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PUTIN SPEECH LIVE - Russian Failed Coup
Recorded: June 26, 2023 Duration: 3:05:34Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion primarily focused on the political dynamics and implications of recent events in Russia, particularly the attempted coup by Wagner Group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Various perspectives were shared on whether this incident would weaken or strengthen Vladimir Putin's hold on power. Some argued that Putin's ability to quell the rebellion without significant bloodshed could consolidate his power, while others believed it exposed vulnerabilities in his regime. The conversation also touched on potential Western involvement and the broader geopolitical ramifications of the situation.
Full Transcription
Hi Mickey, can you hear me?
Yeah, man, you're giving some feedback though on your microphone.
Okay, how about now?
We better out.
Much better, yep.
Right. So we just, I mean, I missed the speech, so did you, did you hear Putin's speech?
Yeah, I saw the translated version, you know, pretty interesting. I think he's, it's a pretty good, clear, simple message, pretty direct.
And he's been not really in public very much during, since the, since whatever we call him this Wagner rebellion.
And I think he's just coming out to control the narrative a bit and narrowly define what happens and basically give a off-ramp to Wagner troops and to start positioning Kregozhen as, you know, an instigator of something irresponsible.
So, I mean, if you want to just recap the whole speech, have you got it on you? Can you play it from the beginning if possible?
Let me see if I can grab it and play. Give me a second.
What I...
The Sky News played the translated version.
What I could probably do is read a transcript if that works.
So what I'm doing is I'm just setting it up.
Just give me a few seconds and we'll heed the speech together.
I know it's gone, but a lot of people missed it.
So let me do that for a second.
And then meantime, I'm also inviting the speakers.
So just two seconds while I get the speech up.
And there has been a firm support of the constitutional order.
and by all the leading parties, virtually the entirety of Russian society,
all of them have been united in the face of the responsibility to defend the homeland.
All the necessary decisions were taken as promptly as possible in the light of this danger,
the defense of the constitutional order and the lives and security of our citizens.
The organizers of this rebellion, this cannot but understand that they will be brought to justice.
Everybody understands that.
This is criminal activity, which is aimed at weakening the country,
and this was a colossal threat.
From outside, we are threatened.
However, the organizers of this rebellion have betrayed those people who were
dragged into this organization and this kind of stewingside is precisely what the neo-Nazis in
Kiev and the West wanted.
They wanted the Russian soldiers should kill each other, that servicemen and civilians be killed,
in the final analysis that Russia should fail.
But our and they wanted our society to be fragmented,
to be splintered,
and they tried to take revenge for their failure at the front,
but they flipped up.
They made a mistake, especially with regard to these special services which have maintained their oath to the country.
The courage, the self-sacrifice of these organs, these bodies have saved Russia.
At the same time, we know that the overwhelming majority of the Wagner Company are also patriots of Russia.
They have owned their courage in disbanding Donbass and yet were
encouraged to fight against their compatriots and by turning back, they avoided further bloodshed.
They avoided further bloodshed.
We have to think about the people who actually decided to do this, to make this step,
which would have had tragic and devastating consequences for the country, for Russia as a whole.
I should like to thank
those commanders and soldiers of the Wagner private company who took the right decision to stop and go back and prevent bloodshed.
And I urge everybody to make contact with the Ministry of Defense or go back to their homes.
This promise will be fulfilled.
I repeat, it is the choice of each of you,
that it will be a choice of the warriors of Russia
who have acknowledged their fault.
President Lukashenko should be thanked also for his role in all this in order to achieve a peaceful resolution.
It is the patriotic duty of everyone, the patriotic feeling of everyone which has saved us and has saved the country as a whole. Thank you.
Well, that will.
Right. So, Von, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the speech. It sounds like he came out hard against progosion. He basically seemed like he was unequivocal in his stance. But I'd like to hear your thoughts, Von.
Honestly, I missed the beginning. I just got here. So I don't have an opinion just yet.
No worries. Mickey, what's your thoughts?
Yeah, I think you're accurate in your assessment.
It's pretty unequivocal.
And it's a good speech from a sort of positioning perspective.
You know, he's basically one, you can sort of see he's trying to carve out
progoshin's power base.
He's basically saying, okay, we know these Wagner troops love Russia.
you know, you guys can join the military or go to Belarus.
But he's pretty unequivocal in his contamination.
He basically says that this was a coup and it was a direct threat to the existence of Russia.
And if you're If Guinea-Pergosian, you're getting pretty nervous at the moment because Putin basically in no uncertain terms as identified him being the...
the chief architect of this as being, you know, threatening Russia itself.
So I think Putin's kind of strategically trying to position this as,
trying to position progogian as the persona non grata while allowing an off ramp to de-escalate for Wagner forces
so that he can, you know, reestablish his power, which has,
been threatened, I think. I think a speech like this doesn't happen unless Putin felt that he had to make it.
And another thing to keep in mind is he's been pretty, he hasn't been public, very public for the last, you know, 24 hours or so.
He gave a speech basically during the...
sort of uprising itself and hasn't really been heard of since and I think he probably felt that it was you know they were starting to become speculation on what was happening was this you know was this a rebellion was this the coup was just this a negotiation he is trying to control the narrative here I think and has done a good job from a sort of a political point of view so doc um look to hear your initial thoughts please
So, so Progosian is in Belarus, right?
And supposedly is there with free reign?
Is he there under custody of some sort?
What is Putin going to do once he figures out which way the Wagner troops are going to jump?
That's what I see this speech as.
Like Mickey was saying, given an off ramp,
to those still loyal to progosin, to rejoin the fight in the union under what leader I'm not quite sure.
But I still have questions, and I think it's finger in the air time.
when we discussed the relationship between Putin and progrosian.
And, you know, was there some sort of agreement or a wink and a nod that this was sort of a false effort to smoke out some opposition to Putin in the general staff?
To me, there's just too many questions you really understand.
exactly what steps are going to be or predict any accuracy.
But I see this as an attempt to get the Wagner Battalion backing gear
under some sort of leadership before Putin takes action against progression.
Thank you.
Lev, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
You've been right all along very often on this matter.
What are your thoughts on Putin's speech?
And I don't know if you saw, but Lukashenko was also supposed to give a speech but has now postponed it.
I was wondering how you feel about that.
Can I come back in like two minutes?
I'm just helping the kids out with something.
I'll be right back and I'll respond.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
Sure, I'm going to shoot it over to Austin or Jackson, yeah.
Jackson, have you heard Putin's speech?
And if so, what's your thoughts?
And what's your thoughts about?
Yeah, let me answer that first.
And then I'll ask you the questions.
Yes, I did.
And, yeah.
Yeah.
So what's your thoughts then?
It sounded like he was unequivocal.
He's put it across as though he was victorious, essentially,
that he basically was able to end any sort of rebellion.
But I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Well, conspiracy theorists has entered the space, and I don't think that that was the planned speech that Putin was said to give. I mean, they troll, but they usually don't troll that hard. And Lukashenko was supposed to give a joint speech at the same time simultaneously.
Right.
Peskov was hyping it up more than I've ever heard anything hyped up in my life.
And, you know, there were some theories rolling around as to what was actually going to be said.
But I don't think anyone expected that.
So what were you expecting?
Like, as he said, conspiracy theories running while.
Like, what were you expecting?
What was the speech in your mind meant to be?
And it became this.
Like, again, this is just speculation.
It's unverified.
But just, I just want to hear that because it sounds interesting.
Well, I mean, I had no idea because the only theories I heard being tossed around were like way too crazy to even merit any sort of legitimate consideration.
But the theories I saw circling were that potentially you had some sort of a formal unification between Belarus and Russia or...
Rybar just posted about 35 minutes ago.
Rybar posted something they said that, let me see, let me pull it up here.
They said that Wagner personnel, units of the Wagner PMC along with standard weapons within military equipment, entered the territory of Belarus.
So that was 35 minutes ago right before the speech was supposed to take place.
And then the other thing, of course, that was being thrown around that seemed like a more legit...
sort of option was the idea that there was going to be reshuffling within the MOD.
Okay, so, I mean, is Lukashenko's speech going to be happening?
Because apparently it's meant to happen, as you said, simultaneously or immediately afterwards.
So is that now completely delayed or is it going to happen later on in the afternoon?
They said no speech, but tomorrow he's going to be answering questions from the press,
but the urgent manner is no longer necessary.
Okay.
Okay, that's interesting.
So, Lev, I mean, I'm sorry, not Lev.
So, I mean, where does this leave us?
Because he basically said something that essentially we all thought,
but hasn't really furthered the situation.
What's your thoughts?
Well, actually, this was very surprising to me
because he offered Wagner, correct me if I'm wrong,
I listened to it, but from what I understand,
he offered Wagner's soldiers,
the opportunity to go home, go to Belarus, or to sign contracts with the MOD.
And all the reporting I've seen up until this speech indicated that the soldiers who participated in the mutiny and the March for Justice, whatever you want to call it,
that those soldiers would be granted immunity, but they would not be given a contract.
So if that is the case that these soldiers are now being, you know, the ones that participated in the march,
if they're going to be granted the opportunity to sign contracts, that actually is a pretty big deal,
I think, and it makes me wonder, you know, if there's going to be some sort of an informal structure still remaining with them
and what they'll be utilized to do once they sign these contracts.
Let me go to Austin. Austin, I'd love to hear your thoughts about Putin's speech and the ramifications of it.
Yeah, I think it's clear that Putin is doing two things.
Number one, as Mickey noted, he's trying to carve out and divide the power base that Wagner has.
And on top of that, he's trying to set the narrative straight.
We've seen, you know, we've seen Putin and the rest of the Russian government essentially pull a complete 180.
over the last 24 hours from, you know, declaring the mutiny as treasonous, as being driven by
criminal actors to, you know, now moving to this,
sort of negotiated settlement where all those charges are getting dropped and Wagner fighters have an opportunity for immunity.
And when a government does that, they need to be able to justify it. They got to sell it back home.
So that's what I think the speech is looking to do because as of right now, you know, Wagner is still armed.
They still have quite a bit of power within the Russian internal security apparatus.
Right.
So I think Putin's objectives is justifying the actions of the government, for one,
and then for two, mitigating the ability for Wagner to organize something like this again.
Right. Okay. Walter, you've got your hand up. Go ahead. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks. Yeah, we have heard the speech of Russian dictator.
And to be honest, everyone expected more.
And he fizzled out a couple of things about Belarus, about Wagner and Prigodzian,
but not even actually naming the perpetrator.
And the baseline is quite obvious.
Putin is weakened and Russia has been weakened.
by the coup and the processes that we have seen unraveling during the weekend.
And apparently, it's not over.
Kim.
Hey, thanks, Solomon. Thanks, let me talk.
I was just going to say that we didn't see the bigger picture here.
Putin is not...
you know, one who shy is waste theatrics.
And I'll give you an example.
So, you know, I'm sure all of you speakers remember, it wasn't that long ago in Bakhmut
when Wagner said they had no ammo and they asked for Chechen reinforcements.
You know, they were saying Putin has abandoned them and they've got no ammo.
And of course, that was a complete deception.
Ukrainian needs were confident that they were able to defeat the Wagner and they sent
the best soldiers and they got demolished and it turned to be a trap.
Yeah.
Secondly, another thing we need to remember, the presidential elections in Russia in March
24, not that far away. Putin needs to show he's a strong man and he can still unify the country,
and he's done that.
And another thing we need to also acknowledge is the fact that as the whole world is watching Wagon move their forces, they've now got about 6,000 experienced trained soldiers who have moved to Belarus, who could in effect, I'm going to be surprised the next few weeks if they join the Belarusian forces.
So all of a sudden you've got experienced soldiers in Belarus, which is about 200 kilometers away from Kiev, and you've got more soldiers, Russian troops being redeployed towards Ukraine.
So...
As much as we'd like to say, oh, this is Putin losing his, losing control.
I think it's not at all.
He's well-known his theatrics.
He's done it before in the past.
And he did it in Chechnya.
Do not underestimate Putin here.
The elections are in March 2024.
He needs to come across as the man who can still unify the country and do the impossible.
And I think he's doing that.
Yes, hi, Salimani. Hi, Mickey. I want to say that starting off, I'm not a big Putin fan. Everybody knows that I'm against Putin. I'm pro-Ukraine, but I will agree with Kim. I think Putin is a chess player. I think this is a strategic move. I think he's trying to set up a trap for all the people that deserted and sending him to Belarus.
and we're trying to spread a weave out who are the real leaders alongside with Pregozion.
Progosion speech also, if you heard today, he was backtracking and trying to, you know, make peace with Putin in some way by saying that no way he was going to go after him.
And all he was, you know, was just trying to do a friendly march, you know, friendly march with all that military equipment and taking over.
rest off on the Don, I mean.
And so I think there's still a lot to come.
I think this is just, this is not the end.
This is just the beginning.
I think we're going to see a lot of different things transpire
within the next few weeks to come.
And I think Lukashenko canceled his speech
because Putin told him to,
because Lukashenko is strictly a Putin puppet.
He doesn't want to say too much or too little right now.
And I think we're going to see a lot happen in the next few weeks.
Lev, can I just ask you a follow-up? Walter, who was on the panel earlier, he basically noted that Putin did not name Pergogian specifically or Gurkin or any other people who are conspirators. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's because he thinks there's more than one, that there's actually someone else he thinks is responsible or do you think he's trying to control the narrative? Like, why do you think he didn't call him out in the speech?
I think it's a combination.
I think he thinks there's more people involved
because, like I said previously,
progoshan wouldn't have made those steps unless he spoke
and felt that he might have support from other people
in the Putin administration.
But the other reason is knowing the type of person that Putin is
and being a strongman,
he won't give progousin the satisfaction
of even putting him in the same level, basically, by just
discussing him and mentioning his name even.
Right, let me go to Vaughn. I love to hear your thoughts.
Yeah, so the speech I brushed up on it, strikes me as very similar to Erdogan's address after the 2016 coup attempt.
You gotta kind of don't let the opportunity see a slip, you know, use everything you can when the opportunity presents itself.
So he has a more united Russia.
Progozen and some of Wagner are exiled to Belarus.
That's interesting because if we're being pragmatic, it kind of coo-proofs Belarus.
Because there's all this talk about removing Lukashenko and color revolutions in Belarus, but this kind of throws a spanner in those gears.
If we're being conspireational, then, you know, it's Lukashenko's problem now.
If they oust him, they oust him, whatever.
But I have my doubts about that.
But can you a follow up to that.
What do you think now, what is Pergogian's gambit at this point?
I mean, a lot of people are saying his days are numbered,
and he probably has a sense of his own safety.
If you were him or what do you think he's going to be thinking
and what moves do you think he's going to be making now that he's in Belarus now
Oh, it's interesting because if he's a sane person, then he had to have done the, then he had, and this, and we're working on a premise that this isn't like quasi-staged, right?
If he's the same person, then he would not have done this if he didn't have the backing of a sufficient amount of higher-ranking Siloviki.
Because it is unfathomable that it's, it's, that this would, that he would have any hope in his mind that this would, that this would end any differently than it has if he didn't have that.
Because the military is not going to let some oligarch take command out of nowhere.
So either there's, either he has, he has co-conspirators amongst the Siloviki or,
He realizes that he doesn't, and he's taking the off-ramp that lets him stay alive.
Can you just tell us who the Silaviki are, Von?
Again, like yesterday, a level will probably have a better answer for this than I do,
but it's the... I think it literally translates to forcemen or the men in uniform.
It's the armed forces and the intelligence apparatus, or those would be the Czechist faction...
And they're basically the shadow government behind the government, but it's not really formal.
That's exactly right.
They charge themselves.
A lot of people, a lot of those names we won't even know.
It's the shadow government that basically supports Puts.
It's his inner circle.
And also, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason why he went to Belarus,
and what his progosan is thinking is that might be his transit out,
and we might see him in Africa sooner somewhere else,
because staying in Belarus is not a safe place to be.
It's the same as being staying in Russia.
I think...
I think it's just a matter of time that certain things start happening.
Agreed.
He might as well be in Putin's basement if he's going to be in Belarus.
Yeah, Walter, go ahead.
Yeah, well, I believe Strelkov slash Girkin was mentioned.
By the way, I would like to remind you who that individual is.
It's...
It's a leader of a faction within Russian FSB.
I would compare that faction and that individual, Strelkov-Girgin,
to, in U.S., it's called Special Activities Division within the CIA.
That's who Strelkov is.
He was perpetrating war crimes in former Yugoslavia in Kosovo.
He was active in Transnistria.
He was active in Crimea during Russian invasion and occupation of Crimea.
And he was the individual that Russian Special Forces specifically injected into Ukraine in spring of 2014 to start the war.
He led the forces, the Russian Invasion Force, the Russian Special Forces FSB Group,
into Slovakianzsk.
That's how the war started.
That's how Russian invasion started.
Having said that, I don't think that you properly addressed what the impact is regarding
his recent announcement.
Stilkov, specifically this morning announced, quote-unquote, that if Prigosian is not
executed, it's the end of Russia.
And today we have seen after this Putin's speech, a weird, essentially a situation.
It's not a 5D chess.
The old man essentially is visibly shaken and he was visibly shaken during his previous speech.
So things were essentially slipping out of control within Russia.
Putin is weakened. As I said, Russia is weakened already.
The position of a strongman is weakened, no doubt.
And we all have to remember that there are power struggles within people or around people who are backing Putin.
There are two main groups.
One is GRU or main intelligence directorate, and the other one is FSB.
They're always historically at each other's throat.
So most likely we have seen a process with this Rogosian coup and the other faction, the Russian loyalists,
essentially losing the balance, losing control over the balance,
which they always have tried to kind of manipulate and ride the tide on top of this balance.
So the implications for Russia are not good.
The implications for Putin are not good.
And there are most likely many dynamics under the curtain, which we are not aware of.
And they're heading not in a good direction for Russia, Putin or Russian invasion of Ukraine either.
Zik, let me go to you.
I mean, Walton is basically saying there's palace politics here, dangerous games that...
that if progocean is not, some people are in Russia are saying if progoshan is not killed,
then Russia itself is under threat.
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, you and I have sort of had some back and forth on this already, Mickey.
But, you know, I think the reality is we probably just saw the greatest opportunity that we may see for regime change in Russia.
Yeah.
And it felt completely flat within 24 hours.
I mean, I don't think we're gonna have another perfect storm
or set of circumstances where you have
an incredibly popular and influential figure like Progoshin
who has a fighting force of tens of thousands of men
with advanced equipment and effectively a clear path to Moscow.
So if ever there was gonna be regime change,
this was it, right? But what's actually seemingly happened is that Putin has used this to consolidate
power and sort of root out anybody who would have gone along with this mutiny. Any of those guys
are either getting sent back to the front lines or, you know, perhaps to Russia. And the other piece
that I find very interesting as of this morning is that we're seeing all these reports about
8,000 plus troops being moved or Wagner troops being moved to Belarus,
along with progosion, and I'm assuming that number could be bolstered over time.
So, you know, perhaps the consolation for progosion and the reason that they're going to allow him to sort of
you know, stay alive in Belarus is that he may be allowed to sort of build up a fighting force just north of Keith.
So I think that angle where these troops have effectively just turned left from their march to Moscow and gone to Belarus, if this is true, that presents a very interesting dynamic and, you know, could sort of point to some 40 or 5D chess being played.
Do you think Walter is correct in that?
So do you think that it is true that if Progogian survives and lives, that that's a threat to Russia itself?
No, not at all.
I think Russians generally understand that this was largely theatrics.
And I think, you know, you've seen the reaction from the Russian public not really taking this seriously.
There may be some sort of, you know, power dynamics, power struggles going on with Shoygu and...
You know, there could be some fallouts still to come, but I don't see this as necessarily, you know, weak-weakening Putin or the Kremlin's, you know, power hold on, you know, the military generally.
Yeah, Bon, go ahead.
Yeah, I would just like to state on a topic of Gyrkin, who is, as I forgot who the speaker was, but said, you know, for the equivalent of special activities division.
I would be very, very wary of taking anything he says publicly at face value,
just because it's an intelligence guy.
Come on, come on.
If he's saying publicly, it's because it's what someone above him wants you to hear.
Let's be real about that.
It's the same with pregoshin.
Although pregogion isn't intelligence, we've learned by now to not take what he says publicly at face value.
So let's not...
Yeah, so let's not build too much analysis on top of what he's saying publicly, knowing who he is.
I agree. I'll just address briefly those points.
The good...
So, sorry, I was like Walter Jackson. Do you say you got some breaking news?
Yeah, Putin is holding a meeting with the participation of the heads of law enforcement agencies right now.
So that's Krasnov, Shoygu, FSB director, National Guard Head, FSO director, and head of the investigative committee.
So I think that's noteworthy to mention here.
Yeah, that's huge.
So maybe it adds a bit more credence to your point that you thought the speech was going to be slightly different.
He maybe changed it and now he's having meetings based on that change.
I mean, it's possible speculation, but possible because it just makes sense based on the context.
Let me go to Joa.
Joe, go ahead.
Those are exactly the kind of people who would be Siloviki.
Yeah, I'll just address what Fawn said.
Sorry, Walter. Yeah, go ahead.
You're speaking. I apologize.
Yeah, he had a good point in regards that everything that Strylkov slash Girkin says should be taking with a grain of salt.
Yet, he is leading a faction within Russia, a faction of Russians, who are Russian imperialists and Russian loyalists.
and who are also very much dissatisfied with the current Russian government.
So that should not be, that should always be taken into consideration.
So things are not great, not stellar within the palace.
Things are in motion.
And we, again, regarding that what
What was said yesterday or day before yesterday, we have seen how Prigosian, essentially a leader of private military company in Rostov, in city of Rostov-on-Dun, when they seized the HQ of Russian military command, he said next to two generals spoke with those generals, essentially keeping them hostage, and he denigrated them.
He wiped literally his boots upon them, figuratively, speaking, and this is a situation where Russia currently is.
The top-tier military commanders are being slandered and denigrated by this rogue leader, and the rogue leader essentially is not being...
the issue of the rogue leader himself is not being addressed by the so-called strongman Putin.
That's why I'm saying that the positions are weak in every direction within Russia.
I'd have to agree with Walter in a sense that no matter how you look at it, what transpired, which it weakens Putin in a way because right now he doesn't know who his loyalists are.
And until he does the purge and figures it out, right now there's a lot of confusion going on inside the Kremlin.
And also I want to make it very clear that Progosion is not a popular person in Russia.
Yes, he has some support.
Yes, Wagner is more popular.
But Progogin himself as a human being is not somebody that is popular or loved by the Russian people.
He is not some hero.
Well, feigning weakness, pretending to be weak, is a great way to get those who might not be loyal, as you think, to reveal themselves.
Right.
So an XKGB guy can be expected to think along those sorts of subtle lines.
I don't think we can dispense.
The notion that Putin is somehow weakened by the fact that this tactical force,
the sophisticated tactical force, gave up and turned around tail in the middle of the night
when they had, as someone has posed here, a free path to Moscow.
I don't think they're as strong as some people would like to believe.
Okay.
Brian, I've got to police.
Please see what there.
Yeah, I have.
So just to add on to what Jackson was saying,
just two quick updates.
So the first one is this emergency meeting that Putin is having.
I have the list of participants now.
It's with the security forces.
And the people participating are the head of the presidential administration,
the prosecutor general, the interior minister,
the director of the federal security services,
head of National Guard, head of the SFO,
FSO, head of the investigative committee and the defence minister Shogu, so he's there as well.
And so it's all hands on deck.
And the second one I've got is Vladimir Rogov has said that in his opinion, today's address of the president will have a continuation because there are definitely undertones.
in tones of understatement.
That's what he's saying.
The version we saw definitely has tones of understatement.
And this is coming from Vladimir Rogov,
who's a member of the main council of civil military administration.
So, yeah, that's my update for now.
I'm curious, Vaughn, what do you make of the statements that Putin gave when he said that the Wagner soldiers, even those who participated in the march, they can retire and go home, they can resign contracts with the MOD.
or they can go to Belarus.
I saw Rybar post something about Wagner PMC units
with standard weaponry being transferred to Belarus
35, 40 minutes ago before this speech took place.
So do you think that when Putin's referencing that Wagner troops could go to Belarus,
he's saying this in the sense that they could go there
to potentially continue to operate under some sort of a contract?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
I think the Belarus option, because this doesn't make sense to have it as a third option, right?
If it sign a contract or go home or go to Belarus, that would, to me, imply under the capacity of a non-signed plausible deniability style PMC.
I think the third option of going to Belarus is a honey trap that is basically setting up to see whoever goes to Belarus signing themselves basically a death warrant.
Also that could be no I think there's a part that no one's talking about
You're not going to station a season fighting force you know just north of Kiev just to have them there as a you know honeypot
But it's also I think I think people are paying too much emphasis on the proximity to Kiev
Because as I mentioned before, having Merks there as a sort of Neo-Vrangian guard
To keep, basically to keep the vassal in power in Minsk makes a lot of sense strategically.
Yeah, Lukashenko's been talking about a potential color revolution for the last like four to five months.
So I think that's a good angle there, Vaughn.
They don't need a false flag.
They don't need 5D chess.
They don't need any of that to put people in Belarus.
It makes no sense.
Yeah, but if they had moved for the pro-Russian.
That's fair, but you can't hyper.
Just like the pro-Russian talking point that if it wasn't for NATO pushing it in.
Can I finish?
Can I finish?
Because just like the pro-Russian talking point that if NATO wasn't pushing in, he wouldn't attack.
He attacked in 2014.
NATO wasn't pushing in, right?
So to say that he only attacked because NATO kept pushing, that's not true.
He went in because he went in because that's what he wanted.
And in 2014, a con-
The economist, the economist already wrote he was going there.
He was going to Dombas because he needed Dumbos to complete what he was trying to do in Crimea.
It has nothing to do with NATO.
It's an excuse.
Just like this trying to say that it's like some false flag or Pliander 5D chess.
I think of it this way.
You're 100% right.
He doesn't need no excuse.
None.
Zero.
He would have just put troops in Belarus.
But, but, but, for sure.
Zero.
If you said progos in to the Belarus.
That's right.
Let one second.
Let von go first and then now let it go to the same.
But I wasn't done.
I didn't get to speak.
And I got interrupted the whole time.
I'm but there's a point.
Sorry.
Sorry,
yeah, finish your point.
There's a point.
There's a point that no one's bringing up.
If you look at just, just, just,
Human nature, right?
You look at the alpha, the alpha gorilla, let's say.
When the leader in strongman leaderships, when the leader shows weakness, people attack.
Everyone's acting like progrosion is the one that's going to pay, and he might.
But right now, I think Putin's the target, not progrosion.
Right now that strong man looks super weak.
There's people who are going to make a move right now.
That's what I foresee.
The Kremlin press pool just came out and said,
the second part of the appeal will soon be at a meeting with the security forces.
Don't go far from your blue screen.
So we might be getting some more info soon.
Yeah, I just read Jackson from Walmart today.
He said that there's going to be a second speech coming.
Yeah, having just read the transcript of the first speech,
to me, what stuck out as the most significant part was actually the very last paragraph,
where Putin says it was the patriotic spirit of the citizens...
Plus, the consolidation of the entire Russian society that played a decisive role in these days.
And I wonder to what extent he's saying that that applies to his own national security council or the upper echelons of the Russian federal government.
Did they actually maintain a cohesive stance of supporting Putin?
He's trying to convey that that was the case.
And if it is...
then that would speak to a possible consolidation of further power on his part by excising the sort of vestiges of the oppositional forces within his sort of governing framework there.
Mike, what do you make of the optics here? I mean, you know, before the speech, Putin's press secretary came out and said this is an existential speech for Russia.
Then we heard the speech. It really wasn't quite what we expected. Then Putin meets with his space to his security council. Now he's giving another speech.
What did you expect? I expected a clear plan myself. And I expected like when I heard existential for Russia, we basically heard a very similar speech to the first one.
and I was always expecting him to be much more clear on what was going to happen,
Progosion and kind of like to assure everybody that, you know, things are me okay.
He sort of came out guns blazing a little bit, but it didn't really give any new information.
And then he said, you know, there's going to be another speeches.
Hang on.
I'm going to go meet with my security team and come back.
So guys, he's doing part of his speech in an open format.
And it's being, I'm trying to see if it's televised because I can see the video of it right now.
So I can see them all in the boardroom with all the people that I mentioned.
Okay, so just check that for us.
In the meantime, while Kalee is getting that speech together,
if it is an actual speech.
So this is just a report from Tass, again,
the Telegram channel, which is pro-Russian.
It says the Ahmad unit sent to Rostov
were 500 to 700 meters from the Wagner PMC fighters,
but did not start active operations without an order.
According to the deputy commander of the Second Army Corps,
the leadership of the Russian Defence Ministry
asked the fighters not to engage in clashes.
So that means they were in Rostov
The two forces were very close together and despite that they did not engage in any combat.
Von would love to jump in, bro.
Yeah, I want to finish what I was saying for is that it's a good point.
He doesn't need to stage a coup to move troop movements.
But again, there's a few problems with that.
One, we're looking at through a binary of either staged or not and nothing in between,
which is reductive and not very useful.
And the second is we can't hyper focus on a single point and be like,
that proves everything because that's also reductive.
Something like this to conceal a troop movement, it would have to be a huge troop movement that nobody's anticipating.
But I'm ruling that out for now.
Just moving your troops around.
No one's concealing anything.
Man, can I go with this speech?
Dude, it's a hypothetical.
Yeah, go ahead.
With regard to the special services which have
May I see show who's speaking right now,
people have a translator.
The courage is so sacrifice of these organs,
these bodies have saved Russia.
Yeah.
At the same time, we know that the overwhelming majority of the Wagner company are also patriots of Russia.
They have shown their courage in defending from bus and yet were...
encouraged to fight against their compatriots.
And by turning back, they avoided further bloodshed.
We have to think about the people who actually decided to do this to make this step,
which would have had tragic and devastating consequences for the country, for Russia as a whole.
I should like to thank you.
those commanders and soldiers of the Wagner private company who took the right decision to stop and go back and prevent bloodshed.
And I urge everybody to make contact with the Ministry of Defense or go back to their homes.
This promise will be fulfilled.
I repeat, it is the choice of each of you.
That it will be a choice of the same speech.
I think this is the same speech.
Yeah, I believe that's the same speech that is.
So I guess that you've heard it again for the second time on the space.
But yeah, we will be watching out for the speech.
So it means it will be coming on later if he does come and give a speech and we will be playing it.
So let me just on mute.
So Lev, I mean...
What's your thoughts?
Sorry, Michael, you were speaking, sorry.
So, Michael, before you, I interrupted you because of this.
Yeah, I'm just to say I'm not sure I fully understand
Mickey's point of wondering why the speech was not as momentous
as maybe some had expected because he didn't give a fully detailed plan as to how to
proceed i don't know i read the text of the speech just the first one i see there's one going on
right now as we speak with uh shoygu and now some other military officials speaking but in terms
of the first one from putin earlier today he was announcing essentially that the rebellion have been
successfully quelled i mean that seemed to would seem to warrant a speech just on its own if that were
the true state of affairs and he was announcing it to public so
I mean, now you can build up certain expectations and then decide that they weren't met,
and that somehow bears on the speech in some way.
But it's more a meta argument than an argument about what was actually stated in the speech,
which seems to warrant some kind of public proclamation.
Well, at Pascal basically came out and said it was like a speech on the sort of existential future of Russia.
And then he didn't really give a speech that,
That seemed to be in that same category.
I wonder what you made of that.
If there was, you thought that there was, you know, that he tempered things down or like,
why have this speech and then go for a break?
Jackson, you made some points.
Why don't you go ahead and what do you think about that?
Can I also just have one thing?
He announced that the national security establishment
had been consolidated around him.
So he said all the powers of government, legislative, executive, et cetera,
had consolidated in support of him, Putin.
And that would also be something that would bear on the existential fate
of the Russia's Federation were a true, you know,
rendition of the events as they transpired that he's then relaying to the public.
So I don't know.
I think whatever PESCO said, I mean, who cares is kind of a functionary.
But if you look at the text of the speech, I mean, I don't see why it would warrant a public proclamation of some kind.
What I'm curious about is in the speech that we, in the part of the speech we just heard,
Putin said that he wanted to thank the Wagner commanders and leaders of
who made the turnaround and decided to go back home from Moscow, essentially.
But he also said, you know, the individuals who made the decision to launch this rebellion
are going to be held accountable.
So who's he talking about there?
Because from what I understand, it's the same exact people who launched this that also
decided to make the turnaround.
It was Progosion who announced the turnaround.
So who is he talking about here?
And that's a good question.
I guess we may find out in the next speech or later.
Sorry, Michael, you're going to jump in.
Well, yeah, I mean, I think that gets to a contradiction, Jackson, actually, that I've been sort of mulling this entire time, that there's lots of, like, discongruities and how this has been presented.
I mean, it started off with Putin yesterday, or was it, sorry, on Sunday or Saturday?
I forget.
Over the weekend, he was very...
grandiose speech about how the ongoing, you know, March to Moscow was this existential threat to the Russian state had to be crushed at all costs. The entire, you know, fate of Russian civilization was in peril and so forth. And that's followed up by just this extension of an olive branch, which would seem to undercut the grave significance that he had ascribed to the events, you know, just a few hours before. So,
I don't really think we, I think where there's still, we get to be seen what is actually really happening here.
And maybe there's a speech ongoing right now.
We can get a reliable translation fairly quickly.
So, I mean, Zic, let me go to you.
I mean, just reflecting, reflecting what happened previously, and I guess there's two questions.
One is reflecting on what happened previously, you have a scenario where, if you look at it, there was an attempted coup.
And what happened?
Hardly any lives were lost.
Yes.
It didn't impact the actual war against Ukraine significantly, which a civil unrest would do, or even a civil war or a rebellion would do.
He's sent progosion to Belarus.
The Wagner group and who are going to be incorporated into the Russian armies, the ones who want to.
Like, this seems like he just...
handle this in the best way possible.
However, whatever happened, whatever moves he made in the back,
it looks like this was the best case scenario after the coup started.
And so I'm on.
Also, you got to remember, as he was on this advance,
or as his progression was on this advance to Moscow,
they were actively trying to recruit additional...
people to join the march. They report to the phone calls coming in from the St. Petersburg number to try to kind of rouse locals into joining the march. And if there have been sufficient will to do that, then you could have seen the march potentially being successful in achieving and ultimately, you know, staggering kind of overthrow of the government. But
The political will to do that wasn't summoned, even though the opportunity was there.
So that could potentially speak to, again, Putin's consolidation of power.
And now we have a full demonstration that even on the cusp of being able to potentially take that kind of final action to overthrow the government,
The most credible opposition figure that might have been able to do that still was not able to rouse the political support for it.
So that could, again, be an enhancement to Putin's political stature rather than a diminishment of it, as I think a lot of people have speculated.
Zique, what are your thoughts on that, on what Michael just said?
I mean, I just, Zeke, I'm going to pass it just one second.
Guys, the Putin's first speech I have...
If Mario has posted on his page, I've attached it onto the nest if anybody wants to see it, but that's the entirety of the first speech.
So check it out in the nest, which is the entirety of the first speech. Sorry, Zik, go ahead.
No, I mean, I largely agree with a lot of what Michael was just saying and sort of some of the points that you made just
prior um you know i think a lot of the existential language that putin used as michael said was
over the weekend on sunday sort of in the midst of all of this but i think he's now intentionally
and sort of very actively turning the page moving forward sort of signaling that you know we're back
to business um but that at
along with that, you know, I think there are probably some advantages that have come along with
this instability in terms of being able to consolidate power, being able to sort of root out, you know,
who some of these, you know, actors are that would have potentially flipped and gone along
with a, you know, coup attempt if we're still calling that. I mean, I think it's, I think it's
It's much more a contractual dispute where, you know, even today, Progogian came out and said,
hey, you know, only one or two percent of Wagner actually wanted to sign these MOD contracts.
You know, we thought there was a lot of sort of unjust actions taken towards Wagner in the first
18 months of this operation.
We're basically going on a protest march.
So I don't think at the end of the day there ever was a coup attempt.
I think it was largely contractual.
And I think, you know, there have been...
more advantages for Putin and the Kremlin that have come out of this than, you know, instability at the end of the day.
What are your thoughts on that?
Oh, sorry, go ahead, Salim.
No, sorry, Mickey, go to where you want.
But I mean, the only thing it is, like, Putin actually called it a coup.
So even though we may disagree with him, but he did call it in the speech.
Sorry, Mickey, who were going to pass the-
I was going to say, I was going to say, well,
Ezek and Michael are basically arguing that this is just, you know,
another win for Putin.
They're saying that he's consolidated his power in this case.
But to me, it seems like he's someone who would have consolidated his power over the last, you know, more than a decade, two decades.
Like, how could he consolidate his power even more?
Do you think this is a win for Putin?
I don't think it's a win for Putin, by the way.
I just want to clarify, for my own sake.
I don't think if this is they quote, win for Putin.
I think the first comment that I had on, the first thought that entered into my head about it was that it clearly demonstrates some of the frailties or vulnerabilities of the Russian state that...
kind of puncture this image of Putin having any kind of, you know,
unshakable authoritarian control.
When if you have such little state capacity that this, you know,
insurrectionary or rebellion force can,
travel through the main military headquarters of the country and then up to the capital unimpeded,
then that says something about the frailties of the state system that you're presiding over.
That being said, now that it happened and that it resulted in the way that it did,
seems to me an outcome that resulted in Putin consolidating more power than other potential outcomes,
such as outbreak of civil war or something that resulted in like maybe in advance on the capital,
the...
thoroughgoingly by prognosis,
all that probably would undermine Putin more than a quelling of his main opposition
and then a consolidation among the national security apparatus,
which if parts of it had peeled off,
And a lot against Putin could have constituted a real threat to his power.
But that's now been stifled by him, at least as he puts it.
Mickey, just real quick, to your point, Putin had consolidated a lot of his power over the last decade or two, right?
But, you know, in the middle of a complex conflict like this, you have some, you know, fracturing.
And especially with a unit like Wagner that's sort of, you know, operating somewhat independently in rogue.
And they've got, you know, 25 to 50,000 men.
Yeah.
following progosion and not really, you know, listening to the MOD, this is more of the power
consolidation that I'm talking about within the defense forces.
I mean, I agree with you Zika a little bit in that space, but let's understand the fact is that what transpired over the past few days is not good for Putin and not good for Russia.
No matter how you look at, no matter if you think Progosaun succeeded in a way, Progosion is backtracking, if this was a coup, if this was a coup, if this was a, no matter how you look at it, it was not a good look and it was not good and what was going on in Russia for Putin.
Now, what Putin does and how he gets out of this jam is yet to be seen.
But one of the ways is the consolidating of power.
I agree it's not a consolidating of power in the fact that whereas he's trying to figure out who the traders are
and trying to get rid of them and to save his own.
Because what he realized with what transpired is that Progogian did have support.
He didn't have support from the people, but he did have support from certain people or at least promise support in certain ways where it makes Putin very nervous.
So no matter how you look at it, it wasn't a good thing for Putin.
He would never have wanted it to happen.
It did shake him up, and it's yet to see how he now comes out of it.
And these rapid fire meetings right now and speeches shows nervousness.
It's 11 o'clock in Moscow.
The Russian bloggers are attacking Putin right now, the pro-Russian bloggers.
They're attacking Putin for statements.
But they're also messaging the West, though, Jolla.
They're also messaging us.
The speech is time to address Europe and the United States, too, in some part, don't you think?
I don't think so because of what's being said.
It seems very directed domestically.
Right now, he looks weak.
He needs to show that he's strong.
He needs to show that he's still a strong man and still in control.
I don't think it's for us at all, to be honest.
Well, the war bloggers have been hacking him forever, so that would be nothing new.
No, the pro-Russian bloggers, they don't normally...
Well, no, I mean, the pro-Russian bloggers who've always wanted a more heavy-handed response to Ukraine have been attacking Putin for agents.
So that wouldn't be nothing new if they're attacking him again.
Not just the bloggers. I mean, RT's been attacking him.
I'm going to throw it to Kim. So what are your thoughts, Kim? I mean, Joe is basically saying, look, Putin could have given this speech like six hours ago. Why is he giving it at midnight and then sort of stop start? Does that look bad? He's being attacked by his own, by people within Russia and has been for a while. Lebb is saying that this makes Putin look weak. What are your thoughts, Kim?
Thanks, Mickey. I was going to say quite the contrary, actually. Him holding a speech at 11 of the night shows how serious he is about making sure he puts Russia first. An example I can give of that is a UK comparison. I mean, David Cameron held a cobra meeting, which is based on an emergency meeting on a Saturday. Unheard of. Our MPs don't like working weekends. They're hardly working at all.
So anyway, so it's like I was saying, another point I wanted to mention was the fact that everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that Wagoner was able to move around 6,000 experienced soldiers safely back into Russia.
with the applause of NATO. And Ukraine could have airstriked.
You know, any armchair general here would know an army is most vulnerable when it's moving.
But as NATO clapped and the mainstream media cheered on wagging to start a civil war,
they move these soldiers safely into Russia. And it doesn't matter where they were redeployed,
the fact they were moved successfully and safely. And like Lev did mention, I do agree with Lev on this point where
Any individuals who may have promised support behind the scenes or been suspected of receiving payments from EU or of CIA individuals, let's say, they are now going to weed it out over the next few weeks.
I would not be surprised if there's public arrests of officials across Russia.
who may have allegedly conspired with NATO to undermine Putin.
And all this is going to do is further cement to cement Russian people's support of Putin.
Because like I said again, look, the elections are not far away.
March 2024.
And Putin wants to be reelected.
He wants to make sure he completes his ambitions in Ukraine.
Do you think, Kim, just to follow up on Ukraine,
you think that there's a chance Putin won't get reelected?
He's feeling like he wouldn't get reelected?
I don't know I think he's confident he's going to be reelected but in any way he'd want to make sure that he has individuals who don't cause he doesn't want anything anything like Euro maiden so it wasn't that long ago where you know there were these like pro democracy people in Russia before the Ukraine were protesting right and and the opposition guy who was put in prison
for, you know, sedition.
I think he is confident, but he wants to make sure he's absolute control.
So I think the war is heading to somewhere, to a much more grave place.
And Russia wants to make sure that...
Is there an expectation that Russian elections are any more fair than American elections?
Well, I think the Americans even said, you know, the Russian elections are fair a long time ago when they did their polling.
I can't remember the name of the foundation, but, you know, individual politicians...
Was it to Rockefeller Foundation by any chance, or...?
I can't recall it as a Rockefeller Foundation, but I think it's political points growing across America and Europe saying calling Russian elections unfair.
You know, that's not unusual. That's not out of the norm.
But, you know, other NGOs have said the Russian elections are fair.
So I can't comment further on that.
I'm going to go to order to Vaughan.
I mean, what are your thoughts on that?
Kim is saying that Putin is trying to win re-election.
He's concerned about democracy protesters
in a sense that the war isn't going in the right direction.
What do you think about that, Vaughn?
Like, on one hand, I get the skepticism for that
because really who's going to lose against?
The communists, really?
Democrats.
I mean, without Zirinovsky, I don't know if there's any point in paying attention to them.
That's a joke. I miss Yerinovsky. He was funny.
But, I mean, no, I'm viewing out with skepticism.
Russia isn't like the United States.
It's not like, there isn't like a two-year-long election cycle.
He doesn't have, really have competition.
But on the other hand, it does look good to the voter base who, but again, who are they going to vote for?
I wanted to speak to the power consolidation argument because we have a few.
Bonn, just quick question and then I'm going to pass a tool because I've got an audience question.
I think you can answer it.
And anyone who's got any questions, put it in the comment section.
What someone wrote is you can make the argument that Putin looked weak.
initially when progousin attacked or rebelled or attempted the coup.
But the way he's handled it, he almost did it perfectly.
No lives lost.
Progosion to Belarus.
no and just a basic and now coming out on this speech and basically given a strong strong unequivocal argument that he would have neutralized if it like he didn't but if he wanted to he would have neutralized him so von what's your thoughts and then continue with what you said uh i agree except with that last part i mean it's technically true if he wanted to yeah he could have neutralized them but you know he didn't start a shooting more and i think it's really suspicious that you know the the the hadiravites were within what 700 meters
and there's an old expression from Murphy's Laws of War.
If you can see the enemy, they can also see you, and none of them fired each other.
Why?
But aside from that, it's true.
He looked weak at first because there's a rebellion going on, but minimal bloodshed, because
people did die, pilots did die.
Let's not pretend they don't exist.
Let's honor their deaths.
They're not animals. They deserve that.
I said minimal because any, every life matters for sure.
Absolutely.
A rebellion or cool.
So look at this Arab Springs.
So a dozen dead, that's what I'm saying.
A dozen dead versus a civil war, which anyway remember what happened last time Russia had a civil war?
What was it? 10 million dead?
Yeah, this is good.
This is a good way of handling it.
Hey, Vaugham, what is your analysis of why they didn't fire on each other?
You said that they had each other in sight but didn't fire.
What is your assessment of why not?
To avert a Civil War, I guess it's just to like watch yourself, we see you kind of thing.
And I don't think either wanted to shoot first.
I just want to give a really quick update, guys.
So earlier on, Peskov was quoted as saying, let me read it to you.
One second, that Putin's appeal allegedly will change the fate of Russia.
And this was published, sorry, can you just mute you?
Oh, on, I think one of you put in mind, open.
It's sort of, thank you.
Thank you.
It's Vaughn's mic is open.
John, could you just meet your mic, please?
Thank you.
We'll change the fate of Russia, and this was published by all media.
And now, Peskov is saying, I didn't say this.
It's not a quote from me.
And remember, here's the president's press secretary,
and he said this was, of course, fake.
And it's part of the course that bloggers, journalists,
would attribute such a quote to me, but it was not me who said it.
So let's see.
Sorry, Von, you were saying, continue.
Von.
Oh, yeah, sorry.
I'm at work, so I'm back and forth a bit.
Right, so what was I saying?
All right, I was answering about, I think I was answering Michael about them not shooting each other.
Yeah, I don't think either faction wanted to start a civil war.
So that should shed some light on motivations, I think.
wasn't a, the intention couldn't have been a coup attempt because you're necessarily going to have to start firing on people.
Is Pergogne really delusional enough that he wouldn't be aware that Putin could perceive an advancing army on the outskirts of Moscow as an attempted treason or a stab in the back, which is what Putin initially called it?
Uh, yeah, but I think part of that is, could be theatrics.
Like, they're both brink, they're both doing brinksmanship.
First, pregozion is like, this is about the MOD, and Putin's like, no, this is treason, my friend.
And in pregons, like, there will be a new president, and we will die before backing down.
And then he gets to Moscow and backs down.
Sorry, sorry, I missed a step.
And then he's like, you know, we're not going to back down.
We'll rather die.
There's going to be new president.
And then Putin says those who put down their arms get amnesty.
And he took the amnesty.
Do we know, was it confirmed that the Russian national troops
that were rumored to switch sides when production of Norgle,
whatever the name of that city is?
Did that actually happen?
And where does that stand, if anybody knows?
Right.
I do not know if it's been confirmed.
I've been seeing a lot of reports, but a lot of the Shusko, and, like, I value his, I value his rumors as much as I value Hoyt paper after I've used it, to be honest.
Right. Let me go to Zik.
Yeah, so I want to address some of the points that the Kim and Bonn were harping on.
Back to one of the points that Kim made, I think the, you know, the fact that Wagner's protest march was largely unimpeded certainly isn't a great sign for Russian security generally.
I get that.
And, you know, if these reports about...
uh... mody forces or national guard forces sort of laying their their arms down
and switching over to wagner and with vaughn i haven't seen sort of any validation of
that beyond you know guys wanting to avoid civil war so they didn't shoot each other
i don't think they necessarily you know we're on board with this march to moscow
necessarily but
One of the things that Vaughn mentioned is that, and Mickey brought it up earlier,
is there was this huge force of Karirites that were advancing up into, like, you know,
a few hundred meters from this, you know, Wagner labor dispute march,
which effectively ended their march.
So I think it points to the fact the Kremlin probably did have plenty of advanced notice here
and would have been able to probably quell this march, you know, regardless if it did come down to
bloodshed, whether it was, you know, using these Chechen forces or the Air Force or
whatever it may have been. And I think Progosian knew that. I think, you know, he probably knew that his bluff was going to be called.
And, you know, who is sort of yet to be seen if he was able to get what he wanted out of this, which is, you know, probably staying alive and, you know, being able to potentially prosper in some way.
And I think Mickey also mentioned earlier that there were direct orders to these Chechen forces to avoid firing.
I think nobody wanted to start a civil war here.
Zeeke, how many pure, quote, labor disputes have you heard of that entailed seizing a major military outpost or even the head of army operations, as far as I understand it, for Rostov-on-Dom, followed by an unimpeded advance to encirclement, or potential encircling by an armed convoy.
of the national city i mean it just seems odd to me to call that as a mere labor dispute like why
trivialized this well i mean we we can call it just go based on what putin said we did when
putin's initial remarks on saturday did he give you the impression that he was dismissing it as a mere
labor dispute no i think he had to use some sort of heavy forceful uh language at that point you know there was
sort of this protest, you know, labor dispute march to Moscow that could have escalated. But,
you know, we can use whatever language you want. We can call it a contract dispute. We can call it a labor's
dispute. But if you listen to Progosion today, he called it an armed mutiny. He called it an
arm mutiny. If you listen to Progosion to that, Progosion effectively said that this was over a contract.
You know, he said a lot of these...
Yeah, but you can't believe what...
You can't believe what Progosion says, Zee.
Well, come on.
But the...
But the July 1st...
...with this July 1st deadline that they gave these Wagner forces to sign MOD contracts,
the timing aligns perfectly with the fact that this was largely a contract dispute.
They did not want to sign over to the MOD.
They had a good deal with Wagner.
Yes.
Sorry, Colleen.
Yeah, can I just ask you a question?
Because he said that after the event, didn't he?
So the timing may seem right, but he didn't declare that at the outset, did he?
He didn't say at the outset, we are doing this because it's a contractual dispute,
and it's a march for freedom or whatever, march of respect or whatever the title was,
and it's all peaceful.
He didn't actually give that narrative at the outset.
Right.
And also at the end,
and also at the outset,
and also at the outset,
Putin declared that it was a national betrayal
and a stab in the back
to heighten the significance of it
in the public mind to show why it had to be
squashed.
And so,
minimizing
that the
and also,
and also,
and also,
even Progoshan
never framed it
as a mere labor
dispute.
If you watched
his first video
that he put out
on Friday,
he was calling
the entire war effort
essentially a fraud.
So it wasn't like
he was just quibling
about the terms
of some contract.
He was,
leveling a much wider critique about how he was saying the war itself was you know basically sold on false but if you understand
and he's still not calling it a labor dispute this is how they work you you make these sort of statements to gain leverage you know when he when he attacks the entire premise of the war what he's doing is trying to rally support it is a last ditch effort
among, you know, to try to get MOD forces or National Guard forces or military police forces to come over and join them.
You know, he's saying, listen, we're in the war for these wrong reasons, blah, blah, blah.
But then in the next breath, in like at the next hour, he comes back and says,
But, you know, we're going to go back and continue to prosecute this war on the front lines. We're going to return to the front lines after this is over. So, you know, it's a bunch of theater. And that theater was largely to gain leverage in this contractual dispute, this labor dispute.
Can I just give a quick update, guys, please?
So we're finding out something that Putin has said at the meeting with his security forces.
And I quote, he says,
I have gathered you in order to thank you for the work done during these few days
and in order to discuss the situation that has developed at this point in time,
as well as talk about the tasks that we face as a result of the analysis of those events
that have taken place in the country.
Yeah, that is the only English translation available so far on the Kremlin.ru website.
Look, I just want to say you could call this a lot of things, but you definitely cannot call this a labor dispute.
I mean, labor dispute is done through conversation, discussion.
Yeah, through mediation, not through armed confrontation.
Right, this was...
a band of troops going into Russia,
and if Progoghom would have started receiving the support that he thought he had,
or if the people would have started supporting him on the way there,
this would have gotten out of hand in a lot worse.
Was it the only reason we...
In the United States, where National Guardsmen killed 30 people?
But how does it apply, sir, to Russia?
I'm, I don't see the way.
They're asking me the significance of this, you know, armed mutiny, this coup where, you know, like, what, five people died?
We had, we had a scenario in the United States.
Yeah, but the union dispute was people over a labor dispute.
The difference, Zieg, the difference was the people were attacking.
They weren't attacking with arms.
They were protesting and attacking, and the arms guards were re, it was.
saving the situation.
It wasn't that you had armed citizens attacking the armed guards.
See, when Putin called it in our mutiny, was he not telling the truth?
When Putin called it in our immunity, was he just reading or telling him faulthood?
He's warning people that, you know, if you go along with this, you know, labor dispute march, that's, you know, there's going to be serious consequences.
He had to use very heavy language at that point in time, which is why I think he's sort of, now that the situation is, you know, dissipated.
He's sort of business as usual, sort of ready to move on using a lot, you know, less existential language.
There have been very violent, deadly labor disputes in the U.S., but, you know,
West Virginia coal miners strike, for example, but they don't call for the head of the Pentagon
or the war department at that time to be removed from office or something.
This is, this is completely different.
Yeah, I mean, Jackson, have you ever heard of a labor dispute in the United States that resulted in the, uh,
Have you ever, Jackson, have you ever heard of a labor dispute in the United States that resulted in the seizure of control over the Pentagon?
Because I must have missed that.
I agree with you, Michael.
I'm not telling a labor dispute.
I know.
I was agreeing with you as well.
So when you say,
has had all sorts of turnover
within their Ministry of Defense,
I mean,
is that a big deal?
I mean,
Russia's been pretty steady
for their personnel.
Zik, just a question, right?
So your argument was that he had to use
more heavy language early on
and now it's different.
But if you look at even this speech
that he's gave,
Putin consistently calls it a coup.
So he said we would have destroyed the armed coup in any case.
The organisers of the coup betrayed the homeland and the people.
We took all measures to neutralize the danger.
So, I mean, what he's talking about, again, look, Wagner operatives signed a contract and the mini of three of defense or, sorry, so, actually, let me just read it from Mario's apostle.
We took all measures to neutralize the danger.
We would have destroyed the armed coup in any case.
The organizers of the coup betrayed the homeland and the people.
Wagner fighters were also patriots and liberated land that belonged to the homeland and one of them tried to use them in a dark operation.
Right.
Wagner operatives can sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense or go to Belarus.
There were extortions and attempts to arrange internal unrest, but they were doomed for failure.
Putin thanked those Wagner soldiers
who stopped at the last line
and did not resort to bloodshed.
Putin assured that the promise he made
of Wagner mercenaries will be fulfilled
and Putin thanked Lukashenko
for his contribution to settling the rebellion
he called it rebellion now.
The speech is as expected
that's just his explanation.
So, I mean, that language that he's using Zeke
even now, even a few hours ago, isn't
one that basically gives the indication of a labor dispute.
No, within that language, there was a lot of labor dispute language within there.
They're talking about, you know, now they're going to be able to sign contracts.
I mean, the whole excerpt that you just read sounded a lot like a contractual dispute.
I mean, I'm dumbfounded. I mean, I think we should move away from the labor dispute situation. And I think we should concentrate on the speech that you said. And if you dissect the speech and take a look at the words what he's saying there, I think you could read into exactly what Putin is saying by first of all saying he's not blaming the Wagner β
soldiers. He's blaming the one individual, which we know who that person is, that basically
misled them into this situation. And he's also thanking Lukashenko. And I think he's thanking
Lukashenko for helping basically put them on the side so he could deal with the traders later.
So I think this is just a, you know, look, redefined print in between what he's saying.
Yeah, he's thanking Lucaschenko for mediating a contract dispute.
Does anyone here think that this was the speech that would change the future of Russia, as they initially stated?
Yeah, I mean, I think Jackson made a valid and strong point that he believed that the speech was going to be a lot different than what was expected.
And obviously something happened and the speech changed.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
And then in terms of him having a meeting.
That was based on the claims that were shared allegedly from Peskov claiming that this was going to decide the fate of Russia.
Yeah.
And this was initially shared by Slavian Grad Telegram, which is a pro-Russian telegram.
They claimed to have gotten this from Russia Channel 24 in the Vosti.
And now, Peskov is coming out and saying that, you know, that was all fake.
So that was my, you know, and I think many people's understanding of why we anticipated more from this speech than we got.
Did people actually listen to the speech or read a transcript of it?
Because listen to this quote.
The highest consolidation of society, executive and legislative power at all levels, was shown.
A firm, unambiguous position in support of the constitutional order was taken by public organizations, religious nominations,
leading political parties, in fact, the entire Russian society.
He's saying that he would consolidate power over the whole of Russian society, most importantly, being executive and legislative power,
which if there had been defections or if factions had peeled off and opposed him, that could have seriously jeopardized his ability to retain power.
So when you say that the speech was being advertised as a significant commentary on the future of Russian people or the Russian civilization or whatever, I don't know.
I mean, for the leader to announce that he has consolidated all power, assuming that's true.
We don't know if it's sure or not, but that's what he's declaring.
It seems like a very significant declaration.
So I'm not sure what people were expecting.
I see what you're saying.
I think the other factor here was that Lukashenko was supposed to give a cybernizant.
simultaneous speech and that brought in a lot of rumors of you know you know maybe uh Belarus
unification with Russia or something more so along the lines of what Wagner or Russian troops would be
doing in Belarus.
I think conspiracy started to run rampant along those lines when we saw that news.
And then, of course, Lukashenko didn't give a speech.
But, Jack, I mean, if you think the only thing that was accomplished in the speech was that Putin declared that he had successfully retained control over the main apparatus of power in society and therefore had consolidated his rule, wouldn't that be significant enough to warrant an announcement like this?
It's significant, yes, no doubt, but when you're talking about the alleged claims that were shared, the changing the fate of the Russian nation is...
It definitely seemed like there was a connotation of something bigger happening.
And when I say bigger, I mean, once we had had the peace deal or the negotiation between Lukashenko's proxy and progoshin, I mean, nothing really fundamentally changed.
The only thing that has changed fundamentally is that now we have Putin basically.
confirming what we all assumed. And also the only changes, I think some people were under the
impression that those Wagner soldiers were not going to be granted the opportunity to go to
Belarus or to have a contract. They were just going to be expected to retire. So that's a change as
well. I don't know about you, but I don't speak Russian natively. So sometimes I wonder if I'm
missing out on some of the subtleties of these comments like Peskov.
hyping a speech that's coming later this evening by Putin and using a certain, you know,
turn of phrase around the fate of Russia.
You're 100% right, Michael, because I do speak Russian.
And when you hear Putin speak in Russian or in the translation, it's totally different.
Yeah, I don't.
What are some big examples of that, left?
Like, just curious.
Like, can you elaborate on that?
One second.
Let me just go to Jackson.
It sounds like you've got some breaking news and then I'll go to left.
No, no, no, I was just going to say, Peskov, he didn't even make it not to be a translation issue.
He just said these were 100% faked comments.
Yeah, he did.
Jackson's right.
And he said that across multiple channels.
I have a quick update.
And this is coming from Andrei Karta Polov, who's the head of the state Duma Defense Committee,
which is responsible for the federal constitutional and federal laws, amongst other things across Russia.
And the statement is, PMC Wagner may change, mainly its structure, security and subordination may change.
Members of a private military company, both individually and as part of units, will conclude contracts with the Russian Defence Ministry.
I think that it will at least change in various ways.
The internal structure, number, security, subordination will undergo a change.
And this was said on Russian TV channels just a few moments ago.
I just want to go to Vaughn quickly because I think it's important to follow up on on Michael's question.
Lev, I'm sorry, I want to go to Lev.
Lev, what do you think it's missing when you as a native speaker listen to Putin's speeches?
What are you picking up and how do you interpret it the speech being a native Russian speaker?
And what is missing in the English translation?
I mean, it's hard to say right now because I don't have the two of them in front of me to say exactly.
But what's missing directly is his terminology of the way he's saying it, the way he's pronouncing it, the words he's using.
Because a lot of the words are mean one thing in Russian.
And when you translate it, it doesn't sound the same way in English.
And he sounds a lot weaker in the translation than he does when you're hearing it and him speak in the Russian language.
But,
But the fact that they've played it now four times shows that this was scheduled for a much longer speech,
which to me shows a sign that something changed right before this speech happened.
Because why would you be booking that long of a time where you just keep repeating the same speech over and over if it wasn't already booked out?
Right. Something's up.
I do want to go to Boston quickly.
Go ahead, love. Sorry.
No, I was going to agree with Joe.
I mean, this is a flowing situation,
so I'm sure things are happening
nonstop, and that's why we're going to
continue to start getting breaking reports
and different people speak out,
even like what Kalees just reported
about talking about Wagner,
now not being the same thing. I think we're going to,
it's a flowing situation, so I think
we can't look into every one speech or one situation too deeply.
I think we have to just give it a little time and see how things start flowing out over time.
I do want to talk about Wagner here.
Austin, you know, Wagner Group was, you know, before the war was situated mostly in Africa,
Central Africa, generating, you know,
from reports like hundreds of millions of dollars for a small group of people in in Russia,
that Wagner then had to go into Ukraine and fight, you know,
presumably many of the people who were making money off a Wagner group
would be less than thrilled about that from a financial perspective
and now having to rearm Wagner, rebuild Wagner.
What is the future for Wagner Group now?
Like, what do you think it's going to happen with them?
Do you think they're going to go back to Africa?
Do you think they'll stay and fight in Ukraine?
Do you think it'll be a mixture of both?
What happens now with this private military contractor?
So I think the loyalty of Wagner has been thrown into permanent question in regards to Ukraine in particular and having forces that close to the Russian interior.
I could easily see some of the fighters being redeployed to already established Wagner presences in the Central African Republic and Syria and Burkina Faso, you know, areas like that because it's a bit of...
a double-edged sword for the Russians because on the one end, they do have all of these,
you know, battle-hardened troops and, you know, putting them in a location like Burkina Faso
where the ability for them to organize any sort of internal dissent against the Russian government
is near non-existent. Yeah, they can screw with the contracts over there if they really wanted to,
but that's a, you know, that's far less of a threat than marching on the capital, right?
So I think in regards to what actually happens to Wagner's operating structure, that remains to be
seen, I think we'll
we'll either see some major shakeups in the next week or so or maybe even longer than that.
But I mean, obviously, you know, things aren't going to remain the way that they currently are.
But I think what's also to note, and I think when we talk a lot about, you know, how we're defining this, this insurrection or mutiny or whatever you want to call it,
it as well as sort of the reactions to it.
I think we're kind of missing the force for the trees here.
And I think looking at who Putin is meeting with after his speech is really important.
Because on the one end, yes, I think we've all, you know, credibly established that leadership
in Wagner is going to be under a microscope for the next, you know, year even.
Yeah.
But also, I think the leadership of many of Russia's internal security services are going to have that same microscope applied, right?
We all witnessed as the convoy was going down to Moscow, the best that Rosgaradia and local police units could really muster were a couple of checkpoints and some dump trucks.
I mean, we even had, you know, video of an excavator tearing up parts of the M4 highway just trying to slow down this convoy.
So the fact that, you know, none of those institutions were really prepared for anything of a magnitude of this.
I would not, I do not envy any of the heads of those organizations currently talking to Putin right now.
It's all that I'll say.
How big of a loss is Wagner Group to the Russian military?
Like how important are they to that fight in Ukraine?
And if they are dismantled, disassembled, if they are sent to parts of Africa or Syria, is that how meaningful of a loss is that to the war effort for Russia?
Yeah.
I think that would depend upon how much time they would have required to sort of recover from.
I mean, they were involved in the Battle of Bokhmud for over six months.
And whenever you have a military formation consistently engaged in combat of that ferocity for that long, you're losing expertise, you're losing equipment, and you're losing organization.
And so I think it really does depend how...
much time they would have needed already to sort of bring themselves back up to a stature to do that again.
So in regards to the immediate, obviously not having them directly involved in the conflict will be a negative for the Russians.
That being said, I don't have accurate numbers on how, you know, capable they were when this issue began.
Thanks for that. Yeah, Kim, go ahead. You have your hand up. What are your thoughts?
I just wanted to say, I think it was either this morning or yesterday evening, UK time,
where the Russian security services said they were investigating if there was Western interference in Wagner's motivation.
Please do correct me if I'm wrong on this. I'm pretty sure I saw it.
But obviously it wasn't part of Putin's speech.
But one of the security services did say they were looking into that angle.
Another thing to ponder about is...
Essentially, this is a great, from the security, from Putin's point of view, and the security service point of view, this is a pretty good mock exercise to test which agencies were loyal to him and how combat ready Russia was if there was some kind of ground invasion.
I mean, and the thing is, yes, as people have said, lives have been lost. But, you know, in 1999, during the apartment bombings in Russia,
most non-Russian sources are pretty confident it was Putin he did those bombings in the first place to consolidate his power.
I just thought that would be an interesting point.
Just one thing, Kim, when you said about the West's interference, and you said that Putin hasn't mentioned it himself,
press TV reported him as saying that he ordered his country's forces to avoid bloodshed during Wagner groups armed mutiny over the weekend.
adding that the West and Ukraine wanted Russians to kill each other.
So whilst he didn't say there was interference,
he didn't actually stay away from including the ambitions of the West there.
I don't know what the truth to that is, but...
I mean, it could be. It could be a number of things, couldn't it? The thing is here, the point you just made about was it just a, you know, a kind of testing exercise, a pilot to see who's loyal to him or not. And it very much, in the early hours, we didn't know who was working on which side, what was going on, was this a coup or not. And now when I look back at that time, I just think,
What was it all for?
If someone's going to do a serious coup,
they're not suddenly going to abandon it
and say, oh, I didn't want to kill anybody.
And this is the thing that really sticks with me.
Like you don't take that action and then say,
but I didn't realize I'd have to kill people,
so I'm going to back off.
And it definitely doesn't seem like it was a contractual dispute.
speak to me either.
You're absolutely right.
You don't walk into mainland
Russia with around 8,000 troops
and have the threat of
Russian Air Force, Russian Marines
30,000 spasnash
ready to die for Putin.
It's completely logical.
Yeah, David, give her hands.
Go ahead. Now, go ahead.
Yeah.
Well,
Sorry, Kalisi, excellent point there.
I've been listening for a while, and actually Mario's been trying to get me on here for a little bit past couple days.
But I live in Ukraine, so it's a bit different time-wise and everything.
It's actually a lot of β I'm here a lot of interesting points, but what if I were to tell you guys that the past several weeks, several people in the Ukrainian military have been talking about this getting ready to happen and kick off?
It shouldn't really surprise you at all to think that this is actually just kind of a stage power shuffle for Putin, a loyalty task, if you will.
And about armed labor disputes, let's just point out that the October Revolution was a very successful labor dispute in Russia.
And it's also more important to pull out that quite often that we as Americans or Westerners kind of have this biglyism about how our countries are our...
NATO superpowers are so big that we don't quite look at Russia as a different thing.
I understand that it's actually a different people with a different set of mentality and belief systems.
Hi, Les. A lot, Lev, nice to see you again. Haven't seen you since the Eric Prince day is in Kyiv.
Nice to see you alive and well. Anyway, real, great steak, man. Thanks for that.
But I just wanted to say, like, look, come on, as Khalis is saying, it really kind of seems stupid.
You can't say the guy who admits to having interference in some way in the American election system just did a half-ass measure to Moscow and then just called it off the last minute.
It does make Putin look good and as a strong guy in the face of how the Russians see things in the sense that he's the big cheer at the end of the day.
He stopped everything and look at all the other countries that have these uncontrolled chaos.
and these crazy activists and violent revolutions
and look in Russia as contrast to that
is very organized and orderly.
In Kazakhstan, actually, earlier last year, there was an armed uprising that immediately Russia stepped in for peacekeeping measures, right, and immediately stopped it.
So the message back home in Russia, and I have lived in Russia, and I do speak Russian, and I do speak Ukrainian, and several other languages.
And I could tell you that the people value the strength of action and weaker actions from the West or a lack of action from the West typically tells, gives Russia the green light to go ahead and do things.
But yeah, like I said, the original point, Ukraine kind of saw this coming.
It was being talked about, not even just by intel people, but basically general barracks chat talking to general troops because of this.
And you can also ask anybody around the area of Bakhmut that every time Bragosan said that there wasn't any, he didn't have enough weapons and armor,
as soon as the Ukrainians tried to come in and utilize that moment when Wagner was supposedly under-equipped.
they immediately met a very well-equipped Wagner.
So, I mean, he is a master of deception.
He's a master of psychological operations.
And that's exactly what we're seeing here right now, right?
And we're falling for it because we see it through an American filter or a very western NATO filter and not, as the Russians see it.
Before I get to Zeke, I'm just going to throw it to you, Volomir, you were serving in the Ukrainian army.
You heard David's comments about this being predicted by Ukrainian armed forces.
Is this something you predicted?
And what's your assessment of it from your perspective?
Hi, everybody.
Thank you for inviting me.
Definitely, we follow the situation very corporously.
And we understood that it might be a chance for Ukraine to make a breakthrough in offensive operation.
But what we saw in reality is that it was real coup.
And Pregojan was preparing for this kind of march towards Moscow for a couple of months at least.
A previous speaker rightly said that every time we attacked Wagner group in Bahmoud, they were full of ammunition and there was no hunger for artillery strikes or any other of military equipment.
But what happened in Russia, Putin failed, and it's a real disaster and catastrophe for Kremlin,
because right now the transition of power from Putin started, and he doesn't know how to react.
It was a great test organized by Pregozhen or by some Kremlin guys to ruin some myths or stereotypes about Russia.
First of all, that more than 80% of Russians are in favor of Putin.
When Brigosian started, you might have seen only a few Russians coming to Wagner troops asking what are you doing.
It's against Putin order.
Everybody else was sitting quiet in their apartments or leaving the cities.
Secondly, another myth of well-protected Moscow was broken.
Maybe there was some hidden deal between some pro-Pregosian military troops of Red Army and Pre-Gosian troops.
But most likely that he was able to make a breakthrough and very fast march, as he said, almost 800 kilometers per 24 hours to approach Moscow.
And he was not stopped.
And definitely the reaction of Putin was very weak.
Early morning on the first day of the coup,
He was simply condemning the rebels and recalling 1917 when Russian Empire collapsed, but nothing else.
And 24 hours after, he simply forgiven all those bastards as he named them and said, okay,
Pre gosion will be sent to Belarus.
Wagner Group is available to join Red Army or can return to their homes.
And the same thing was repeated just a couple of hours ago.
And this speech of Putin, regardless of it was kind of advertised as a historical one, was really pathetic.
He didn't say anything strong as a...
big president of big country and he looked very pale and I think that some big changes are
upcoming in Kremlin and Putin will be replaced. Yeah, I'll throw it over to you, Zeek and then to you,
David.
Thanks, Mickey. So just one thing, I'm glad that at least David agrees that this was a glorified labor dispute. But I'm kidding. Another point that David made was, you know, that the West and Ukraine were somewhat reserved in their response and likely, you know, did have some sort of foreknowledge about this. And I think Ukraine was probably advised not to get sort of tricked into effectively giving away where they're going to concentrate their offensive during this sort of perceived time of weakness for Russia.
there were also reports from U.S. intelligence, and this was published in the Washington Post all the way back in May that's, um,
Progosian had been in contact with Ukrainian and Western Intel sources and had actually offered them information on Russian positions.
So, you know, we know that Progossian may have already kind of had some contacts with the West during this conflict.
And I'm not insinuating direct involvement on the part of the CIA or, you know, Western actors or that, you know, any of the 6.2 billion was, you know, potentially used for this.
But there was also another little interesting signal that came out of the Russian MFA Twitter account over the weekend, actually.
They put out a tweet sort of criticizing the West and even invoked the Bay of Pigs.
So, you know, just sort of thought that's, and this was back to Kim's question earlier.
You know, I think they have made some subtle jabs at the fact that there may have been, you know, some sort of Western involvement here.
Can I just give a quick update, please?
And then I would like to ask David a question, if I can at one point, please, Mukian Suleiman.
So the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party in Russia, Slutsky, has said that he insists on the creation of a contract army of at least 7 million people.
also there is an updated statement from the White House
and this kind of relays back to something David was talking about
and this is coming from the National Security Council
Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby
he says the US considers a situation around Wagner
an internal affair of Russia and does not intend to interfere in it
The US positively assesses the contacts with Russia that took place over the past weekend and looks forward to their continuation.
The US does not take any of the sides in the events around Wagner, but focuses on supporting Ukraine.
The US does not see any evidence that there is a threat of undermining the ZNPP by Russian forces as Kiev claims.
the US does not see any intention of the Russian Federation to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
And there was one final statement that they believe...
that what's his name, Pyrgyzhen, is in Belarus already, as far as they know.
So that statement, that last one was from Senator Mark Warner, who's the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
and he said, as far as I understand, progozin is already in Minsk. So that was my update.
Well, and we know that Mark Warner has pretty impeccable Russian sources.
Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to ask actually, David, because David was talking about the U.S. and West, and I sense that David believes that the West are not doing enough to support Ukraine. And I want you to ask if that was his true feeling, because I feel he alluded to that.
I would say that the West historically and what's in a lump America, the NATO partners together in that basically have the wrong perspective when they go into other nations.
Afghanistan is a prime example, more realistically stinging people's memories.
We went in there thinking we could just do things like we normally do and we know the best way and not really consider local people's thoughts on things.
Unfortunately, they didn't work out the same way.
Of course, now they've gone back and said, yeah, well, we have a different Taliban in there.
We have the better version of the Taliban.
It's like, okay, great.
That doesn't really sound like a win, but okay, sure.
Sure.
But I would say that there was the point, the initial Kabul photos of the Taliban with their fingers on the trigger.
And then within like 15 minutes, another photo was released with their fingers off the trigger.
So I guess you could see if you want to get deep state conspiracy theories that maybe the CIA or somebody got in there and told them good trigger discipline.
But all jokes aside.
And yeah, I mean, thanks about the comment supporting that.
Because, I mean, you know, when we look at how U.S.
labor disputes or other issues or things from the U.S. perspective or U.S. examples in the United States,
it's really hard to compare that to another nation that's not the United States, even if it is an ally nation.
I mean, you can't compare France and Germany, even though their neighbors exactly the same.
And we have a tendency to do that.
I kind of like to tell people that Russia has more of the mentality of betting on all the horses,
or having multiple ways to go and making it seem like it was their way to go in the first place.
So there is a very real possibility that all of our answers are actually correct and were considerable contingency plans.
I usually say the KGB colonel was asked to train the new lieutenant and how we do things in the KGB
and they go to the horse track to fix the race and he says the young lieutenant with full ideas and everything new ways to do it
says we could have compromise, we could poison some horses, we could threaten some people and their families and win the race.
And the colonel says, we put 10 rubles on all the horses because the task was to win the race and not to actually win with only one horse.
So, and then sit proceeded to get drunk on vodka.
Because, you know, as long as you achieve one of the goals that you're supposed to do, then that's a victory.
I mean, I always told Ted saw people that I absolutely disagree that the Russians did not want Trump necessarily to get elected.
They wanted to just divide America.
And I think they've done a pretty good job of that.
in the 2016 election.
The last election was just to make us not believe in the election results.
If Biden would have lost and there would have been a blue wave of saying,
oh, there was a fraud in the election and there would have been something to do with that.
This is just a consistent thing that Russia likes to do.
It likes to play both sides.
It's gaslighting Americans and Facebook and social media is a great way to do that.
I mean, heck, even if we're talking about sciops, even Elon Musk put out on Saturday, you know, that...
about a reference to siops i mean he was actually in here at the beginning of this when i joined
and i'm pretty sure i mean i won't speak for him but i'm pretty sure he would agree that
you know something is quite there and maybe we're looking at russia the wrong way from a
right for looking at from a western perspective i mean even uh lev pointed out that the translation
itself and improper translations when it's a transliteration and not really understanding
the mentality of the russians
That is a big failure on our side.
I see that all the time when I deal with Ukrainians that are translating into English and Ukrainian between heads of state, between visitors, and a lot of things that are lost in translation.
I had the pleasure, or maybe not, depending on how you guys look at it, of debriefing.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Venman on Independence Day 2021 in Ukraine, so August 24th in 2021.
And I told him and several ranking members of the United States government of armed forces
that there would be an armed open revolution or open invasion of Russia within six months.
And exactly to the date it was.
Then later on, of course, in the meeting, one one colonel who's no longer a colonel now, he got
demoted slightly, but he said, uh, the American government doesn't involve itself in the politics
of other nations. And I said, well, who wants to tell this guy? Um, so it's kind of funny to say
that we didn't have some sort of intelligence guys throwing out some bloodshit money or I think it,
um, uh, who wasn't that said that, you know, the missing billions from the Pentagon. I mean,
I, I think that there's, you know, very realistically a possibility that all the answers are
right and also at the same time, none of them. It's very, um,
I would say when it comes to Russia.
And they're playing chess,
and we're usually playing checkers geopolitically
from the United States perspective.
And I think it's time we need to understand that
and really not just translate,
but understand the contents of the words
and what people are saying and listen and look at the history.
David, do you mind if I jump in there?
I don't agree with you on the chess point.
I think that Putin has a very good poker face,
but I don't think that his chess game...
as we've seen from what's happened in Ukraine to be as strong as you might expect.
We can look at his air campaign within Syria.
We can look within, well, just the Soviets approach to Afghanistan, right?
The Russians have a desire to be able to be good at chess, but often they don't know what it means.
And Putin's...
shall we say feints that he did in the late 2000s over Georgia resulted in what?
A pretty tough domestic result in the protest of 2012 and that's partially why he had to take Crimea
because you needed to stimulate now Russian nationalism in the form of foreign policy.
We've seen autocrats, strong men do this time and again.
So I appreciate your perspective on much of what you said, but I disagree with your mind of mind.
That's all.
Yeah, I agree.
But I would say going back to playing multiple chess boards at the same time, and that's, I just have to win at one of them.
Right? I just have to win at one of them. And then you can lose all the other ones, but you can point out to the one you won. And I'd absolutely agree. It was absolutely pitiful. But it wasn't also his tovia, Afghanistan lost her victory. But I mean, yeah, Georgia, all that. But again, we have a country that literally worships death culture. We won the World War, World War II, because we lost the most people. That's what Russia will say. And it's ridiculous. That's bad strategy. But, but yeah, I mean, you know.
I'm not detaining what the Allies did during World War II in the Eastern Front.
And I'm thankful that we did have the Soviets on our side at that point.
But do not forget also who helped build the Soviet, the Nazi war machine.
And the friendship between Stalin and Hitler before all that.
Yeah, no, I'm not denying that.
I mean, you need, what, 2.5 million Soviets to take on a force of 800,000 in Berlin.
that's without question.
I mean, the Russians, specifically the Russians,
look at strategic warfare very differently into the West.
Casualty numbers is not something that matters to Russia.
That is where the term total war or absolute war comes from
because you throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at the matter.
You know, more bodies means more glorification and loss of lives for your nation's
you know, defense and, you know, it's almost as if the Russian mothers who sit around the table with Putin in a very propagandist piece of video are done there to sort of basically glorify the losses of their children.
Like they fought in the honor of their Russian heritage. And it's like, well, hang on a second.
the Ukrainians don't look at it like that anymore.
The West doesn't look at it like that.
And it's just generally a sort of a completely different mindset.
And I think that is something that a lot of people are hard to find hard to understand.
Anyway, sorry, I just really wanted to jump on that point because I think you've made some great.
That's awesome.
Could you imagine if the Indonesians did that, though, if we started glorifying the death of that,
all that would go over.
I want to go to Michael quickly.
What are your, you sort of might have a different point of view from, from David and Pioter.
Michael is wondering what you were trying to chime in say.
Yeah, as far as the question of Western, quote-unquote, involvement or some other kind of Western slash U.S. activity that might have been connected to the events in Russia over the past several days, I would just point everyone to a quote from the FBI director, Christopher Ray, in April. He was...
appearing at Texas A&M University.
And in the appearance, he explicitly said that the U.S. was seeking recruits from within
Russia, so attempting to entice defectors to carry out, I think the euphemism Ray used was
historic acts within Russia.
I mean, the insinuation was obvious that he was, he and the other elements of the
U.S. intelligence community were actively seeking to take a,
take steps to foment instability in Russia that could culminate in some sort of coup or some other sort of regime change action.
So even if we don't have the full details yet on what connection might have existed in this particular incident,
no one should be under any illusions that the U.S. hasn't been actively pursuing this from a variety of different angles.
Again, I'm not making any factual assertions about this particular set of events.
but the infrastructure, the framework has been in there for the U.S. too
sees opportunities in attempt to foment that kind of instability in Russia, which they view as within their interest.
Remember, Biden has said, Kamala Harris has said, Jake Sullivan has said, Lloyd Austin,
said that part of the strategic goal of the U.S. and Ukraine is to, quote, weaken Russia.
Well, what happens when you weaken a state?
It becomes more susceptible to internal discord and even potentially β
coup d'etaz and ousters and so forth
that's in the bear of mind
David,
speaking of that David I just want to go back to you
because I know you were speaking, I have a question for you
you know you spent a lot of time in Ukraine
you speak Russian and Ukrainian
who do you think in the Kremlin or in the circle of Putin
who is sweating right now
of course people are talking about
Pergogian, Gyrkin, etc.
But who else do you think is
looking over their shoulder right now
or afraid to go by a window
or to walk across the street by themselves
Well, yeah, or walk across the bridge outside Red Square and maybe get to have a shot pop off.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, it's hard to really say because I think that honestly that any one of those people would probably sell their mother out.
for the right opportunity you know i think that most of those guys think even lavrave if you gave him
like the guarantee new iPhone every year a nice condo in uh in a couple nice different places in
the united states would take american citizenship in defect in a heartbeat um most these guys
are looking for an exit for a long time
I think, but, and I think this is, that's why I think more so it's a loyalty test.
Because, I mean, I mean, I don't want a condo in America right now.
I think Jackson would probably agree with me.
I think he's about ready to take the Russian citizenship if you haven't done it already.
I'm just to disrep anybody.
But, yeah, I think that this was a good way to flush people out.
And I think that, you know...
The joke, I guess, or not that Putin's a master strategist, it kind of comes to play here.
And I think he is, it's like, win some, you lose some, right?
It's the expression.
In Russian, it's more like, you win some, you win some.
You know, it's just like you don't have to win all of them.
You just have to win some of them in the narrate that you were thinking that the entire time.
And it's a different strategy.
I mean, it would never fly in America.
We would be called out.
I would be canceled and stuff.
Yeah.
But I just think there's several people in the MOD right now that are really wishing they didn't pick a fight with Wagner.
I don't think this is the last of Wagner we're going to see.
I really honestly think this was just at best an attempt to flush out people and at worst an attempt to flush out people and rearrange some things.
Maybe give Wagner a little bit of a night vacation in scenic Belarus, all the potatoes you eat.
Peter, what are your thoughts on this?
Well, I heard that there was a speech coming from Putin. I didn't even bother to watch it until it was already done because I knew, well, because it was pre-recorded. It was five minutes. It's pre-recorded. Let's take a look at what was mainly focused on, the West. Putin does this. I've been following this man for the best part of 20 years since I became fascinated with Russia as a kid. And...
His rhetoric is relatively similar.
He talks about an onus on other parties that are at fault here.
The West has been at the fault of a lot of Russia's issues,
not only necessarily the only problem, but a large factor since 2007.
Why 2007?
Because that's when he gave his Munich conference speech,
where he talked about many things related to NATO Western expansionism,
neo-imperialism and so on.
And then what happened a year later, he invaded Georgia.
So...
His emphasis on trying to blame the West for what happened with Wagner
and this desire to create an instability internally.
I don't put it past those people who might, like Michael's saying,
that the West has an interest to destabilize Russia,
be it maybe not directly, but indirectly through, you know,
supporting the Ukrainians, right?
It leads to political instability and strife within the country.
Yeah, for sure.
Countries have done that throughout time and history.
But what I do think is different is that,
I don't, I just, I don't agree with people who were saying that this was some kind of Western backed or some kind of thing, because the rate at which it happened, if you know anything about progroshenian or Putin or just generally their relationship and Russians generally, the way that they interacted and the way that progroshenian presented himself in his audio messages and video does not strike me as though this was some kind of longer cunning thing. I genuinely believed.
we can go into the specifics of whether it was meant to topple the government.
Probably not.
But was he genuinely trying to make Putin unsettled?
I think so.
I think we have generally seen the biggest significant...
challenge or undermining of the existing power structure within Russia since the 90s.
And I don't know whether this is going to lead to a change in the government.
Probably not. I do think Shoygu and Grasimov,
Karyosemos, excuse me, are going to be out of the picture.
What I do think this is really interesting is how much Putin isn't as sort of solely capable as we all thought, right, in the sense of
of Lukashenko was such a critical person.
He knows both men incredibly well, 30 years plus for basically Putin and 20 plus for progroshenin.
And he was a crucial interlocutor for both of them to negotiate this peace plan.
I don't know whether it was premedicated.
I don't think it was as clear cut.
But now what does progroshenin have?
He has basically Russia's backyard, i.e. Bealus, with a facility in the southeast, with 8,000 troops,
which he can basically do whatever the hell he wants.
It's a great core area for him to basically command operations in Africa and elsewhere.
And I think he got what he wanted, which is a change in the government structure of the Kremlin.
I do think that Putin's position is definitely more fragile.
People who've heard me tweet today are freaking out, thinking that I'm saying,
it's the end of Putin.
No, it's not the end of Putin, but he's definitely not Putin from...
a day ago, right?
So, you know, I do, again, emphasize how do foreign actors look at this?
How do the Chinese, particularly, look at this in their long-term partner
that they believe is the one that is meant to help them observe the United States Western-led order,
given that now Putin has suffered a rather, whether or not it was a success or not,
it was an embarrassment.
It was an embarrassment.
Peter, can I ask you a question?
Yeah, my God, I thought of my.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So just as, you might well be right that Putin is emphasizing the foreign elements of this to paper over maybe some of his domestic vulnerabilities that also could have given rise to.
to the situation. So you may be well be 100% right about that, but aren't you also running the risk of prematurely discounting that there could have also been a Western or US influence of some kind? We don't have the full facts. I just gave you an example of the director of the FBI, kind of an important guy.
saying in a public forum in April that they were attempting to recruit defectors within Russia to foment regime change.
So it's not like it's even been particularly hidden that this is a stated objective of the U.S. and others.
I mean, with regard to Eastern Europe, forget it.
I mean, they have all kinds of fairly zealous activities going on that are attempting to achieve that outcome.
And let me just give you a quick quote that illustrates this.
It'll be 10 seconds and I'll go.
Here's Chris Christie, who's the presidential candidate of Republican β
saying this yesterday on ABC Sunday morning TV, quote,
what we do know is that America's support,
along with our allies of NATO of Ukraine,
has done a great deal to cause what we're seeing right now in Russia.
So US policy makers are boastful of the fact
that their preferred policy course in Ukraine
has contributed, as they see it,
to a set of conditions in Russia that allowed for such
a destabilizing event to take place.
Yeah, so what I would say to that is what I always say, which is that I think that we mustn't, when I say, this happens to me all the time, right? And I'm not trying to personalize it. I'm just saying when I talk about the Ukrainian war, I get really cool from both sides. Because I'm half Russian, people think that I'm a Vatnik.
But then I'm talking in defense of Ukraine.
And so people think that I'm just a Western propagandist because I work for the UN or something like that.
Right.
So I get rid of both sides.
Well, I haven't assumed either about you, just so you know.
So I'm trying to be about, I'm trying to be genuinely objective here.
So what I would say to you is, I don't know any more.
I'm not privy to any more information than you guys are.
I'm just very enthusiastic because I've just come in and you guys are probably war fatigued from the discussion that I missed.
But aside from that, I think that is there a possibility that the West has had more involvement in this?
I don't know.
The way I look at it is very real politic in this instance, which is Russia may be the worst thing you can imagine.
You may be sitting in the audience right now and thinking, I hate that country.
I want them to dissolve.
They shouldn't exist.
They're, they're, you know, neo-Nazis, whatever.
But...
If you are simply a diplomat or someone who looks at this from a international security paradigm, you must understand that Russia, unfortunately, has the biggest stockpull of nuclear weapons.
They have an influential say on North Korea, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Canada.
Cuba, name you pick, right? They are still a massive role in the Security Council.
So the point I'm getting at is that I find it far-fetched to think that the West would be so intent on causing the absolute dissolution of Russia that it leads to potentially massive insecurity across other fronts of the year.
Peter, Peter, when the FBI director says that they're actively seeking to engineer this outcome using United States intelligence and other kind of military slash clandestine assets,
What are we to make of that? Is he just kidding around?
I mean, the guy seems like he's pretty serious, as do most FBI directors when they pledge to, you know, defeat an enemy or take certain, you know, decisive action.
I can't speak to that specific quote because I haven't heard it. I haven't seen the context in which it was said.
Well, I mean, unless I'm lying about it, I'm telling you, I mean, take for the sake of argument that I'm not lying to you at the quote.
And the FBI director did pledge that the U.S. is getting engaged in a process whereby they're aspiring to facilitate some sort of,
inter-resigned strife within Russia.
Right. Well, then I would say...
Why would he say that? Is he just joking around?
Then I would say that's an extremely irresponsible bit of American statecraft.
I think that's incredibly the wrong thing to do, be it Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, whoever it is.
I personally think Biden's comments in certain contexts like calling Saudi Arabia a pariah state,
whether you like them or not, is not the wisest thing to do.
I'm going to throw this to Lev quickly, just to add on this.
I mean, Michael and Piota are talking about, you know, who in the outside of Russia benefits.
A question I have for you, Lev, is who inside of Russia benefits?
There's talk from, I was watching Belina Charcova talking about Nikolai Patruchev,
who is head of the Security Council, is sort of the big winner and all this?
Are there any one, is there anybody inside the Kremlin who wins from this infighting?
I think at the end of the day, Putin is going to be the winner of this in fighting, and he's going to get stronger inside of Russia.
That's my opinion.
I think whatever tried to happen failed, and now he's going to come out even looking stronger, even though he looks weak right now.
And as far as what Pietro and Michael were talking about with, you know,
Western powers interfering in Russian or trying to overturn the governments and other countries,
I mean, that's been going on for centuries.
I mean, that's just given fact.
Do I believe that they had something to do with this particular situation?
I think this had to do with an internal fight between directly with Progosion and his...
His own incentives, as you want to call it, and knowing the person, Progogian, I think he himself staged this.
I think there were people that were inside of the Putin inner circle that were not happy with the way the war was going on and wanted to go stronger and more precise.
And basically, Progosian thought he had their support.
and thought that, you know, the way things were going, that this would be the perfect time to try to basically make a change.
And when he reached Moscow and realized that he didn't have the support he did, that's why we're at where we are right now.
So, Lev, can I ask you a quick question on that? I think that's really interesting. I am very curious to know what happens in your mind in Putin's Russia then. Do you think this is a more than ever shameless centralization of control? I mean, the country's been getting more centralized under Putin. A lot of people think that COVID wasn't good to him. He spent a lot of time in Sochi and Kremlin by himself.
What do you think this does for his frame of mind?
He's getting older, he's aware that he can't go on forever.
There is no clear succession line.
I'm very curious what you think this might do to the general sort of makeup of Russia in sort of security sense.
I think at the first glance, and what we're seeing right now, I think it was a big blow to Putin.
I think definitely in the state of mind.
And I think, you know, he was extremely shaken and worried and it was not a good look from a lot of angles, even...
from the point of, you know,
fearing that he had people on the inside that might be turning on him
to the fact that the whole world saw a convoy of armed men
inside Russia reaching Moscow and threatening him.
but I think because of the way it transpired and there was no bloodshed
and he was able to stop it the way he did and now basically set up a honeypot
and trap in, excuse me, honey trap in Belarus for all the people that tried to do it.
I think he's going to consolidate. I think that he's going to purge.
I think he's going to be some changes and I think he's going to get even a lot tighter
and a lot stronger.
not to say him personally because, you know, his health and his, you know, agent's state of mind is one thing.
I think as far as the people of Russia, I think, are going to support him and continue stronger now.
Jackson, what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I just have a question for anyone in this space who thinks that in the long run or even in the short term that this is going to be a bad thing for Putin or tangibly make him any weaker.
I would just ask you to provide some sort of an example as to why other than some vague comment as to like, oh, well, this was a challenge to Putin.
Because...
Let's look at what happened.
So he consolidates power via nationalizing what I believe is the largest private military company and that Russia works with steadily.
Right.
He sends off this oligarch, progoshin, patriotic oligarch, to Belarus, and it looks like some Wagner soldiers are going to be going there.
We don't know why.
We don't know if it's, you know, military operations, if it's to safeguard Lukashenko from a coup, or if they're going to be sent off to a, you know, POW camp there.
We really don't know.
We see that...
any of these Wagner soldiers that are too disloyal, they don't want to participate anymore,
they're going to be essentially encouraged to retire or to go to Belarus.
Those who want to keep fighting will have that option.
It seems like everything that has come out of this is simply a further consolidation of power,
more unity in Russia than ever before.
So, yeah, I mean, if you want to say this was a CIA-backed coup, if you want to say this was Progogian, strong-arming of Putin, if you want to say this was an actual coup attempt from Progosion simply within Russia, no foreign actors, it doesn't matter.
Can anyone honestly make an argument, again, other than with a vague generality, that this somehow definitively hurts Putin in the long run?
Yeah.
Can I add some, can I add, sorry?
I have a possible.
Can I add a supporting point to that really quickly?
So, Jackson, I think you're sort of on the mark because let's just take of a recent example as potential precedent.
Obviously, no coup attempt is the same throughout history, but there are some potential lessons you can clean over time.
Erdogan had a coup attempt in 2016, right, in Turkey, and it was much more violent.
required much more manpower on everyone's part to put down the coup attempt and had a real
chance of succeeding because the rebels successfully peeled off defections from the military
establishment, which Progosion apparently did not even do or not even end up having the
ability to do despite the unimpeded advance toward Moscow. And after that
coup attempt was thwarted by Erdogan in 2016.
It's pretty much assumed across the board,
whether you're a supporter or detractor of Erdogan,
that he substantially consolidated power in the aftermath.
Well, think about it this way.
Putin just quelled...
the most serious challenge to his power yet without a bullet fired, you know, to use a figurative way of putting it,
I realized that there was the casualties with the helicopter incident around Rasta Van Dam, but it was exceptionally less bloody than it potentially could have been,
even if you just compare to the 2016 incident in Turkey as just, you know, again, for comparison's sake.
So...
If it follows the same trajectory as third one did and enables Putin to consolidate power in the aftermath of having sexually forwarded that challenge to his power,
I know I see it plausible that this actually improves his standing overall than undermines it,
even though there's a lot of risk and a lot of potential peril that went into even having this event take place at all in the first place.
Yeah, Joe, go for it.
Yeah, I want to read something from February.
Okay?
And I'm just reading the last paragraph.
I posted it in the nest.
As long as Putin is relatively strong and capable of maintaining the balance between various groups of influence,
progosin is not dangerous.
But as slight change could prompt progoshin to challenge the authorities.
Perhaps not Putin himself at first.
War makes monsters out of men and their recklessness and desperation can become a challenge to the state if it chose even the slightest sign of weakness.
Okay.
Since this has happened, and like I said yesterday, this has been chatter for a long time, not chatter as a CIA operation, which I doubt highly because of the fact that America killed hundreds of Wagner's in Syria.
That's not typically the type of deals we make because we know we'll get double crossed.
And since then, he's only prognosion has come out.
He's not downtrodden.
He doesn't look like he's almost shaking the way Putin has.
He's made political statements still.
This actually brings him up in terms of...
raises his status among, among Russians. Even within the Kremlin, you have Karpalov and Stroudov, or defending Wagner, while the defense ministry is trying to dismantle them. There's already division that's happening.
Like, this is not the way strong men governments work, right?
He has not come out with a clear solution.
He let Progogsing start of rebellion and not get punished for it in all reality.
That is not a good look.
This, to me, does make him weaker.
This changes the rules.
Anyone who raised the hand before at Putin would be killed, right?
Automatically right away in a very public fashion.
That's not what's happening here.
This is why I think it weakens Putin a lot.
To put it to you, but before I do, Piotr, I guess the question from Jackson and Michael is,
okay, you know, this could be good.
Like their belief is, hey, I need a little bit more meat and potatoes,
something more to chew on.
When you tell me it's bad for Putin, exactly how, or exactly how will we know that
Putin, this has been bad for Putin, maybe it's truly to say.
But like, what are the measurable ways in which this could hurt Vladimir Putin and his regime?
Are you asking me to go, Mickey?
Yeah, thank you.
And also I appreciate you doing the good modding.
Yeah, I mean, look, to the question that was said,
I just want to illustrate to people very quickly something.
If you're not familiar with Russian history intricately,
this is something you need to understand,
which is that in the 21st century,
Putin is Russia as much as Russian as Putin.
If you were a Russian in the 90s, you were in a dark place.
The Soviet Union collapsed.
the Russians were trying to undergo what was known as shock therapy, which was a fancy academic term used to illustrate that the Russians were shifting a socialist economy to a market, free market economy, while simultaneously trying to change the political system, right?
China did it differently. They did something called gradualism, which was they first changed the political system and then the economic system, although most academics agree, the political system never really changed.
So Russia was trying to completely basically redefine, reshape its political economy in 10 years.
And that led to the average age of men being cut in five years within a year and a half
due to alcoholism, suicide, mass exodus.
Like it was dark times in Russia.
And a lot of Russians put this down to Boris Yeltsin.
They put this down to the breaking up of the state media systems or state companies, right?
Ramana Bromovich was nobody.
Suddenly he goes from being the governor of Tukka to owning a massive government.
share of gas prom, I think it was, right?
And he suddenly exists in the early 2000s as $12 billion
able to buy Chelsea Football Club in the UK.
So when Putin comes along,
clamps down hard on the Chechninean outbreak in the 1990s, 2000,
a lot of Russians look at him as the man to restore the glory that is Russia, because Russia
at that point is an insecure, inferior state that was once, you know, the mighty power able
to take on the United States and NATO and the West. And so they look to Putin and Putin benefits
from things like a massive oil rise in the 2000s and the, and Russia's booming. Russia goes from,
I think it was like 400 billion to a billion by 2008.
It grew very quickly.
And so Putin has been riding on this natural love that rural communities particularly love for him,
because that's the only information they've ever had, state TV.
Putin has been able to influence the minds.
I'm not going to say manipulate because I don't want people to think I'm being too biased, right?
So he has been able to do that.
And that's the point. He removes any competent potential challenger to him. Look at what Navalny represents in the past 10 years. The biggest genuine succession. But Navani in many ways is like Putin. He's a nationalist. He's got a huge amount of similarities to Putin in certain ways. So when it comes to whether or not Putin is now at risk to answer the question simply, I look at it in two ways.
One, the Snow Revolutions, which is the Western term used to describe what protests happened in 2011 to 2013 in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Upwards of three, four million people, yes, they're a particular type of people, urbanites, well educated, open to Western information, not just rural communities.
They protested Putin.
And this really...
unnerved him, like really unnerved him.
That's why in 2012, when Medvedev was coming to the end of his presidency,
Putin actively changed the constitution
so that he could basically run again and again and again
as the head of the United Russia Party and win as the president
and to stay as president for the rest of time.
But what it did do was undermine his credibility in certain informed circles, i.e. the politely and, you know, academics. So he, what did he do? He tried to stimulate nationalism through things like the annexation of Crimea.
as I said when I first joined the conversation, you can look at what happened in Argentina in 1982,
or 1981, when the, I forget the name of the strong man, but the autocratic leader in Argentina
was struggling economically with Argentina.
He invades the Falklands because it meant he was great.
He gained huge amounts of popularity among Argentinians.
And the last point I would just emphasize is also the foreign policy one.
In international relations, optics is as important sometimes as policy.
And whilst Putin may not be actively losing his position physically,
He will be seen differently among certain circles.
It's a fact.
The Iranians, yes, it wasn't the IRGC,
but the Iranian Islamic Republic coming out and saying,
we see this as an internal matter, isn't great.
They are supporting Putin in Ukraine,
but the fact that they're not willing to directly acknowledge him
as not being challenged by progroshenin is a problem.
And why is it problem?
Because it illustrates that any autocratic country looks at Putin
like he probably looks at them as expendable.
right all you need is the country in question to support your interests it doesn't matter who runs
or fly flies the flag or whatever runs the ship right doesn't matter as long as you have a degree of
stability and consistency and you support that other autocratic regime regime survival you're good to go
so i personally think that this is a significant moment for Putin um is at the end of him no but i think
it's significant and sorry for the long good point but i'll end it
I'm just going to before we before um to you Michael I would like to hear from Vaughn you've heard sort of both sides Jackson is and and Michael essentially saying like look maybe this is bad in a superficial way but you know I need to see a really solid reasons why this is very bad for Putin and then Joe and Piotr and there are saying like look like the fundamental his fundamental ability to have a you know to have a monopoly on violence and his
and the way he looks to the world, you know, are very serious issues to consider,
and any chipping away of his authority can, you know,
could be extremely bad for him and dangerous.
Bon, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on,
on the conversation that's being had right now.
Yeah, I got a go, so I'm going to be quick about this.
One, the IRGC offered its support, which is huge, but the underlying deal with the SCO and all these Eurasianist partners is they don't meddle in each other's domestic politics.
So expecting one to come out and say it's not an internal affair.
is kind of you're not paying attention to how these, to the relationship between these countries.
Also, I would put forward that if your analysis of the internal power dynamics does not include the Siloviki,
you are not answering the question.
Because ignoring them means you're ignoring the internal power dynamics of the Russian Federation.
It's a non-answer.
But I'm in Jackson's camp on this.
I think you need something more solid than...
We don't have a solid thing.
And no offense, Piotr, but he's different than he was yesterday.
It doesn't mean anything.
He's perceived differently than he was yesterday.
He doesn't mean anything.
Everyone is perceived differently the after.
Can I throw something out?
Can I just release news real quick that?
Yeah.
And now they've been told no further statements, which to me kind of shows something, something is...
The speech was supposed to be longer.
There was supposed to be a statement afterwards.
Now there's not.
Like something's going on.
Yeah, got it.
So I just wanted to draw everybody's attention if they haven't seen it or hasn't been mentioned yet.
I'm not sure.
I haven't been privy to all the discussion about this.
But May 15th.
of 2003.
So last month,
there's a Washington Post story
headlined.
Bogdian Chief offered
to give Russian troop locations
to Ukraine, Leak says,
this is a continuation
of that series of reports
on the classified Pentagon files
that had been published
in part through Discord,
and then were basically
taken control of by the Washington Post
in a move that we still don't have
the full details on,
and I continue to find suspicious,
but either way,
they had a report on May 15th
about how apparently...
Prokotian, quote, said he would tell Ukraine's military where to attack Russian troops if it pulled its own forces back from the beleaguered city of Baku, where Wagnernerosin were taking heavy losses.
So I can't vouch for the perfect authenticity of this document that the Washington Post is reporting on, but there have reports that are credible enough because pretty much all those other leaks panned out from that.
That series of revelations.
And so in light of that, I mean, if there's a great of truth to this report in the Washington Post,
why should we then discount that there might have been some further Western involvement than we're aware of?
He already had apparently had dealings with the Ukraine military intelligence.
And that's not that far away from having dealings with American officials given the close interoperability between Ukraine and U.S. military.
Why does it, so if there is, so what?
What are we going to do about it?
Wouldn't you want to know?
I mean, wouldn't it be significant knowledge for the historical record?
Well, isn't it?
We've got evidence of that happening before.
Like, what difference does this make?
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but like you're pushing this point quite a dog.
You don't think it would be significant event if that was done?
Well.
Well, what difference is it going to mean?
Well, the Russians will respond how with nuclear weapon threat again?
I don't know how they're going to respond.
I'm just saying, I mean, do you disagree that it would be a significant event
if what happened the way that it described?
Well, yes, but we're also saying this back in November when we last chatted, and frankly, nothing kept up.
Well, I mean, I never made a firm prediction of conclusive civil war, or sorry, nuclear war breaking out last November, so I'm not sure what standard you're holding me to.
I'm just documenting significant events that have occurred over the course of this conflict.
I'm not sure why you would raise doubts about the U.S. having a hand of some fashion in facilitating a potential regime change in Russia.
Like, why would you just count that as significant?
It seems like you should be...
It's not a discount, Michael.
It's just you push a certain point very often, and I'm trying to understand why you think it's going to make any difference.
Let's just have a little bit of different conversation.
So before I pass it off to Jackson, Bulletin, you've been waiting patiently.
You've heard the different speakers, like, you know, Michael's put forward that this may have the markings of a U.S.-backed coup or U.S.-backed effort.
Jackson's saying this may be...
superficially bad for Putin, but maybe not seriously bad.
You've got Peter saying, you know, this is, you know, very bad for Putin.
What are your thoughts?
You know, Putin was keep on telling people that he brought back the glory and he will bring great achievements for Russia.
And actually he was talking mostly to the generation he raised himself since 1999
and to the past generations of Russia who thought,
were remembering Soviet victories World War II or also another Afghanistan world,
which was also not very successful.
But one thing is to promise and to tell people that everything is according to the plan.
And then to tell people that something is going wrong.
And it's not only a problem with Ukraine or even NATO or somebody else great power,
but also there is a strong problem inside of the country.
And there are some rebels.
When a Russian liberation army started killing Belgorod and Brians were silent about that,
not recognizing that there were Russians attacking another Russians.
And now Wagner troops approach in Moscow
is reality.
And it's another shock for Kremlin
and shock for ordinary Russians
because they do not know how to react.
They were raised under huge propaganda pressure.
They were told that Putin is a gut
who will handle any kind of problem.
And now they see that he is weak old man
without real response even to rebels.
Because he was condemning them
48 hours ago and now he says, okay, there is no problem and nobody will be punished.
And I think that's a great weakness of Putin and his company.
And definitely it's a great strike against Kremlin.
Actually, that's why Putin was keep on telling in the morning of Saturday that do not recall 1917.
Do not come back to 1917 because it will be the collapse of Russia.
They are really afraid of that.
Putin left Moscow on the first hour of this coup and he took a prime minister with him.
with only one reason, because if something wrong happens to Putin, if he is dead,
or recognized as in textual,
prime minister, according to Russian constitution,
will take the lead.
And they live in all this conspiracy series,
and they believe that if something goes wrong,
Russia will not withstand.
And I think it's a big shock for Kremlin.
It's a big shock for Russians,
because they were never told this story
that if Russia attacks,
something can happen wrong to Russia.
Jackson, what do you think about that?
Well, so far in response to my question, there's been a lot of commentary.
And the only things I've really heard when I asked for tangibles about how this negatively is going to impact Putin,
were that, A, you know, that Progosin and Ola Wagner weren't, you know, blown up at the immediate start of this March for Justice or coup, whatever you want to call it.
And B, what's that last individual, that last speaker just said that, you know, this was a shock to many within Russia.
And I just don't feel either of those are really arguments in that this is going to be a long-lasting negative development for Putin.
I mean, I think it's actually the first argument, which Peodor put up, I think that actually lends credence to my point in that...
Putin was able to effectively squash this, you know, two brigade large, spearheaded March, 100 kilometer, March to Moscow, with basically no casualties.
I mean, there was obviously a few big cabooms that went off on both sides.
But for the most part, I mean, it wasn't like you had...
Russian fighter jets going down these highways and just, you know,
scatter bombing the convoy.
So I think of anything, this goes to show that like,
Well, you know, Putin can effectively stop the most armed, the most, you know, the most strongly manned operation at a challenge to his power that he's ever seen and that we've seen in many, many, any countries really in recent history.
And I'll also say that the last speaker, I think it was, brought up the...
The Russian, the exiled Russians in Belgrade as another example that's posed some sort of a threat to Putin.
I don't even know what you're getting out with that.
I mean, those guys have been exiled by Russia.
They're legit Nazis.
The New York Times wrote an article about how they're Nazis.
And this is kind of bad for the efforts that they put forward to, you know,
dispel the Russian propaganda that there's a Nazi problem in Ukraine.
Most of these guys are even exiled from countries in Europe and from FIFA events because of their Nazism
and what they were trying to do within soccer events.
So these guys, you're probably more Russian than they are.
They've been expelled from their country and they were leading movements with Western supplied armored vehicles.
into Belgrade, it didn't last very long, and that was squashed as well.
So I still have yet to hear any ways in which this actually poses a long-lasting threat on
Putin's grip on power.
And I think...
Von, the Twitter user, I forget their von clown or something, they said something to the effect of, you know, what you really need to look at is how this impacts Putin's inner circle, how this impacts the various, how the various ministers responded, how the various governors responded.
And from everything we've seen thus far, it seems as though everyone provided, even international coalitions provided their support for Putin.
There was no real wavering.
The only people that have been ousted as traitors...
I guess, are the Wagner soldiers who continued in the face of Putin's speech on their march,
and then they eventually turned back, and Putin has since thanked them for turning back and not spilling more blood.
So I just, I don't see that any arguments has been really put forward,
despite all the very long historical diatribs.
Jackson, when Piotr was speaking initially, I had two questions for HAM,
but I'd also like to ask you those questions.
I think you've answered the first one in some sort of way,
but two of the things you said Pira, and maybe when you speak after Jackson,
you could also just touch on these.
The first one you said is, okay, look, I'm not saying that Pugosin was going there
to Moscow to unseat Putin, but he wanted to, and your words were, unsettle him.
I mean, literally, like,
He didn't know what the outcome could have been at that point, that he started this rebellion or however you want to call it.
So he couldn't have possibly planned this strategically with Belarus in mind to unsettle Putin.
So it's an interesting take you had.
And the second thing is, I mean, and I don't know.
I just think this is the weirdest thing I've ever seen in terms of whether or not it was a coup or rebellion.
The outcome of it was so unforeseen.
And the second thing, the second question is you said that, I mean, he's gone to Belarus, he's going to have his, you know, at seven million or eight million, you know, army there and he's got his life ahead of him and he's won out of this.
My question is, is that rose tinted spectacles?
Because somebody on this space said, and I think it might have been Joa who said this, that, you know, back in the day he wouldn't have been able to even leave.
But we have to remind ourselves, it's not even been 48 hours.
And this isn't normal circumstances.
Russia is in the middle of a war when this has happened.
And so, you know, is it rose-tinted spectacles?
Does he have this glorious future ahead of him?
Is he just forgiven and forgotten?
So, Jackson, what are your thoughts on those two?
And then we can go to Peter.
Peter.
Yes, the DAS has definitely not settled yet for Progogian, for, I'd say even still Shui Gunasimov,
but in your right, I mean, though, and I'm speaking from like, you know, personal relationships right now,
I can't say this reflects all of Russians, and as everyone knows I'm not Russian, but from personal relationships I have with people and Russian soldiers and reservists,
who were very, very supportive,
the overwhelming majority of them
were very supportive of Progoshin and Wagner,
both prior to this madness unfolding over the past few days.
And they all liked, uh,
You know, they all liked progoshin even more than they liked.
Sure, you know, I talked about this with them over the past several months,
even before those videos in Bachmute came out.
So when this went down, I mean, all those same people I hit up again,
and they said, well, you know, if this was real, if this was not some sort of an op,
then, yeah, he obviously went too far.
And that was a bad move on his end, which I think most of us can probably agree with.
It was very dangerous.
You could label it treasonous, self-centered.
You can label a lot of things.
But, yeah, we still don't know.
The thing is, though, that Progosion was celebrated by so many.
He was respected by so many.
He was an oligarch, but people saw them as, like, you know, Russia's oligarch, a patriotic oligarch.
If that makes any sense.
And...
He was obviously, you know, he earned his stripes, though he's not a military officer, commander, anything like that, never had military experience.
People respected what he did in Bakhmu for 280 plus days being out there primarily on the front, you know, and that messes with the guy's head.
But I think maybe even part of the reason why he hasn't been killed yet, if we can assume that this was all real.
even if it wasn't a coup, it was a challenge to Putin.
The reason why he hasn't been off yet is because I think there are a lot of people within Russia
who don't like what he did, but are probably like, well, you know, he's done so much.
I don't really want to see him be killed and maybe Putin's worried about the ramifications
of killing him right now if that's something that's on his mind.
So there's a lot to, you know, it's not, these things don't happen in the vacuum and there's a lot of things to consider.
Yeah. And just before,
thanks, Jackson. Just before we go to Peter, I've got a update.
So Zelenskyy's done a video as of two minutes ago and he said,
yesterday I had talks with partners including President Biden,
primarily about armed supplies.
Today I was in the area where these weapons will give more power,
more protection to Ukrainian lives and bring our victory closer.
This is the main thing. All our land will be free, all of it.
And that's the end of the statement.
So, Mickey, I pass back to you, thanks.
I have a genuine question if I can ask, because it's something that I've been wrestling with.
If you mind if I answer Calici's questions, please, Joe, because I've been waiting a while and I'm going to go to bed.
Sure.
Thanks, just to finish this conversation out.
Kaleisi, can you remind me of your two questions briefly, please?
Yeah, so the first one was, you said he,
progaution didn't want to kind of DC Putin,
and you thought it was just to unsettle him.
And I just said, is it really, I mean,
would you really have gone to that extent?
Yeah.
not knowing what the outcome could have been to unsettle somebody.
It was a massive risk.
Second one was where you said he's gone to Belarus,
he's got his future, he's got his 7 million, 8 million army, whatever.
And so isn't that roasted it's spectacles?
Because it's not even me in 48 hours to think that he has this bright future.
Right, right. Okay.
But it's, okay, so 8,000 proposed forces that would be in a facility
in the southeastern part of Belarus.
roughly around where the Russians dropped power troopers from into the outskirts of Kiev in the initial early days of the full-scale invasion.
So, I mean...
Look, what I'm trying to do is condense sort of 20, 30 years.
I know I spoke a long time before.
And what I was trying to do, as I say,
was just trying to condense a lot of information
into a quick take,
because I know people have short attention spans
or not interested in the long history,
but it's relevant here.
And I think it's not just,
if you don't try and contextualize it through a bit of historical information.
Personally, I think to answer your second question first,
I don't think it's...
rose tinted glances, I think that's a simplification of what I'm trying to get at here.
Prudogrosian is not out of the picture. He's not suddenly out of Putin's radar.
But the main point I was trying to say is that if you look at the peace deal that was negotiated,
and again, we don't know how much of this was already premeditated,
It's turned out very well for the Wegener forces.
They've gotten full immunity immediately,
despite attempted coup,
amongst certain people's views.
It was an attempted coup.
That's pretty generous,
considering what they were trying to do.
And he's basically being given free reign
to continue to operate operations.
Equally, there will be a change.
I think it was point number three of the deal.
There will be a revisement,
my words, not theirs, of the top
parts of the Kremlin. So I think Grasimov and Shoygu will be gone.
Shoygu is a terrible defense minister. He was put in place in 2012, I think,
because he was more malleable to Putin's demands. And what happened?
He quickly fucked up in Crimea, right? They sent in the little green men in Crimea.
They tried to do some other stuff in Eastern Ukraine, and it didn't go the way that the Russians wanted.
So Shoygu, I personally think Shogu's an idiot.
And he basically, you can tell from the way Putin and him have interacted one with one another over the course of the Ukrainian conflict.
Clearly, Russia believes that it should be doing better job in Ukraine than it has been.
And Putin's body language and general lack of interaction with Shoygu has been documented in videos and conferences.
So I do think that I'm not saying it's a role.
I don't think it's rose-tinted.
I don't think Progrosion is out of the picture.
I think he's definitely got, you know, a role to play.
But as you yourself and Jackson, in which I'm in agreement on this specific point,
is the dust is not settled.
It's been less than 60 hours.
And these sorts of things will be feeling...
for months, weeks.
And again, I really want to emphasize that when I think Putin is in a fragile position,
it's relative to what he was before,
which is arguably the most successful autocrat in modern times, right?
So he's not disappearing. No, definitely not.
And to your second question, your other question, to unsettle him,
the fact that they even made a statement,
is pretty unusual, right?
If tomorrow the senior member of the, I don't know, Chinese Communist Party says,
I've had enough of you, President Xi, that's going to be enough for enough people to be like,
okay, we're going to wake up.
So, no, was this enough to maybe completely undermine the entirety of Russia's existence?
Probably not.
I don't want to sugarcoat it or embellish it, but I do think that the fact they got quite quickly over to Rostov-Vondom, took over Rostov-Vondom, which is Russia's southern military command. It's a city of a million-plus people. It's culturally very important.
that easily, the fact that we've seen video footage of Russian troops,
some of which were killed, there were a few people killed actually on Saturday,
we should keep that in mind, basically sort of let the Wagner troops come through
and they're standing in the main table desk area on the desk rather,
you know, is I think enough to be like,
Yeah, we need to do something about it.
And oh, and the last point, actually, just to come to think of it,
flight radar.
We saw loads of flights leaving Moscow, St. Petersburg and so on.
And whilst we don't know who fully were on those flights,
you know, a lot of people suggest that it was oligarchs,
people with money getting the head out of Russia.
But there was a lot of this going right, right?
Who was on these...
So we don't know.
But the point, I get your point.
It was...
unforeseen and because it was
unforeseen
you know you can take
whichever perspective you want to
massive it was a huge big deal
it was a coup or you know what
there was a bit of movement because the guy wanted to be out
but let me I'm sorry
Petro let me just
Yeah Felisi I mean I
We are probably going to be wrapping up the space very soon
so let me just hear your chief what's your comments and then we'll
can i just ask the question so i want to ask a question oh sorry yeah go ahead joe joe you ask you
ask you a question i'll go achieve
Chief and then.
Yeah, sorry.
The last two days I've been noticing something that I don't understand, I really don't
understand, right?
I'm American, proud American.
And what I've been hearing lately coming a lot from the Magaside is pro-Russian rhetoric,
anti-American rhetoric.
CIA or America is the source of all evil funding these uprisings in other countries.
And Putin is a God.
And he's powerful and almighty.
And I don't get it.
I honestly don't get it.
I thought Michael was like America first.
And I don't get it.
It seems like so anti-American.
And I don't understand.
Please explain it to me someone.
who said can you give it any specific examples of who said stuff like that you for example
what you you were saying that you got to give you an exact quote about the CIA the
CIA being behind this uprising for example no I didn't hold on Joe I don't know
Who you were listening to or like maybe you tuned into a different program, all I did was cite a Washington Post article, which I wanted to ask Peter about as well, actually, or get specifically get his reaction to.
This is May 15th, 2023. This isn't me doing wild anti-American speculation about anything.
I'm telling you that U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that Progosion had been secretly collaborating with Ukraine military intelligence.
and after the Pentagon leaks in April
this information came out through classified
document.
So it's not me making like
you're right, you're right.
Because I hate America.
So I mean, why don't you address the substance
rather than making baseless psychological?
You're right.
You did address it that way.
But there were people on the other show
who did not address it that way.
I tried to make it seem exactly like
CIA 100% is behind this
and this can cause the end of the world.
I mean, Joe, I don't think anyone said that.
Like some people made the,
Oh, I can quote exactly who said it.
No, no, someone, someone said that this is a possibility.
I don't think anyone said.
Yeah, Michael today said it was a possibility.
You're right.
I'm overstepping, still very confused from the night before of, I don't know, I didn't get that rhetoric coming from very pro-Maga people, which I would expect to be America first people.
You know, so I apologize, Michael.
Yeah, you did pose it as a question, not as a statement.
Right.
Mind if I make one quick point to that, Joe, Mr. Lamar.
Yeah, yeah.
I know you've got to.
Let me go.
Let me go.
Let me go to.
Bro, bro, please.
Let me go to see.
Let me go to chief.
And then I'll go, oh, go on.
30 seconds.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
No, just, just, just, so Joe, some people believe that why Putin is such a
appealing character to people in particularly an evangelical circles on Twitter, for
example.
is because he preaches to traditional family values.
He's about, you know, church and state.
He's about women.
Russia is a pretty homophobic country.
And whilst I'm not going to go into all of that tonight,
there are many people on here who really do like Putin,
and he knows that.
And he talks as much to his domestic audience as he does to the foreign audience in America,
which he knows will support Trump, and Trump is more sympathetic to Putin.
And the thing goes on.
So that's one reason.
Good point.
Never looked better like that.
But, yeah.
Yeah, so a couple points.
I mean, we can go and we're looking at this from the Western perspective mostly in terms of Putin.
I think the speculation about how this is going to impact Putin and his in his country long term.
I think he's a lot of speculation.
I think Putin's going to win his election.
You know, I think that he so would win this.
I really don't think that it's going to sway the sizable or the scale of people that have been, I guess, purported that would be shifting over or questioning him.
I think in a bare minimum, we're going to see Putin probably looking into his advisors, as I've said the entire time, and figure out who's loyal to him and who wasn't.
It wouldn't surprise me if there was a change in leadership.
from that
but a lot of times
I'm advising people
just wait and see what happens
I don't think
that there's be a lot of change
you know
You know, in terms of support for Putin in Russia, I don't think there is, it's more so
to be leadership changes.
And I think, you know, I'm America first, but I can, I recognize that I'm looking at this
from the West and people in Russia may have a different opinion about things and they
might feel differently about certain issues and values that Putin resonates with them
with.
So we're looking at this as outsiders.
Russians may have a very different opinion about him as a leader.
And I'm not going to know what they're thinking because
I'm not a Russian citizen or anything like that.
But there's a,
that people definitely resonate with him in that country.
And at the end of the day, Russia, Putin has a goal with Ukraine.
And this issue could have been a lot more bloody, a lot more violent.
And this has been pretty much resolved,
our understanding within like 24ish hours.
I'm sure that Putin knows.
Yeah, he can go back to bombing malls in children's schools and things like that instead.
Peter, I wanted you to specifically address, if you wouldn't mind, this report from the Washington Post in May that U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed that Progotion had been a secret collaborator of Ukraine military intelligence.
In light of what Progotion has now done, what do you make of their report? Do you have any reaction to it at all?
Not read it. Can't speak to things I haven't read. I think the notion that the West is somehow collaborating.
Peter, do you have Google?
Yeah.
Yes, Michael.
Okay.
I'm not just like you're back and cool, but I'm busy.
Do you know how to look up the Washington Post?
I'm busy, mate.
I'll answer you on the face of what you've just told me.
I'm not jumping through Hoopsweet, mate.
I think that it's preposterous.
Well, I ask you to read an article, not jump through.
Yeah, well, I'm also conscious of the fact that Suleiman and Mickey want to wrap up the space, mate.
So let's be respectful to that, yeah?
Oh, so it was a matter of respect.
All right, fair enough.
Yeah, yeah, Michael. Come on.
Like, cool, you've called the mic.
I think it's preposterous.
I think that the notion that the West is working with Progroshenan,
who is in some ways worse than Putin, is ridiculous.
That's my initial take.
So you think that's a report is false?
I mean, I know people want to wrap up if you're going to say that this report is just flatly false and not give him the explanation at all beyond that.
I know I got a question your...
Why are you so intent on sort of...
Dude, if you love Russian Putin so much, go and lift that.
All right, so now, see, this is what I'm talking about.
It ultimately comes down to an accusation that I just personally love Russian and Putin.
You've done everything but addressed the substance to the point.
You've done everything but addressed the substance of the point.
You've psychologized it about me.
You haven't addressed the point.
Why not?
Michael was saying it's not a non-zero possibility.
That the, just real quick, like 10 seconds.
The thing is, it's not as non-zero chance, or it could be a possibility of that.
We don't know that.
And Michael was referring to a report that he saw that was alleging some coronation.
So that that's what he was talking about.
I don't think it's, we can dismissing.
Yeah, Chief, and I'm, and Michael's now getting annoyed because I'm not willing to go down this road with him at the end of the conversation.
And when I haven't have enough information or context to get into it.
My personal initial reaction is that knowing Prokroyne and having studied the guide for the past five years and looking at the Wagner Group, I think that that is an extreme case that even the West wouldn't be willing to go to.
That's my initial reaction. If you don't like it, well, that's too bad. I don't have enough information to give you an answer otherwise.
Michael, you have a habit of wanting to pursue a particular line of thoughts and rhetoric and I don't agree with it, I'm afraid. So that's where I end the conversation.
even the West wouldn't be willing to go to
Peter I mean I'm not I don't have enough context to comment on this but you see
I just I just tweeted you the link to the article if you're interested
so I wanted to make it as convenient as possible for you to see what I'm talking
about so for your benefit Michael you are putting so much effort in I appreciate
bro you for your search for the truth you're even getting the article out of
please read it bro please
Thank you.
Let me take a bow and then I'll...
Yeah, yeah, no.
You're even willing to be
to do the research for him.
You should be bowing for me, buddy.
I'm trying to let you go to bed, Suleiman.
No, no, bro.
Like, you know what I mean?
When Michael's putting that amount of effort in,
I feel bad.
Like, he's even...
I'm teasing him.
He's even put it on the nest.
I'm like, you know what?
Please read a few paragraphs at least.
Patrick, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this
in terms of what your thoughts were
on Putin's speech and any thoughts
in addition to that.
Yeah.
Hey, Hussimman.
Yeah, I don't think nothing there that moved the dial for me,
more than the previous speech that he gave just a couple of days ago.
So, yeah, I think I'm more interested in it's kind of unpacking and analyzing the reaction
and, you know, how people were carrying on over the weekend,
especially in Western punditry circles.
I thought it was a great case study.
uh in kind of i don't know um it reminded me of uh orson wells in 1938 in the war of the world's radio broadcast
where half the east coast thought that there was an alien invasion that's what i sort of liken it to
um i think there's something to be learned by everybody from that
The one thing I want to say is I hear a lot on the space and lots of spaces about how the Western media reacts to it and how the Russian media reacts to it and how the Ukrainian media.
I mean, we have to use common sense and understand, yes, America is going to try to react to it and the media is not going to.
We don't live in the world where we only get told the truth.
we get told perception of what they want us to hear because they want us to follow a certain agenda.
Just like the Russian media doesn't tell them the truth.
They have their own agenda, just like the Ukrainian media have their own agendas.
These are all agendas at play.
So I think the most important thing is not to debate how the media or how our politicians or their politicians are reactive, but to...
read between the lines of all of the information that's being put out there
and come up with a common understanding of what really is going on.
So, sorry, go ahead, Khalisi.
No, I was going to ask Peter if he's had a chance to because I now, now I do.
Do not put pressure on Peota.
Do not make him do it.
Like, I'm sure he's going to get through one paragraph soon.
Like, don't be like that.
Piotter is a good guy.
Right.
People's statements saying, oh, no, the West would never do that.
And I'm like, seriously, I mean, take Russia, Ukraine out of the context of it.
What Michael's actually saying on principle, you're telling me the West would never do that.
No, it's not what I'm saying.
Again, you're simplifying a rather complicated matter because...
Peter, did you see the link I sent you to the article?
Did you have a chance in a paragraph or two?
Say again?
No, I was responding to someone else.
Peter, I said, did you see the link I sent you to the article?
And did you have a chance to scan a paragraph or two?
No, Michael, because I'm not that quick to read.
I don't just skim things.
I read them, take in the information and make educated assessments.
I'm not a, like Lev has said, I'm surprised that I have to actually agree with that.
How long do you think it would take you to read what article?
Enough that I decide when I'm finished on mulling over the information.
His guy go, what I go?
I love this, Michael.
I want to point everything out for the audience.
It's not even about the topic anymore.
It's more just Michael wants to be right.
Wait, progotion is not part of the topic.
He wants to illustrate to everybody here that he's right and I'm wrong and because I haven't had a
I've only been provided in the past two minutes that somehow my points have no validity whatsoever.
I love this.
This is great.
Tell me I'm crazy here for Sillivan.
He's saying that I brought up an irrelevant thing by bringing up progation.
I thought that was the whole topic.
Am I crazy?
Look at how educated you are.
All right.
Guys, guys, you both talk to each other.
All right, listen, listen.
It's fine.
Like,
Piotasetti is a slow reader,
so Michael,
don't put pressure on him.
Like,
this is almost bullying.
Like,
guys might take a day
to read a few paragraphs.
I don't want to be arrested
by Interpol.
Yeah,
yeah.
I don't want to.
I can't keep up.
I'm sorry.
I'm a dumb ass.
it's fine.
Piot will come back to you.
We'll probably have
another space on this anyway.
So Piotto...
so Peota will...
You genuinely want me to read it.
I can read it quickly now
and give you my hot tape.
My point is trying to make it.
Yes, absolutely.
That's all he was asking for.
Just read a critique.
This is way too much of the Piotto show.
This is not what I'm here for.
I'm here to talk about it.
I mean, it's felt like that for the last hour,
Peota, so it's fine.
We accepted it now.
Fuck off, mate.
Right.
While Pioter's reading the article,
let me go to...
We have a musical interview
while he reads it.
I've not had your thoughts on this because
Yeah, you should play do, do, do, do, do however that song goes.
Do you want, do you play any instruments?
No, I don't.
Stop asking you other questions.
He can't read and talk at the same time.
Let him read the article.
So let me go to, right, let me go to Mitty, guys.
Let me go to Mickey.
So, Mickey, obviously, you've been host on the show, so we've not had your, like, your thoughts.
So what's your thoughts been on the current discussion?
Well, you know, the current discussion, I think, you know, Michael was cyberbullying.
All right.
Well, Michael was cyberbullying.
No, no, no, not that one.
Not that one. Let's not go to Peartre's reading skills.
Can I get a plaque commemorating me or congratulating me for cyberbullying him?
What is your overall, your overall president?
We don't want to talk about Peot's a reading level, reading skills, right?
What is your overall perspective about the discussion that you've been moderating for the last few hours?
I think there, the...
I think everyone's actually made pretty good points and actually it's been pretty
moderate.
I think nobody has said anything totally like,
like unreasonable.
I think what I'm hearing from people like Jackson is, you know, he wants more than just
superficial damage to Putin.
He wants something measurable.
And I think Peotor's point is like, well, it's a little bit early for that.
It's been a day or two.
Let's wait and see what the fallout is.
But overall, but like Peodor's point is in part of Peuter...
And Joe is like, well, it definitely not good.
And I appreciated what Lev was arguing,
and Lev has been right pretty much the whole way through,
if you had paying attention to what Lev has been saying on these spaces.
Lev is saying...
You know, you know, Putin is going to navigate this in a way that benefits himself, and we're going to see him consolidate his power and use this to his advantage.
Maybe he didn't cause it, but he will definitely utilize it to his advantage, despite looking bad.
And I think, you know, I think those are all very reasonable points.
I think what's kind of interesting for me is just sort of the lack of...
clarity from the Kremlin.
I think like I'm used to Putin in his pomp
where it's very clear, very strong,
decisive action right away.
He wouldn't have let
Perugian get anywhere near the Kremlin before.
He would probably be,
Berosian probably be dead by now.
It's kind of a strange,
it's like to me,
I would expect the Kremlin to be a bit stronger,
but maybe there are palace games being played,
you know,
and we have yet to kind of see those play out.
It is interesting who is in the meetings
with Putin and who wasn't.
That's maybe a topic for a later date, but there's not everyone on Putin's circle was in the meetings he had following his speech.
It's also kind of interesting.
The speech was basically a nothing burger, although it seemed to have been hyped up, which is kind of also interesting.
So, you know, I think this is something to watch.
It's very extremely newsworthy.
This is...
you know, in my opinion, you know, a new type of Putin.
And we'll see whether or not, you know, his power weakens or not.
It's definitely too early to tell.
And, you know, like, the thing that we've been saying all along is if anything happens to Progoshan,
You know, if he falls out a window or, you know, he shoots and stuff in the bag of head twice, then we'll know, you know, what the palace games are going to be. But if we don't see that, then I think all bets are off.
That's an absolutely profound analysis by Mickey. You should think about applying for a job at CNN. I think you'd be brilliant.
Patrick, Patrick, Patrick,
what are we got to be so mean, bro?
Why are you in a bad mood?
You'd want to be cyberbullying me too,
just like Michael's cyberbullying, Piotr?
I'm serious.
You'd be great addition to their team.
Cyberbullying with sarcasm.
That's the only way to go about it.
Okay, guys.
The thing is, the thing is, I will say,
Patrick, you have a great voice.
Okay.
I think you have a wonderful voice.
Okay, okay, guys, guys, Mickey,
Mickey, don't try and promote your Twitter space layer.
Right, Patrick.
Dude, I was not going to do a dating group.
This is being weird now.
I thought you were saying,
now it's getting weird.
I thought you signed.
So Patrick, if you, because we're about to end now,
if you can give all of me also a summary,
an overall summary, just from a different perspective,
and then we can wrap the show up.
Silliman, before Patrick does, I think Piotr finished reading.
I think he wants to respond.
No, no, no, we're giving people.
Guys, we're giving Piotr until tomorrow.
Oh, he needs at least a week.
No, I'm doing all right.
I'm on the bottom of paragraph one.
I have a special musical company for when he finally comes back.
Hang on, hang on, I'm nearly there.
I've just read the headline.
I'll get on to the actual.
I'm polishing it off my trumpet for when you're finished so we can celebrate.
All right, buddy.
Okay, Patrick, go ahead.
Just give us a summary of overall thoughts.
You've heard what Mickey's got to say.
Obviously, you disagree with the pie of it.
Just give us me a different perspective before.
before we end the show.
Okay, well, I'll come at this from a completely different angle than what you're expecting,
but I think that this space is 24-hour marathon on the night of the coup that wasn't a coup
was to me the ultimate case study in a petri dish for disinformation and misinformation
ever on Twitter spaces, and I was absolutely floored.
and fascinated and morbidly fascinated at the same time,
and I'm glad I have witnessed it.
So I know that that's the gold standard.
You're a part of history, Patrick.
Yeah, so, I mean, I don't agree with Patrick because we,
when we were on these spaces,
we provided a significant amount of various opinions on this,
both for and against.
We had people pushing back like Kim and Ian and myself who disagreed with some of the
narrative, left kept more of a balanced position.
Most people, yeah, a lot of, not most people,
and then the other side we had the other position.
So we had various opinions on here.
And when people say about the coup, I mean,
Putin keeps using the word.
So as much as everybody's getting upset about that word,
like Putin used it even in this speech like three times.
So maybe Putin's getting wrong and he's getting confused.
That might be the case.
Maybe we need educate him.
Oh my God.
You're using Putin to validate your position soon.
And then come on.
No, no.
Come on.
Come on.
So the guy that is getting, no, no.
I mean.
I mean, yeah, what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with that?
The guy who is...
The people that are going after the king,
the guy is in charge.
He's literally like,
you guys are doing a coup.
So my point is...
And even when we were going through the spaces,
like, I remember I said to...
Ian was like, no, it's not a coup.
And then he was like, oh, after Putin's speech,
oh, yeah, now Putin said it is.
And with Kim, I was like, when do you think Kim that it could be?
Because I changed the title to mutiny, I remember.
And then I was like, Kim, because he was like, it's a mutiny.
So I changed the time.
I said, Kim, when do you think it would be?
And he goes, when they get to Moscow.
So again, like, everybody had different perspectives of what it could be.
And again, we put all those perspectives in,
and then we give overall a balanced thing.
opinion on 24 hours as opposed to what mainstream media does where it's just one specific
narrative but anyway scott president i think you guys did a great i think you did a great job of
reporting of the fast-moving uh reports that were coming along was it was a non-stop reports coming
and you guys did a great job and telling the people that's happening you told you of twitter's faces so i
but you find this interesting
because I had never hosted one really for an extended period before, but I ended up hosting not really by in my own tent, but it just organically developed that it was like an all African roundtable on the events of what transpired in Russia, Ukraine. So it was all people from, you know, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, everywhere across Africa, for some reason, just
using my space to give their perspective on what happened in Russia.
It was just fascinated because it's not one that you're ever really going to get to anywhere near
enough as much as that should be represented in just kind of popular consciousness.
So I have to endorse the utility of Twitter spaces, at least as a unique information gathering mechanism,
even if it does have some risk of...
putting out unverified information,
but so does every other...
It's great for letting people read articles
one word at a time, so I agree.
Just getting...
Brilliant, perfect.
Yeah, that's it.
Okay, guys, so thank you very much.
Much appreciated.
Thank you for listening.
We will be back tomorrow.
Most likely at our normal time,
unless Putin decides to give another...
unplanned speech or
and actually there is
they are saying that
Lokashanka is going to be
fielding questions or depending on
how we think that is and how big it is
they may be another space tomorrow
but if not same time tomorrow
for this space
we do the normal finance spaces
8 a.m. Eastern. The crypto spaces at 10, 15 a.m. Eastern. And then tomorrow is the AI space at 12.30
Eastern. And then we have this at 6. So yeah, join in and check it out. Much appreciated. Thank you guys.
Thanks a lot. Thanks to the life updates and everything. Thank you. I just finished the article.
