bumped into him.

Ricin of him.

Heeded bernard montgomery's advice, Rule#1 Do not march on Moscow*. at the urging of Putyin:
After rec'g a call from Putyin 'Prigozhin, did you know we have fighter bombers which can take out your tank column in a couple hours?'
Prig combined the two choices and made a quick detour to byelorus.

Putyin might have attacked the column sooner, but maybe thought he could stiil 'persuade' Prig back to supporting russia v ukraine, using the above threat. By obtaining somehow sanctuary in byelorus Prig perhaps scored a strategic victory.
A couple neutron bombs over the column and voila, prig begone, clean not dirty nuclear bombs (no long lasting radiation). I think neutron bombs would be the choice nuclear weapon Putyin would use, for uh, his defensive purposes, cough....

* British WWII general Bernard Montgomery (Monty), May 1962: In reaching a decision on that matter, we must first be clear about certain rules of war. Rule 1, on page I of the book of war, is: "Do not march on Moscow". Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule. I do not know whether your Lordships will know Rule 2 of war. It is: "Do not go fighting with your land armies in China". It is a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives, and an army fighting there would be engulfed by what is known as the Ming Bing, the people's insurgents.”

So my answer to the poll as 'other' is: drone hiding in byelorus somewheres. Or at least creeping towards it.

In the middle ages, what was to stop them?
Montgomery was surely speaking of modern warfare.
No offense taken.

Wagner was just 200 kilometers away from Moscow and the bulk of Russia's army is fighting in the Ukraine.

The Bolsheviks took Moscow after a week of street fighting in 1917

Duh, they lived there. Not what monty was talking about.

Wagner was just 200 kilometers away from Moscow and the bulk of Russia's army is fighting in the Ukraine.

Where are the wagner groups aircraft? to intercept Putyin's fighter bombers when they decided to blow Prig to kingdom come?
Putyin could have let Prig get 50 miles away, even less. (200 km = 125 miles).
Stinger missiles will work against copters & transports, not well against fighter bombers.

Wagner forces had traveled some 400 miles+ from Rostov-on-Don towards Moscow before turning around at Yelets.

"The Russian capital is preparing for a siege, according to Ukraine’s miltiary intelligence, which said that any military vehicles that can be spared are being pulled toward Moscow, where law enforcement and the military were authorized with emergency powers."

https://news.yahoo.com/moscow-mayor-declares-state-emergency-170444571.html

"Local authorities in the regions to the north of the convoy rushed to find ways to prevent the column’s advance. Roads were blocked with school buses and trucks. Diggers appeared on the highway and began to tear holes in the asphalt. The Oka river, which cuts across the region just south of Moscow, became a key defence line for the capital. Bridges across it were blocked by the army.
"

https://www.ft.com/content/2cbc1abf-f818-4c5c-aed8-3256a1d775a2

The Russian capital is preparing for a siege, according to Ukraine’s miltiary intelligence,

Enough said?
A siege? with tanks & trucks & troops around moscow for an extended period? hahahahaha, starve them out prig!
As well, slowing the column down would make easier targets from the air. Combined arms strategy, army & air force.

I do not know for sure what is occurring. I simply posited the pollster's request when I checked off 'other'.

Rather then strong, in control and brutal had he taken out the Wagner forces immediately as you suggest he could have easily done

Putin looked weak and frightened in his response Rather then strong, in control and brutal had he taken out the Wagner forces immediately as you suggest he could have easily done

Weak and frightened? according to who? you? beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I would say putyin was understandably disconcerted, unsettled - not with the fear of 'Moscow Falling' - but that Prig's anabasis would precipitate a domino affect, where other russian forces would mutiny. Perhaps that it why he held off attacking Prig, fear of sparking other russian forces to mutiny.

In June 1941 when Hitler launched Barbarossa invasion of Soviet Union, Stalin was, reportedly, in a high strung state of fright for 2 weeks, likely convinced his soviet army could never stop the so far invincible Wehrmacht. This of course ended with Hitler stalling out at the gates of Moscow during december, essentially being stopped & weakened by general winter - what Monty was talking about.
But Prigozhin did not control 3 Army Groups like Hitler, only a division or so in his 'drang nach norden'.

The 10 most powerful air forces in the world are the United States Air Force, Russian Air Force, People's Liberation Army Air Force, Indian Air Force, Japan Air Self-Defense Force, Israeli Air Force, French Air and Space Force, British Royal Air Force, Republic of Korea Air Force, and Italian Air Force.May 22, 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_military_aircraft

Air force
United States ............. Russia
Fixed wing aircraft
5414 ..........................2176

Fighters/Multiroles [would include fighter-bombers for airstrikes]
1840 ...........................1319

Bombers
162 ..............................181 [russia has some old bombers]

celerity: that was advice for foreign invading troops nt ... re Do not march on moscow.

Certainly the way I read it, for the greater part, celerity, but the Wagner group are mercenaries, right? albeit mercenaries aligned with russia.
I did not intend montgomery's advice to literally be the reason prig was abandoning his drive on moscow, Prig likely never heard of Monty's quote. Just that monty's remarks were somewhat applicable. Just a train of thought or something.

kaleva: Why didn't the Russian air force blow the Wagner forces to kingdom come?

Sources report Gen. Sergey Surovikin, head of Russia’s Air Force, has been arrested. He is reported to have known & possibly supported Yevgeny Progizhin’s mutiny.
Surovikin, also commanded Russian forces in Ukraine until January

Hmmm, the plot thickens. Your argument takes on credibility.
If Putyin could not count on Surovikin to take out Prig/Wagner column, Vlad could have indeed been very worried.

...with lighter skin (which is one of the reasons why Hitler viewed Slavs as "inferior" and in certain areas it still prevails and others, still viewed as savage barbarians). And Russia at the time was nothing more than a collection of Principalities with some claiming to be the rightful heir of the Roman empire (Moscow is often called the third Rome). it was Ivan the Terrible that basically founded the empire when he was crowned Tsar (Cesar), granted Peter the Great made it official.

Whenever I visited Europe and a scammer would come up to me (wearing a Yosemite sweater often means you are a US citizen...and they are right), I would respond in Russian. How fast they jumped back and left me alone was amazing. I still shake my head thinking of when I walked past a statue of Thomas Jefferson and then later crossing a street named after Joseph Stalin in Paris.

And I agree with the other person, you do not march on Moscow and you do not get into a land invasion in China. Moscow for the most part was burned to the ground during Napoleon...but this time, the Russians burned it. In war, you are usually trying to gain resources, you can't gain any if the people you are invading destroy it before you can fully capture it.


And I'll add a third rule, do not get involved in a war in the Mid-East. Sure in the past you could take advantage of old tribal divides, but now they are united against the "Great Satan". Iran, Saudi Arabia and Russia used to be bitter enemies, now they are becoming allies. The world has changed.

Which was what Montgomery was essentially talking about.

Wagner PMC vs. units loyal to Putin would have been a civil war and the Bolsheviks did take Moscow in 1917 after some intense fighting

There have been some here who have advocated breaking up Russia even further. Finding ways to aid those that challenge Putin both politically and military.

Nor was there ever a danger of a civil war, Prig still professed loyalty to Putin (and still does). The results of Reds vs. the Whites (Tsarist sympathism which the UK, USA and others aided) is well engraved in memory. So is the hard line coup that threw out Gorbachev, but was brought back...only to thrown out again by liberal coup from three guys drunk in a Dacha. The economic chaos that followed is well known over there.

And please, the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government barely firing a shot. It was when the Tsarist supporters took up arms that the bloodshed occurred, and I'll state it again, they had western support.

Plus, to head you off at the pass, NATO has militarily been involved both officially and unofficially in areas of conflict such as the break up of Yugoslavia, troops in Kosovo, Libya, etc. The irony, if we didn't get Cheney and Co. we would have probably followed through on verbal promises of integrating Russia into NATO and none of what is going on now would be happening.

https://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/may/30/the-army-estimates#S5LV0241P0-00791

An excerpt:

"But the strategy of those who fight on land will be defensive, since any considerable movement will not be possible owing to the terrific destruction caused to communications by nuclear bombardment, as well as by the movement of refugees. This latter is a terrific problem, and during the ten years in which I served in Supreme Headquarters in Europe, we never could get the refugee problem seriously tackled. The sea must be exploited increasingly to give surface strategical mobility, and to provide 228mobile launching sites for nuclear weapons."


You'll notice that Montgomery is talking about nuclear war and that the ground forces will be used for defensive purposes while the navy and air force will provide the offensive punch.

Since the army will be on the defensive, a march on Moscow is out of the question as is getting into a land war in China

Bathroom.

That's ridiculous considering how humiliating it turned out for Putin and how weakened he seems to be by it.

He needs to get the band back together and march on Moscow, its his only chance.

And there are many to choose from.

...and, of course, none of us know for sure what's going on. I jokingly chose "Getting shitfaced on cheap vodka".

Nevertheless, I'm a little surprised at the popularity of the "disinfo stunt" answer. There is, perhaps, a bigger conspiratorial mindset on DU than I would hope.

Russia has it down to an art form.

Nothing coming out of Russua can be fully believed.

...doesn't elevate the probability of needlessly elaborate and conspiratorial interpretations of events.

If I've learned anything from the past several awful years of the rise of Trump and Trumpism, it's that a propagandist sadly doesn't have to work so hard at creating disinfo as staging imaginary revolts that are actually coordinated behind the scenes.

The simple bullshit of the kind that Tucker Carlson did on Fox, before getting canned, is more than sufficient. As dim as my view of human intelligence has been all along, I hadn't, until 2016, lowered it enough to grasp how many people are susceptible to what seems to me to be transparent bullshit.

The Prigozhin attack didn't help Putin at all. It made him look weak. When disinfo is easy, why bother with whatever complex 10-dimensional chess it would take to figure out how a staged attack that makes Putin look bad somehow, someway plays to Putin's advantage? Not totally impossible, I suppose, but not anywhere near probable enough to eagerly jump to "Laughing on phone with Putin about another successful disinfo stunt" as anything close to a viable or realistic top choice explanation for what's going on.