“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
– Donald Rumsfeld
Right now we are very much in unknown unknowns territory when it comes to the attempted coup d’état in Russia and its aftermath.
Vladimir Putin has already told us in no uncertain terms that when Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner group agreed to stop their incursion, the country avoided civil war. According to Putin, the deal made with Prigozhin avoided “fratricidal” warfare.
But Putin’s phrasing let us know that it could have been civil war. In other words, Putin feared Russia itself could have a truly existential crisis.
Meanwhile, Prigozhin has flown back to Moscow from Belarus, allegedly for only a few hours, to work out in more detail the future of Wagner. Without monetary support from Russia, Wagner will go out of business. Prigozhin seems to be relying on Putin’s promise not to harm him.
Prigozhin owns his own business jet, an Embraer Legacy 600. The jet is under Western sanctions.
Bakhmut Puzzle
Another strange development occurred north of Bakhmut yesterday, where the Ukrainians have made some advances against Russian forces that had dug in to try to prevent Ukraine from taking the flanks and forming a pincer abound that city.
As the Ukrainian forces mounted their attack, easily visible to the Russian side, Russian artillery stayed silent and made no effort to support Russian defenders. This is quite out of the ordinary since the Russian army bases a significant part of its defensive capability on artillery strikes. What does it mean?
The lack of artillery support in the north of Bakhmut could mean no local Russian commander is in charge of the artillery and rocket forces in the area. How come? Have they been arrested or purged, or is something else going on?
An alternative explanation is that Russian artillery was needed elsewhere as Ukraine is in the midst of strengthening its counter-offensive in the Zaporizhzhia area. Ukraine has been attacking around Bakhmut for a couple of weeks, however, so pulling out Russian artillery seems an unlikely move.
The third data point is based on speculative statements by Russian military bloggers. They are saying that General Sergey Surovikin and his deputy, Colonel General Andrey Yudin, have been taken to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison compound for “preliminary” interrogation.
This claim appeared even before the New York Times said that US intelligence thought it possible that Surovikin was involved in the Prigozhin-Wagner operation preparations. If Surovikin and Yudin have been arrested, bigger problems lurk for Russian army leadership. The New York Times suggested other Russian generals might be implicated.
It is worth remembering that Surovikin made a video calling for the Wagner forces to stop their operation invading Russia and to return to their camps. There’s a question whether this video actually reached the Wagner forces during their operation – or whether it was prepared so that Surovikin could have plausible deniability that he was part of Prigozhin’s coup.
One of the oddities of the video, as I previously pointed out, is that Surovikin is clutching an automatic pistol under his right arm.
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