The threatening the family is normally from the Chinese playbook, but you’re right it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it too. I really don’t understand what he was thinking, either go all the way or nothing. But yeah it’s weird.
He didn’t have nearly enough weapons, manpower, supplies, etc. to successfully take Moscow, so I don’t know if anyone (including himself) really knows what he was intending.
I still have no idea. They encountered so little resistance, so many of the Russian rank-and-file and even commanders seemed content to just sit and see what he’d do. Seems like he really could have just kept rolling past all the barricades and past all the police and national guard who were doing very little other than just watching. IDK, Russia as a state is so close to just a mafia that I really question if any significant amount of troops had enough personal loyalty to Putin, or if 90% of them would have happily stood by while Wagner occupied the Kremlin and switched sides the moment it seemed safe to do so. I can only imagine that a massive barrage of “we know where everyone you love is and we have knives to their throats right now” aimed at the Wagner commanders is the only thing that stopped them from just walking into the Capital almost without firing a shot, because that’s just how corrupt and empty the Russian state is right now. But who the hell knows.
That seems a plausible an explanation as any, but Prigozhin and the Wagner brass had to have known that their family would immediately be used as hostages as well, so again who knows what he was thinking?
The threatening the family is normally from the Chinese playbook, but you’re right it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it too. I really don’t understand what he was thinking, either go all the way or nothing. But yeah it’s weird.
He didn’t have nearly enough weapons, manpower, supplies, etc. to successfully take Moscow, so I don’t know if anyone (including himself) really knows what he was intending.
I still have no idea. They encountered so little resistance, so many of the Russian rank-and-file and even commanders seemed content to just sit and see what he’d do. Seems like he really could have just kept rolling past all the barricades and past all the police and national guard who were doing very little other than just watching. IDK, Russia as a state is so close to just a mafia that I really question if any significant amount of troops had enough personal loyalty to Putin, or if 90% of them would have happily stood by while Wagner occupied the Kremlin and switched sides the moment it seemed safe to do so. I can only imagine that a massive barrage of “we know where everyone you love is and we have knives to their throats right now” aimed at the Wagner commanders is the only thing that stopped them from just walking into the Capital almost without firing a shot, because that’s just how corrupt and empty the Russian state is right now. But who the hell knows.
That seems a plausible an explanation as any, but Prigozhin and the Wagner brass had to have known that their family would immediately be used as hostages as well, so again who knows what he was thinking?