{"id":1108438,"date":"2023-06-28T05:59:37","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T05:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=287506"},"modified":"2023-06-28T05:59:37","modified_gmt":"2023-06-28T05:59:37","slug":"russia-the-wagner-insurrection-and-the-perils-of-overwrought-punditry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/06\/28\/russia-the-wagner-insurrection-and-the-perils-of-overwrought-punditry\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia, the Wagner Insurrection and the Perils of Overwrought Punditry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photograph Source: Alexander Davronov \u2013 CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

When news broke of Wagner Commander Yevgeny Prigozhin\u2019s race toward Moscow this past weekend I noted in a social media post this required a serious logistical effort to supply. I have since scaled back my assessment of its logistical complexities. Rather than 24,000 Wagner forces on the march toward Moscow, it quickly became known it was only 4-6,000, and estimated vehicles at 55 on the bottom end, to 200 on the top side. Not insignificant, but not huge either. And we don\u2019t know yet if it was Prigozhin\u2019s intention of going all the way to Moscow, or if it was a bluff. In short, logistics may not have been that consequential for this rash dash to Moscow, or perhaps they were all along intending to halt before arriving there. There may, or may not, have been significant planning involved, but the logistical complexity of Prigozhin\u2019s race to Moscow may not have required the advanced planning many pundits assert.<\/p>\n

No sooner, however, had the tires on Prigozhin\u2019s trucks stopped rolling, than pundits from what Vladimir Putin calls the \u201ccollective West\u201d (as he terms what is chiefly the UK and its former historical settler colonies) were spinning yarns about how the run on Moscow reprised events of 1917. In fact, so was Putin for that matter. Having seemingly read an article or book on the subject, the foreign policy commentariat began churning out articles suggesting a veritable Kornilov Affair that was a prelude to the collapse of Russia\u2019s Kerensky government still at war with Germany. Of course, it remains too early to tell if there are any \u201crhymes\u201d let alone repetitions, to paraphrase the late Samuel Clemens to 1917, in this matter.<\/p>\n

Regarding WWI, we all know it was catastrophic for Czarist and Kerensky\u2019s Russia.  Then 1.8 million Russian soldiers died and some half-million direct civilian deaths and another 700,000 from war related disease. Its economy shrank by over half. So, it was utter economic collapse then and some 2-3 million dead for Russia in 1917. This has little relation to Russia now, but that is hardly to say all is well there presently. But what are the differences between then and now?<\/p>\n

Today, instead of over half of Russia\u2019s GDP gone, Russia\u2019s economy shrank 2.1% in 2022 and is set to grow by 0.7% this year. We might quibble at the margins of these numbers, but for most this is an unnoticeable change, vs the catastrophic collapse of Russia\u2019s economy in WWI. Moreover, Russia presently is not even on a full war-economy footing (although their critics from Russian chauvinists say they should be). Russia is spending a paltry 3% of their GDP on the war. In short, Putin has undertaken his war in Ukraine on the cheap in hopes of \u201ckeeping the calm\u201d at home. But it appears Putin went too far on this score of war without domestic inconvenience and the military and nationalists are unhappy with the results.<\/p>\n

On deaths, the numbers are serious. Some tens of thousands (others argue more, but without conclusive evidence) Russian soldiers are dead. These are poor working-class sops from the provinces few care about. Disregard for their plight, if not fate, showed Putin at his worst when he told the mother of one of these fallen young men that she should be happy her son died for a reason. \u201cSome people, are they even living or not living? It\u2019s unclear. And how they die, from vodka or something else, it\u2019s also unclear\u2026But your son lived, you understand?\u201d It\u2019s rotten, but also increasingly normal in war today and Ukraine now also shows a similar profile for who is fighting and dying in this war.<\/p>\n

This is all by way of saying we should not overstate comparisons with WWI, which while the present war is terrible, its impact still pales to that of the first World War. That said, the war clearly has gone on too long for the taste of Russia\u2019s nationalists and they are restive with the lack of its progress. Thus, Putin will have to exit or escalate, both of which pose their dangers for the Kremlin, and possibly the world if Putin takes the likely path of escalation.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\n


\r\nThis content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org<\/a> and was authored by Jeffrey Sommers.
<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photograph Source: Alexander Davronov \u2013 CC BY-SA 4.0
\nWhen news broke of Wagner Commander Yevgeny Prigozhin\u2019s race toward Moscow this past weekend I noted in a social media post this required a serious logistical effort to supply. I have since scaled ba…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57839,42657,22,1684,266,63864,55548,63865,24,27150,42603],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1108438"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1108536,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1108438\/revisions\/1108536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1108438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1108438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1108438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}