Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Gorefest, on 06 October 2022 - 09:43 PM, said:

This reminds me of how Gadaffi and/or Saddam and/or Bin Laden were always about 3 days from dying of natural causes. Those rumours with Putin have always felt like wishful thinking (even granting that some of the people waiting to succeed him are far more hardline).

A Russian friend told me that in Russia there is more of a stigma to turning 70 though, they see it like maybe someone in the US or Europe turning 80 or even 85: good going but you might not have too long left. That's always seemed odd (Putin has access to the best doctors in the country, obviously) but the average lifespan in Russia is significantly below what it is elsewhere. Also, one of Putin's friends seemingly died of old age at just 74 fairly recently.

Kirill has asked the clergy and the faithful to pray for the health of Putin for two days.

Huh.

Abyss, on 06 October 2022 - 03:13 PM, said:

Entirely possible!

Apparently the psychic alerted him to a plot by the United States to destroy Russia after he "listened in" to Madeleine Albright's dreams.

Hoo boy. Sounds like infighting has broken out in Putin's upper circles. Patrushev, the very hawkish and somewhat bizarre conspiracy theorist (he has a psychic on retainer) who has Putin's ear in the inner circle, has apparently started campaigning for Prigozhin (the head of Wagner) to be fired or possibly even eliminated, as he has apparently broken their long-standing agreement not to talk about Wagner as an unofficial tool of the Russian military.

Prigozhin has also been publicly disgruntled about how things are going, and his PR guy Slobodenyuk has been calling for Shoigu to be fired. A Rosgvardia unit loyal to Putin has arrested Slobodenyuk, one of whom's Telegram channels has publicly called for the execution of Lavrov and Peskov as traitors. Interestingly this did not go through the FSB, which Putin continues to blame for intelligence failures prior to the war (the FSB insiders maintain they gave accurate intelligence and Putin ignored them).

Kadyrov has joined Prigozhin in calling for a change in direction, and will likely not be impressed by these later power moves (Putin has given him a field promotion, possibly to alleviate that issue). Prigozhin's own men, loyal to him personally, are currently fighting hard in Bukhat, one of the few areas where Russia has had recent (if modest success). Kadyrov commands a very large and personally loyal military, and has kept that military on-side with rewards, keeping them out of the worst of the fighting, and ensuring they know he has their backs and is only working with Putin out of personal loyalty from the end of the civil war. If Prigozhin and Kadyrov feel they've been betrayed, they have significant power and resources to stop fighting, pull their troops out of Ukraine and start a civil war.

It's also worth noting that Prigozhin has garnered some popular support amongst the wider Russian military in Ukraine, condemning poor equipment, conditions and far too late reinforcements. If Wagner were to go off-reservation or withdraw, it's possible other Russian units would follow.

This argument on how the war might end with Russian forces simply turning on one another, even if Putin could somehow ride it out, is interesting, although I'm not sure 100% convincing.

Pretty solid reports coming in that Davydiv Brid has fallen, basically completing the collapse of the entire northern sector of the Kherson front.

The Times in the UK has tapped a source who has said that Russia may be considering a test firing of a tactical nuclear warhead in the Black Sea, whilst the Poseidon drone is test-fired in the Kara Sea. However, they do not believe an actual use in Ukraine is imminent. It does appear the mood music has changed since last week, when the reports were of Russia test-firing a missile onto Ukrainian soil or a direct conventional attack on a logistics hub in Europe, so, weirdly, it seems that this might be a climbdown from the previous positions, and would not necessarily trigger the kind of overwhelming conventional response that NATO members had been impressing on their Russian counterparts.

More than 700,000 Russian men are reported to have left Russia in the last fortnight to avoid conscription. The shock to the Russian economy that has caused is going to be huge.