiors and/or clueless political leadership? And this, from a “mercenary.”

    It seems that the US military no longer produces senior officers who could shine Prigozhin’s boots, and hasn’t for generations. The real question for American citizens ought to be: how far down the chain does the rot go?

    • Frankie P says:

      “How far back in US military history must one go to find a leader willing to subject himslf not only to enemy fire to the same degree as Prigozhin, and/or stand up for his men against incompetent superiors and/or clueless political leadership?”

      Unfortunately, all the way back to Joseph Stillwell.

    • leith says:

      I’ve seen no evidence that Prigozhin has stood up to the clueless leadership of Putin. Just the opposite, he remains under the protection of Putin and he continues to suck up. Prigozhin and Kadyrovuses him as he uses Kadyrov to keep potential rivals in the army from growing too powerful. Putin does the same with Naryshkin, Bortnikov, Zolotov, Gerasimov, Shoigu, his oligarchs, and the Oblast governors; playing them against each other. It’s ‘rule by division’, Stalin did the same.

      Prigozhin is a punk, nothing more. He’s being used.

  3. English Outsider says:

    He gets unceremoniously shortened in my notes to “Prig”. That doesn’t express an opinion. It’s just a necessary abbreviation because he’s popping up all the time.

    Too much of the time. Every man and his dog has a different opinion of what he’s up to. There are weird people like Borrell or Arestovytch, or our own Ben Wallace, and you can listen to what they say and have a pretty good idea of what today’s story is they’re hoping to put across to us and why. But Prig remains unfathomable. He’s a Rorschach ink blob all can make what they please of.

    He is not in operational command of his group. The rare interviews one sees of the real commanders give something of a more sober picture. I don’t think he’s a pinhead like Strelkov. Is he one of the “Angry Patriots”? Or just finding it a good move to appeal to the Angry Patriot crowd. No idea.

    Big Serge comes up with a wicked put down. He’s detailing the quite formidable list of units Kiev put in to defend Bakhmut. Then he writes, “Russia came to meet this challenge – bringing as their spearhead a mercenary group, staffed by convicts, wielding shovels, run by a bald caterer. What could go wrong?” But that’s a jeux d’esprit, not a serious judgement I think.

    I don’t think Wagner’s an Academi or similar style organisation. When seen in action a while back in the Eastern Syrian desert they were more a cross between French Foreign Legion and Special Forces. Seriously effective. What are they now? Dugin writes of them:-

    https://www.thepostil.com/the-wagner-factor-and-the-fairness-principle/

    Picking what sense one can out of all that – I am not a Dugin fan though very sorry for him after his recent bereavement – seems they do resonate with something in the new post-SMO Russia.

    • English Outsider says:

      “When seen in action ,,,” refers to a Wagner attack on one of the Jihadi groups that remained behind for a while in the Eastern desert.

    • Fourth and Long says:

      The Lord your God is a man of war.
      Exodus 15:3

      Sorry, it doesn’t run on for 25 paragraphs. Dugin mentions the oprichnina in reference to Wagner, which I think is a really piss poor comparison in some ways, but not entirely. Whether Dugin understands it or not he’s using that reference because that group evokes terror and lawlessness which has the blessing of the highest office. What the oprichnina did, for Tsar Ivan IV (the terrible) was destroy the boyars ability to use their own considerable military powers for their own pursuits, thus truly unifying Russia under the Tsar. It’s a useful referent, a bit dicey, but useful. According to reports of those days, which are quite spotty and divergent and rely entirely on non-professsionals who were mythmakers without knowing it, the oprichnina was a performer of monstrosities of cruelty. They have a cultlike status which some writers think they have seen celebrated at various times throughout Russian history, especially during the worst episodes of the 1930s.

      The ancient concept of good and evil was not like the Sunday school versions of today. If something or someone expelled or eradicated forces destroying your lives, your lands, your wives and children then despite the methods used, however horrific – that something was “good.”

      • English Outsider says:

        F&L. I’d hoped you might come in to sort that out. Masterly. Thanks.

        I took against Dugin a while back. Thought of some of it, the hell, is this a Russian Brzezinski? Because there were one or two passages that could have come straight out of the Grand Chessboard, if you changed the geography around.

  4. Fred says:

    So the Ukraine first line ne troops spent months grinding down prisoners, aka Wagner Group, while being ground down themselves. No Wagner, aka mercenaries, are off to the dark continent, “forcing” the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to open up a second front. Meanwhile, three weeks from the anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, the Ukrainians are still not ready. Unless they are, in which case they will face Russian regulars, who we are being told will fight worse than the “criminals” of the Wagner Group.

    On to Moscow!

  5. d74 says:

    When it comes to his statements, Prigozine is a clown or a comedian. It’s probably a mistake to place too much emphasis on his staging.

    As a Frenchman, I’m very pleased to see him grappling with tribal, ethnic and religious issues in French-speaking Africa. These countries have lost all economic and strategic values. They’re just “miles and miles of sand”. We remember Bismarck’s words: “Let the Gallic cock scratch the African sand”. Well put and still true, especially for Wagner, or anyone else who wants to take up the burden.

    We used to exhaust ourselves defending powers that were more or less democratic, more or less clean, to the great detriment of our reputation ans money. We’ll see how long Wagner can be supported by a population that’s rapidly getting fed up – I hope so.

    • Babeltuap says:

      Western media sure did take a big helping of Prigozhin running his mouth wide open like a gator. Putin however let him alone. Why is that? Media didn’t bother asking that question.

      If I had to take a guess it’s because Putin knows he can’t get his foot in the door in the media. He can however light this dog crap on fire and run away. Putin didn’t remove him, Battle of Bakhmut is over and somebody is moving on to the next conflict of securing a warm water port.

      • Fred says:

        Odessa, but not anything in Africa.

        • TTG says:

          Fred,

          Russia is negotiating with Sudan for port rights. Wagner is already there minding the gold mines and arming Dagalo’s RSF (Rapid Support Forces). Russia is not getting Odesa. They missed their shot at that in the early weeks of the war.

          • Fred says:

            TTG,

            Which Sudan are they negotiating with, there is a war going on there too.

            The Russians ‘missed their shot’ at Odessa? Guess the war is over in that country too, or will we – without a whimper from congress – be defending the city once the war changes?

          • TTG says:

            Fred,

            Russia was close to closing the deal for a Red Sea naval base for four ships and 300 troops with Omar al-Bashir before he was overthrown. The deal fell apart when al-Bashir was overthrown, but it now appears to be back on track. Dagalo was always enthusiastic about the base and remains so. Hence Wagner’s strong support for him and his RSF. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, current head of the Sudanese Army and the government, and Mohammed Othman al-Hussein, chief of staff of the army, had their reservations because they didn’t want to totally alienate the West, but they’re coming around. Al-Hussein signaled tentative government support in February. The deal awaits ratification by a yet to be established civilian government. We’ll see if that happens any time soon.

            Russia’s high water mark in their quest for Odesa was back on 2 March 2022 at the battle of Voznesensk. That where a Russian armored column and airmobile reinforcements were defeated by Territorial Defense Forces and local residents as the Russian tried to seize crossing over the Bug River en route to Odesa. It became a classic example of national defense strategy.

          • Fred says:

            TTG,

            The Russians need a naval base in Sudan for what reason, other than protecting oil tankers heading to China?

            Odessa circa March 2022 is old history. The war isn’t over, except for that inevitable Russian collapse we keep hearing about.

          • TTG says:

            Fred,

            You have to ask the Kremlin why they feel the need to have a Red Sea naval base. They were negotiating with Al Bashir since 2017 for a basing agreement and had a 25 year agreement by 2020. Al Bashir was ousted and the basing agreement was sidelined. Lavrov made two trips to Khartoum this year to push the basing agreement. They clearly want it.

            Since March 2022, Russian forces have only lost more ground in their quest for Odesa. Their loss of Kherson was a major setback on that front. Don’t tell me you’re pining for another Russian march on Odesa. I think you’re going to end up disappointed.

          • Fred says:

            TTG,

            When in comes to Russia-Ukraine I am 100% on the side of the USA. I just happen to believe that we have essentially zero national interest in Ukraine, and funding them while prodding the Russians is having unfortunately side effects. Mostly for Germans right now, but the middle class elsewhere too. Definitly a minority oppinion here.

  6. LeaNder says:

    Wagner must be dealt with in Ukraine

    Meaning? They have to be destroyed? I don’t recall his opinion of the Wagner Group in Syria:

    https://thewarhorse.org/special-forces-soldiers-reveal-first-details-of-battle-with-russian-mercenaries-in-syria/

    Special Forces Soldiers Reveal First Details of Battle With Russian Mercenaries in Syria, MAY 11, 2023| KEVIN MAURER

  7. Fourth and Long says:

    Way back in grade school were you one of those kids who did well on the number sequence and geometric analogy tests only to flunk miserably on the sections which tested for cultural awareness and knowledge? Ok either way.
    Here’s a new puzzle.

    How is it possible that American viewers can watch this CNN coverage (and so, so many others over the years) of the war in Ukraine and NOT come away understanding that the US is ruled directly from London? If you need more clues it’s probably too late for you.
    Ukraine official: Gates of war have opened on Russian territory.
    https://youtu.be/IMY0sHZfkz8

    And fancy this – in an interview without British accents which somehow got past the censors, a retired US general actually does a decent job of analysis.
    ———-
    Putin hasn’t punished Wagner chief for criticizing Russia’s military. Retired general thinks he knows why.
    https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/06/03/putin-wagner-group-prigozhin-russia-ukraine-oligarch-kimmitt-vpx.cnn

  8. Mark Logan says:

    I suspect he and his boys will be retained in Ukraine for the summer as deep reserves. The Russian have to know they are about to be in one hell of a fight, nobody can be spared. Assuming he wises and shuts up a bit, they will deal with him either after this is over of if he refuses to answer a call. I imagine some of his new fighters and close staff will be collecting two paychecks….and packing umbrellas with oddly pointed tips.

  9. mcohen says:

    Khartoum awaits.In Tina’s Arena.

  10. English Outsider says:

    Time to get real.

    Living in England, a country with a government that’s all in more than most against Russia, and having a reasonable amount of exposure to our politicians and journalists, I get the full blast of the information war. I also do my best to keep an eye on what information they’re getting in Germany, which is a key player in the Ukrainian conflict as we in England are not, to see something of what they’re getting of that blast in Germany.

    Then from my contacts over there, all vaguely Left or Green so naturally predisposed to go along with their government in any case, I get to see the effectiveness of that information war.

    It is devastatingly effective. For the Ukrainian conflict the information war gives us nothing less than an imaginary war in an imaginary country with an imaginary history. It gives us the parallel universe in which most of us have been living for over a year.

    A sceptical German General, long part of the German establishment so not a wild-eyed dissident, says he’s never seen an information war like it. “”Military experts [and those] who know what is going on among the secret services, what it looks like on the ground and what war really means – are largely excluded from the [German public] debate. They do not fit in with the formation of media opinion.”

    “We are largely experiencing a coordination of the media, the likes of which I have never experienced before in the Federal Republic.”

    So the information war has been intense and it has worked. If we’re looking for NATO victories then we can at least point to this one.

    Every now and again one comes across references to entire departments run by NATO and its constituent countries dedicated solely to the information war. I’d not be surprised if we in England didn’t spend more on that side of defence than we do on tanks or ammunition. In fact I’m sure we do. We can fairly say, looking at the phalanxes of information warriors in the Western militaries, that this is their finest hour. They at least, in the Potemkin villages that are the Western militaries, have come through victorious.

    But it’s that imaginary war that they’ve constructed for us that is the most dangerous. I do not believe that our military and Intel personnel in the UK or Germany consume their own product. They might feed nonsense to the influencers and the “analysts” and the media. They can’t believe it themselves. And they’ve known, they can’t not have known, that the real war is lost and has been since February 2022.

    Someone military in Russia’s been doing a bit of thinking. Certainly since the failure of the peace initiatives that culminated in the failure of the Istanbul talks and almost certainly long before that.

    A full war against the Ukrainians could not have been lost by Russia. It would have entailed heavy casualties and vast expense but none doubt that the Ukrainian army could have been defeated in short order. The flag could have been raised in a shattered Kiev and victory assured.

    Afterwards? The closest parallel for us in England, and it’s still a remote one, is Northern Ireland. But a hundred times worse.

    A resistance consisting of hundreds of thousands of men, many fanatically determined and that in a region of the world much given to fanatical determination. NATO trained in just the type of small unit fighting that resistance groups would need to employ. Armed with NATO equipment that, while not that effective in an all out war as we have seen, would have rendered a guerrilla war costly in the extreme to any occupying force. An RPG in every barn and an ambush at every turn. And the cities would have been ungovernable.

    Mix in a hefty dose of fratricidal strife – because there are also Russian sympathisers all over the country and plenty of other groupings that don’t get on that well with the fanatically determined – and Ukraine would have been a nightmare for any occupying force.

    It took a good half of the then British army and a massive intelligence operation, plus covert assistance from the government of the neighbouring country, to put the lid on a resistance conducted by no more than a few thousand determined fighters in Northern Ireland. Scale that up to what the Russians would have had to cope with in a defeated Ukraine and Ukraine would indeed have been, as so many of us in the West were hoping at the time, “Russia’s Afghanistan”.

    And the Russians sidestepped it all. Instead of chasing all over a country bigger than France, and hunting out small groups of the fanatically determined here there and everywhere, they have formed a line that the Ukrainians must attack and are disposing of the fanatically determined there. At some cost in lives and money but at nothing like the cost they’d have incurred otherwise.

    Does our Military and Intel not know that? Of course they do. Time they stopped messing us all around with their information war nonsense and got to grips with the real military position over there.

    Since that real military position is untenable for NATO, and since the sanctions war has also been comprehensively lost, it’s time we called it quits. Time we stopped feeding the hapless Ukrainian PBI into the killing fields for nothing more that PR purposes.

    • Fourth and Long says:

      Well of course, everything is going according to plan. (Including the 100,000 or so dead with 200,000 wounded. I guess I skipped over that, it must be trivial though or you would have mentioned it, right? Part of the “plan.”)
      Strelkov’s real name is Girkin, but you chose “pinhead” when you had the huge opportunity of pointing out that he was in a bit of a dill* pickle.

      Zippy wants to know if we’re having fun yet:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zippy_the_Pinhead
      ——————————————
      *dill — fennel — “ukrop” (Ukrainian forces) is translated by the bots as “dill,” it’s become usage, because the Ru word for fennel is indistinguishable from the abbreviation ukrop.
      https://translate.google.com
      Insert укроп under Russian with target English

      EO, when even TTG passes on the opportunity to critique this response of yours ..

    • Billy Roche says:

      E.O. Let’s see if I understand the gist of your recent posts. Ukraine lost the very day Russia invaded. Although Russia d/n win that day they could have if they really wanted. They d/n b/c Putin only wanted to remove Zelinsky (an illegitimate Ukrainian, Jewish puppet of the neocons) w/o hurting Ukrainians or their cities (neither, BTW, really exist). Nevertheless, Russia resorted to an air war to destroy “that western region’s” cities, infra structure, and kill its civilians b/c it wanted a surgical intervention that will be studied for decades as an example of military restraint. It’s time therefore, for NATO to stop supporting Ukrainian independence and permit Russia to re-absorb the “region” and its confused residents into the motherland. This will have the helpful affect of eliminating a group of latent, crypto Nazi’s who have been plotting the demise of Russia since ’45. “Remnant” Ukraine will be completely absorbed into Russia in order to prevent a Napoleon (200 years ago) or a Hitler (80 years ago) from re-invading. It s/n pass notice, BTW, that this will make another Russian invasion of Germany, Finland, Poland, Baltics, Hungry, Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan, and Georgia again possible. If only Ukrainians would submit war would end, the “spice” would flow, people would get food and energy, and western Europeans w/make money. We in the west would know this if we weren’t lied to by our gov’t, the military, NATO, and the media. Why don’t Swedes, Finns, Lits, Lats, Stones, Poles, Slovaks, Modavians, and Romanians agree? Here is what some don’t get. Eastern Europeans w/n be Russia’s bitch anymore. That boat left in the summer of ’91. I have another idea for peace … Russia go home.

      • English Outsider says:

        I take a more Eurocentric view, Bill, me being a European.

        I reckon it could all have been avoided had Scholz and the Euros stuck to Minsk 2. Instead of pretending they were trying for Minsk 2 and leading the Russians up the garden path.

        Your side of the Atlantic, I reckon Biden et al didn’t read the manual. The manual is quite explicit.

        “Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages.”

        https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html

        So was it Scholz, leading the Russians up the garden path? Or Biden, who neglected to RTBM?

        Bit of both, I reckon, but as you know I’m something of a contrarian and put the blame on Scholz.

        Your side of the Atlantic, neocons neocon and there’s nothing much to be done about that. My side of the Atlantic, it looks from where I’m sitting that the German government made the most disastrous and dishonourable decision any German government has made for a good eighty years.

        • Fourth and Long says:

          You either lie through your teeth or are living in a very separate reality on some strong hallucinagenic drugs. And that’s because it’s been the UK who has been pushing for this war from way way way back. It’s literally impossible for someone such as you to cite all the things you do covering a nearly 10 yr time interval without knowing what the British government role in all this has been. Impossible. Without either lying outright or being miraculously impervious to knowledge. I don’t believe in miracles. And all that that I just said is without even touching on Billy’s main point – who invaded who and when. The UK leadership is so ultra in its attitude to Russia that – hold on now – it wouldn’t surprise me if Red Sonya wasn’t the great espionage genius she’s made out to be, but rather was assisted by your leaders in the 40s in getting the nuclear secrets she’s credited with obtaining. In order to force the American’s hands into nuking Russia postwar which we know for a fact Churchill wanted to do. Yes, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. It would surprise me more if it wasn’t so, sort of like 911 being allowed to happen, which it almost certainly was.

          • English Outsider says:

            “And that’s because it’s been the UK who has been pushing for this war from way way way back. “

            Of course! Open and shut case. But are the Americans really taken in by all the big talk? We are really supposed to believe that HMG is “Delivering the leadership that the world turns to Great Britain to actually provide”?

            https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-munich-security-conference

            Look behind the talk. The sanctions war was what was supposed to defeat Russia. The UK will be hurt indirectly by the sanctions blowback, true, and it could be hit in the services sector. But our direct volume of trade with Russia is not great.

            The main damage to Russia done by the sanctions, or the damage that it was believed at the time would be done, was that caused by the US financial measures, secondary sanctions that Washington had hoped the ROW would impose, and the damage done to the Russian economy by choking off EU trade with Russia.

            Militarily, we have I believe the best trained army in Europe, Superb personnel and the only Tier One army around in these parts.

            Or a couple of Tier One Brigades, anyway*. Unfortunately it has accurately been described as the “Benjamin Button of Militaries”. Cruel but true. If they keep on cutting we’ll eventually be down to what will still be the best army in Europe but we’ll have trouble filling a squash court with it.

            Nor do we have much clout with the EU. Obvious reasons.

            So forget about the old BAOR days, F&L. HMG talks big but we are, I’m afraid, one of the smaller poodles. Putin loses no sleep if we yap at him.

            The EU’s a different kettle of fish. As explained before, that’s really a collection of power centres. But you’ll remember the Juncker remark that let us know where the centre of the collection was. Germany has or had the only successful large economy in the West. It’s the paymaster, directly and indirectly, for a great many of the rest.

            An industrial economy too. They haven’t outsourced it all yet. An economy that demands great amounts of energy and that sells quality industrial goods in volume that, as even the farmers in remotest Siberia are now finding out, are not that easy to substitute for in a hurry.

            If Putin lost any sleep over the economic war he lost it worrying about how he’d cope with the Washington financial sanctions and the Berlin/Brussels energy and trade sanctions.

            Did he? Maybe not. Difficult to believe the Europe would cut it’s own throat merely to assist a bunch of determined fanatics laying waste the Donbass. I expect Putin worked out that he’d be in for a rough few months but that he’d weather the sanctions OK. As he has.

            Be that as it may, forget about May or our ersatz Churchill Johnson. And yes, as you say, HMG’s conduct has been “impossible”. But in real life it was Berlin/Brussels that has the clout in Europe and that’s why out attention should be focused on their doings. The White Tiger would never amount to much without Germany.

            ………………….

            * https://www.forces.net/services/army/what-difference-between-tier-one-and-tier-two-army
            https://www.forces.net/services/army/what-difference-between-tier-one-and-tier-two-army

          • LeaNder says:

            English Outsider,

            still slightly puzzled, am I, what the hell made you choose “outsider”? Considering you are a proud Englishman, two things come to mind. The first is Colin Wilson’s curious/sensational/early success with his first book, The Outsider, as the larger field of literary topoi(τό·ποι) … Triggered by your use of the image/self presentation as ‘contrarian’.

            Initially, I admittedly, I considered a different semantic possibility, ‘the stranger’. After all, Camus novel L’Étranger is published as The Outsider on your splendid Island too.

            I found Ritter interesting too during the run-up to the war and later, but admittedly find it hard to read him more recently:

            I didn’t like it but had to accept it was more or less true when Ritter called them the “Benjamin Button” of militaries. Fine soldiers, as I know very well from my own contacts over the years, the best by far in my view, but too few and poorly equipped. We’re teaming up with the French at the moment to bomb mud huts in Africa and that’s now about our level.

        • Fourth and Long says:

          Let me add to my post of 4:32 pm.

          Your blaming of Germany is not only an off the wall howler it’s a glaringly obvious dead giveaway of your untruthfullness. Brits absolutely hate the Germans. Period. They despise them. I know, believe me I do. Especially the older Brits. And it’s British foreign policy to weaken continental Europe anyway and always has been and always will be due to simple considerations of geography and power politics. You are outrageously, astoundingly obvious. And feigning concern for the poor Russkies. Of course.

          • English Outsider says:

            F&l. On your second comment, I do know my own country quite well. I used to find a lot of harping on about WWII among older people. We are convinced, most of us, that we won it more or less single[handed and there’s a lot to harp on about. But real Germanophobia? I don’t see it around.

            I did have one awkward moment with a German friend quite recently. She told me, in all seriousness, that Blücher had won the battle of Waterloo!

            Fortunately I kept my mouth shut. I looked into it later and found she was probably right.

          • English Outsider says:

            In haste, F&L Just looked over one of your replies.

            I do not believe that 9/11 was “allowed to happen”. Nor do I believe that Covid was a NWO conspiracy, whatever the NWO is. And I’ve had all the injections.

            Also observed all the lockdown injunctions. If you’re prepared to overlook the fact that once, just once, I had six people to a socially distanced garden party when there should only have been five. Please keep that last one quiet.

            There. I’ve said it all and confessed all. Just thought it would be as well to clear the decks.

          • A Portuguese Man says:

            Who wouldn’t despise the sort of fools that loose two world wars?

            You are of course, ignoring the fact that Britain can only weaken continental Europe if continental Europe allows herself to be weakened.

            As has happened, yet again.

            I commend and salute my old ally for at least making you express yourself in a straightforwardly manner, rather than employing the usual unreadable gibberish.

          • Here’s a news report:

            How the U.K. helped convince the U.S. and its allies to spend big to help Ukraine in its war with Russia

            https://news.yahoo.com/how-the-uk-helped-convince-the-us-and-its-allies-to-spend-big-to-help-ukraine-in-its-war-with-russia-193918302.html

            2023-06-05

            Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has quietly acknowledged to foreign officials that
            the United Kingdom has played a crucial role in convincing allies like the United States
            to dramatically increase military aid ahead of a summertime counteroffensive against Russia.

            London’s bullishness, U.S. and U.K. officials say, has had a galvanizing effect on Western security assistance in general.
            Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior U.S. diplomat told Yahoo News that
            the provision of Storm Shadows even helped break the White House’s impasse
            on sending F-16 fighter jets [to Ukraine].

            My comment: The level of support the political elite has given to this war is, to me, incredible.

        • Billy Roche says:

          E.O. If you will permit me, your view is not eurocentric. It is western eurocentric. Obscured from western eyes by “the Great Schism”, Rome’s refutation of Orthodoxy, the Mongol influence, the Renaissance, Reformation, Westphalia, and the unification of Germany, Eastern Europe still remained. It remained and contrary to what many in west Europe believe, does “Not Belong” to Russia. In the west most things still revolve around what Germany, France, and England (Brit.) want and do. But using western European eyes to understand today’s eastern Europe is a mistake. Its history is different. Eastern Europe endured centuries of Russian hegemony (repression) and seventy years of communist/Russian suck ass. Ignoring the brutal history of Russian relations w/h neighbors and explaining Ukraine today w/just “neocons” is, well just silly. That awful history happened far b/f ’91, the Maiden, 2014, Minsk, and b/f the neocon. Churchill comes to my mind again. He drew a line through Europe in his speech in Miss. (’46). In ’91 Eastern Europe emerged from behind that curtain; yes it still remained. Ukraine, a part of eastern Europe, has been fighting for its independence w/o overt Russian violence since ’91 and today in the face of Russian invasion. East Europeans want independence from Russia. They don’t need encouragement from neocons, they need weapons. What was Zelinsky supposed to say in February 22? I don’t need a ride I need guns? This is a simple fight for independence from a colonial oppressor.

          • English Outsider says:

            Bill. With you most of the way. The Hungarians were a big deal over a millennium ago – I expect you know it was where the Aethelings fled when England was conquered. Wrote to a Hungarian on the Colonel’s site a while ago saying we wanted ’em returned but didn’t hear back from him.

            Sobieski saved us from the Ottomans when Poland was one of the major European powers. Lithuania has a language the oldest in Europe and is wreathed in forest mystery. These countries are an integral part of European civilisation and to see them all now no more than outlying satrapies, and looted satrapies at that, of the EU sludge that has rolled over the continent in recent times is just sad.

            Sandwiched between the Bear and the sludge they do urgently need, not just better defence, but recognition of their unique qualities and more play for those qualities.

            That’s my Europe, Bill. A tapestry of countries all going their own way but all a vital part of that infinitely rich and varied European civilisation. Of which of course your own country is also part; few live in the States who don’t have their roots in one part or other of this continent. So too with other countries far away. “The West” is all of us. If we don’t value it we don’t value ourselves and if we don’t value each individual part of it we lose so much.

            And returning to the prosaic but central question of defence, of course we all need it. Just in case some bastard rolls in and tries to pinch our stuff. Or our country, more like, given we’re a quarrelsome lot.

            But prodding neo-Nazis on to harass the Bear is absolutely no way to do it! That will become more and more evident in the very near future. It’s time to call quits on that ugly and failed enterprise.

            As a result of that enterprise we’ve just seen what was also an integral and valued part of European civilisation – Russia – up sticks and leave. Their loss. Our loss. We can afford no more such losses. We must be careful that we fringe countries of Europe, the Eastern countries, the Baltics, England, in freeing ourselves from the sludge, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and reject the real Europe, our Europe, as well.

  11. mcohen says:

    I think the matter is now cut and dried.A misconception is that good shall prevail over evil but this is not the case.The duplicity of the biden administration is now fully exposed.

  12. English Outsider says:

    LeaNder – “Outsider” because I live several thousand miles away. “English Outsider” because I seldom find myself in agreement with the majority of my own countrymen.

    There was one glorious moment, just one, when I did. 2016. I was on the team at last and felt that wonderful warm glow of camaraderie. Then it turned out that all of us who voted for Brexit were outsiders so the name became applicable again.

    Where did you get that last paragraph from? I looked it up. Saw how it continued.

    “Fortunately the Russians don’t want to walk into the Baltics tomorrow. Not unless we use the Russians living there as a pressure point, as we did with the Donbass Russians. Why on earth would the Russians want the Baltics? An industrial wasteland peopled by the fiercest Russophobes on the planet. It’d be a nightmare to hold down and no profit in it.

    “But things change, and change very quickly these days. What happens when Putin goes and if the Russian equivalents of the Washington neocons take over? Because the Russians have their hawks too, as I’m sure you know very well.

    “So we need proper defensive forces to guard against any contingencies, however unlikely, that might arise. And bombing mud huts doesn’t cut it. But putting the Russians in a position where they had no choice but intervene militarily in Ukraine, and then trying to destroy their country with sanctions, isn’t any rational defence policy. It’s sheer lunacy. ”

    Then I realised I’d been saying the same thing over and over again for more than a year. So I’d better shut up!

    Unless TTG does some more cooking. The family’s attitude to my own cooking is one of resigned acceptance so I’m always on the lookout for that one magic touch that will astonish them.

    Er, you any good at cooking? Any magic touches from the Heimat? You ought to be good at cooking, Did you know that the French bon vivants now come to Germany when they want a really special blowout?

    On literary matters, Camus is a man I’ve been promising myself for years not to read. Is he any good?

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