[Telegraph] One of the bloodiest battles in modern European history is taking place in Bakhmut, with reports of more than 1,000 soldiers dying in a single day. But more significantly for the Kremlin, it may also be the site of an extraordinary Russian civil war, playing out on Ukrainian soil between different factions. At the heart of it are two of the most significant parts of the Kremlin’s war machine: the Wagner Group and the Russian ministry of defence.
Their confrontation has been eight months in the making. For while his mercenaries have been at the forefront of the campaign to take Bakhmut, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has been waging a political battle of his own, to gain influence in the Kremlin. He seemingly believes he can use sheer military might in Ukraine — with the help of some 50,000 men — to prove himself as a Russian leader. Some think his ultimate goal is to usurp the Russian ministry of defence. Perhaps he wishes to bring all Russian forces under his personal command.
Since May last year, Prigozhin has been striking a public contrast with the Russian army’s humiliation on the battlefield. He openly brags about his own successes, while issuing damning public criticism of Russia’s top brass. He frequently alleges incompetence and even betrayal by Putin’s senior officials. In February, he went as far as to accuse Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu of treason for withholding ammunition from his troops.
As one might expect, the reaction from the ministry of defence has been unforgiving. A new report from the Institute for the Study of War says that Russian generals could be using the Bakhmut death trap as an opportunity "to deliberately expend both elite and convict Wagner forces... in an effort to weaken Prigozhin and derail his ambitions for greater influence over the Kremlin".
In other words, they could be holding back Russian forces and depriving Wagner of ammunition in order to inflict maximum attrition on Prigozhin’s mercenaries. This would be an astonishingly self-interested strategy in the midst of an existential battle for the Russian regime and could be slowing down the advance on Bakhmut. It would mean that the Russian ministry of defence is now prioritising domestic power struggles over the invasion.
Such a zero-sum strategy could hardly be conducted without Putin’s blessing — and indeed it is just the latest in a series of moves by the ministry to diminish Prigozhin and remove Wagner from the order of battle.
Wagner, for example, has hitherto depended largely on convicts taken from Russian jails and labour camps, which make up 80 per cent of its forces in Ukraine. But at the start of the year, that source of recruits was cut off by the Kremlin, with the Russian army reportedly taking them for themselves.
These moves would correspond with Putin’s behaviour in the past. He’s been known to exploit the friction among leaders of the various parts of the defence establishment to ensure that their personal power remains limited — a somewhat similar tactic to that used by Hitler to keep in check the rival Wehrmacht and Waffen SS.
Early in the war, to the anger of Shoigu and General Gerasimov, the Russian president sided with Prigozhin, supporting Wagner with ministry of defence resources to alleviate the Russian army’s initial losses. But now, seeing the bombastic Wagner leader as a threat, Putin may have shifted gears. It appears to be Shoigu who has the upper hand again, with Prigozhin having his wings clipped at every opportunity. Even military victories he claims for Wagner have been formally attributed to the ministry of defence.
But while that trick has worked for Putin in the past, it is a big gamble this time — the risk being that he loses control of his disparate fighters. Other mercenary groups, including Shoigu’s own private military company and Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechen army, are presumably watching and learning. It may also be too late to suppress Prigozhin, who enjoys notable support among top officials and is constantly lauded in the patriotic media.
Prigozhin’s popularity reached new heights last autumn when he gave public approval to the killing of a Wagner defector, who was then battered to death by a sledgehammer. If those are his tactics, Putin had better hope the civil war in Bakhmut doesn’t reach Moscow.
Colonel Richard Kemp is a former infantry commander.
[Bee] Many are praising President Biden for his swift and decisive leadership this morning. In a set of forceful and clear remarks to the country's financial system, he called on all banks to stop collapsing immediately.
"Hey there, banks! Yeah, you! Stop it! I mean it! Not a joke!" said the President to a smiley face written on his thumb in Sharpie he mistook for one of his nieces. "You've collapsed long enough! I say, no more! That's enough, banks! Cut it out right now, or so help me I'll count to ten!"
The President then attempted to count to ten but got lost somewhere around the number four when he became distracted by the smiling face on his thumb and began sniffing it. "Oohh honey I like your shampoo! What was I saying again?"
Mainstream media, politicians, and Wall Street bankers all joined the call for banks to stop collapsing and vowed to never hold anyone accountable for any of this if it's the last thing they do.
At publishing time, the banks had still not heeded the President's command.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/15/2023 11:12 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
This is another article I had to check to see if it was the Bee after just reading the headline.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
03/15/2023 16:05 Comments ||
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#2
Rambler - I know...all too real. That's what great satire does
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/15/2023 19:09 Comments ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Victoria Nikiforova
[RIA] Yesterday, March 13, became a black Monday for Western exchanges. First, American stocks collapsed - this is how the bankruptcy of two large banks at once affected the market over the weekend, and after them, according to the domino effect, European quotes also fell.
[Daily Caller] A former Treasury Department official said Tuesday that American banks were on the verge of being nationalized following the Friday collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the government’s response.
"What the authorities did over the weekend was absolutely profound. They guaranteed the deposits, all of them, at Silicon Valley Bank. What that really means — and they won’t say it, and I’ll come back to that — what that really means is that they have guaranteed the entire deposit base of the U.S. financial system. The entire deposit base," Roger Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, told CNN host Kaitlan Collins. "Why? Because you can’t guarantee all the deposits in Silicon Valley Bank and then the next day say to the depositors, say, at First Republic, sorry, yours aren’t guaranteed. Of course they are." (RELATED: Biden Admin Shot Down Purchase Attempts For Failed Bank, Former Trump Official Says)
"If you want to change the law and go above $250,000 as a guarantee, well, then you got to go to Congress and change that law," said former Assistant Treasury Secretary Monica Crowley.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/15/2023 9:07 Comments ||
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#4
Depositors who iggied the FDIC insurance limits were aware of other financial assurances.
#9
SVB = Silicon Valley Bank
SB = Signature Bank
SBF = Sam Bankman-Fried
Coincidence?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/15/2023 18:35 Comments ||
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#10
Depositors who iggied the FDIC insurance limits were aware of other financial assurances.
How can it be otherwise ?
Possibly, Besoeker. The biggest players, no doubt. But some others really are shockingly ignorant— or unthinking — outside their area of expertise. Mr. Wife is being consulted by a start-up in that part of the world, and they were keeping all their funds in their operating checking account and associated savings account. Mr. Wife figures he earnt them months of operating expenses just by advising them to invest everything over six months spending in laddered Treasuries (T-bills? I’m not sure what the difference is) up to one year duration. Most people compartmentalize their thinking.
[PJ] The Biden Economy — hailed Monday morning by Presidentish Joe Biden as "strong" — seems like it’s falling apart, everything, everywhere all at once. NYSE halted trading of Charles Schwab, whose shares fell by more than 20%, and even a few Etsy sellers have been impacted by the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) collapse.
Schwab’s fall was the firm’s "most ever on an intraday-basis," even as company execs assured investors in a press release that "Schwab’s long-standing reputation as a safe port in a storm remains intact."
Overall, trading of shares in over 30 banks was halted on Wall Street Monday morning, as the entire sector suddenly looks like a risk investors aren’t willing to take. Almost everything banking was down, down, down in pre-market trades, which MarketWatch described as "panic-like activity."
"Among some of those that have already been halted at least twice," MarketWatch reported, "shares of Western Alliance Bancorp WAL, -51.05% plummeted 78.2%, Regions Financial Corp. RF, -5.33% sank 15.6%, First Republic Bank FRC, -64.05% plunged 65.5%, Comerica Inc. CMA, -21.24% tumbled 39.4% and PacWest Bancorp. PACW, -25.18% took a 47.7% dive."
Signature Bank, "a key financial institution for the cryptocurrency industry," according to the New York Post, was shut down on Sunday over "similar systemic risk" to SVB.
SVB and Signature are the second- and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history, respectively, with combined assets in excess of $300 billion. Depositors will be made whole, even deposits greater than the $250,000 covered by FDIC insurance. "Federal Reserve also said it is creating a new Bank Term Funding Program aimed at safeguarding institutions affected by the market instability of the SVB failure," according to CNBC.
The French statesman Georges Clemenceau once said: “#War is a series of #catastrophes that results in a #victory.” In the case of the invasion of #Iraq, however, the war that began 20 years ago started in victory and has ended in a series of catastrophes.https://t.co/kIISh5INAn
[FirstPost] As per reports, the arms left by the United States at the time of its withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 are being used by Pak Talibs. The spillover of these high-tech weapons and night-vision devices has also made its way into Kashmir
The weapons left by the United States at the time of its withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 have reportedly found their way into the hands of Pak Talibs.
As per a Nikkei Asia report, modern arms and "sophisticated" night-vision devices left by the US forces are being used by Tehrik-e-Taliban
Continued on Page 49
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Bee] Many are praising President Biden for his swift and decisive leadership this morning. In a set of forceful and clear remarks to the country's financial system, he called on all banks to stop collapsing immediately.
