It’s fair to call the Cape Tarkhankut site the linchpin of Russian air and naval defenses across the Black Sea. Which is why the Ukrainian armed forces blew it up.
What I don’t get: Doesn’t this turn the Wagner mercenaries into even more of loose cannons? What’s stopping them to just fracture into chaotic splinter groups now?
Nothing, and a few probably will. But a few small groups are much more easily handled. I wouldn’t be surprised if smashing the group was the main motivation behind the plane crash.
What about just one guy with a grudge and a shoulder-fired missile launcher (anti-aircraft or anti-tank, depending on how you prefer to travel)? I’m sure Putin himself has countermeasures but he may still have problems unless his men can track down every Wagnerite who may have taken home a souvenir from Ukraine.
Historically, in Russia one guy with a grudge and a shoulder-fired missile launcher would have dropped the grudge in favor of selling the launcher for personal gain.
It takes a certain measure of belief and optimism to go against a distant enemy so physically removed from you and protected at every step, like Putin’s government. It takes even more to make a rogue soldier think one shoulder launcher would make any difference at all. But it takes no faith or hope at all to sell whatever can be sold and live like your commanders for a day.
That’s not to say it would never happen; I think it’s far likelier now than it ever has been in my lifetime. But the Russian mindset is completely different than our own in the west, they’ve had many more centuries of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” than we have, and at the end of the day it’s just much easier, safer and more profitable to sell out.
Doesn’t this turn the Wagner mercenaries into even more of loose cannons? What’s stopping them to just fracture into chaotic splinter groups now?
There’s a BBC article right now that addresses that question in some detail. Take it with a grain of salt, but it points out that Wagner forces have not been on the ground in Ukraine since Prigozhin’s June march, Putin has had two months to plan for the transition, there are already replacement candidates, and the real difficulty may lie more in finding a leader with cash who will not oppose the Putin regime than in simply finding a leader, because Prigozhin was funding much of Wagner himself:
What I don’t get: Doesn’t this turn the Wagner mercenaries into even more of loose cannons? What’s stopping them to just fracture into chaotic splinter groups now?
Nothing, and a few probably will. But a few small groups are much more easily handled. I wouldn’t be surprised if smashing the group was the main motivation behind the plane crash.
What about just one guy with a grudge and a shoulder-fired missile launcher (anti-aircraft or anti-tank, depending on how you prefer to travel)? I’m sure Putin himself has countermeasures but he may still have problems unless his men can track down every Wagnerite who may have taken home a souvenir from Ukraine.
Historically, in Russia one guy with a grudge and a shoulder-fired missile launcher would have dropped the grudge in favor of selling the launcher for personal gain.
It takes a certain measure of belief and optimism to go against a distant enemy so physically removed from you and protected at every step, like Putin’s government. It takes even more to make a rogue soldier think one shoulder launcher would make any difference at all. But it takes no faith or hope at all to sell whatever can be sold and live like your commanders for a day.
That’s not to say it would never happen; I think it’s far likelier now than it ever has been in my lifetime. But the Russian mindset is completely different than our own in the west, they’ve had many more centuries of “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” than we have, and at the end of the day it’s just much easier, safer and more profitable to sell out.
There’s a BBC article right now that addresses that question in some detail. Take it with a grain of salt, but it points out that Wagner forces have not been on the ground in Ukraine since Prigozhin’s June march, Putin has had two months to plan for the transition, there are already replacement candidates, and the real difficulty may lie more in finding a leader with cash who will not oppose the Putin regime than in simply finding a leader, because Prigozhin was funding much of Wagner himself:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66604261