As for the size of Wagner – the organization was effectively a semi-deniable arm of the Russian government, and it’s size makes sense based on that. If you were a Russian vet, you didn’t join Blackwater or a similar outfit. You joined Wagner. Wagner had ready access to the prisons to fill it’s ranks. It even has its own brand-name consumer goods, which are apparently at least somewhat popular among Russian citizens.

When the top tyrant feels any sort of threat from an adversary, someone will wind up dead.

Putin did not bother with a show trial to kill his adversary. Why bother if the outcome was preordained.

Here in the USA, we still are in the show trial phase, but if the dems stay in power, you can expect this charade will pass.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

On a side note, I always understood that there were mercenary organizations, but I thought they were small, composed of highly trained soldiers, capable of doing things like hostage extractions and such. I had no idea that there were mercenary organizations capable of fielding 100k+ personnel.

Say what you will about Prigozhin, he made his move, and Putin responded in kind.

Erronius

Comedy gold or consider you don’t understand “plausible”:

The one thing we can be sure of is that this wasn’t an accident. At this point, the United States being responsible is just as plausible an explanation as the obvious Putin.

Was he so naive as to trust Vlad? In any case I go along with PA+Cat/Juan Browne that we’ll never really know. It’s already like the Kennedy assassination, the pie chart of probabilities looks like a bunch of crumbs. Though hard to argue Putin’s hand wasn’t in there somewhere.

We don’t really know, but, yes, it certainly feels like it was Putin, and was a devastating strike against the Wagoner group leadership. Knowing the situation in Russia, why were they all flying in the same plane is beyond me.

I was flying once from Kigali, Rwanda back to Bujumbura, Burundi after an African Great Lakes peace conference, in a small 6-seater aircraft, when I noticed that made me very nervous. I was in the front of the plane chatting the Burundian Ambo to the US when I really noticed the other passengers. Besides the Ambo, there was the Burundian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Defense, and the Vice President. I recalled the plane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian presidents that was shot down by who-we-still-aren’t-sure, which triggered the Rwandan genocide.

I was nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs until I was safely back in a USG armored vehicle. It would have a perfect kill shot against the Burundian gov’t, and here I was sitting with them. So I ask, WTH were the Wagoner folks thinking by getting on that plane together?

Taking down his plane also produced a bonus for Putin; it appears that the top brass of Prigozhin’s mercenary army were all on that plane with him.

It appears that Putin hit a grand slam home run in this instance.

It appears that Putin hit a grand slam home run in this instance.