Usually, my Saturday mornings have more to do with managing my three-acre fortified mountain compound, walking the dog, and drinking coffee than writing, but I’ve found nothing gets my creative juices flowing like a good solid dose of schadenfreude. In this case, the triggering event for me is reading all of the accounts that have assured me over the last year and a half that Russia was unbeatable, that Putin was a strategic genius, and that Ukraine was a corrupt nation that would disappear if the West only got out of the way.

Friday morning, Wagner Group PMC honcho Yevgeny Prigozhin kicked off what first looked like a mutiny against a rapacious and out-of-touch Defense Ministry that quickly morphed into an overt attempted coup d’etat. See  Russia Faces Either a Military Mutiny or Coup D’Etat From Wagner PMC Boss Prigozhin, Fighting Against Leadership Underway in Russia: Wagner Group Seizes Buildings in Rostov, Battles Allegedly Erupt in Voronezh and Putin Surfaces With Speech on the Coup Attempt, Prigozhin Responds, and Has Anyone Seen Victoria Nuland?

New Developments

Wagner in Moscow Oblast

This is amazing. Wagner fighters have just bulled their way through Russian government checkpoints and entered Moscow Oblast. I agree with my friend Laocoon in the comment section that if Wagner gets to Moscow proper, this could be game over.

BREAKING Wagner PMC columns have just entered the Moscow region.
The main journey begins.#RussiaCivilWar pic.twitter.com/V2oSM3iGkH

— Ukraine Front Lines (@EuromaidanPR) June 24, 2023

BREAKING:

The Wagner Group has smashed through the first road barriers on the way to Moscow pic.twitter.com/LdzVXjqy7L

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 24, 2023

Wagner Calls Fighters Home from Africa

There are as yet unconfirmed reports that Wagner Group fighters have been recalled from Africa to take part in the coup. This makes a lot of sense because if you are a Wagner fighter in Africa, you are going to be unemployed and surrounded by unfriendly people if this goes pear-shaped. If you go home, you can be in on the kill or have a plausible story for why you weren’t involved when Russia’s equivalent of the FBI, the FSB, comes calling. Maybe you can be like Ray Epps and convince them it was all a big misunderstanding (Ray Epps Demands Tucker Carlson Retract Allegations That He Was a Federal Plant on January 6).

Wagner Group Pulls Equipment Out of Combat Zone for Use in Coup

That Wagner is pulling equipment out of the war zone shows how serious this threat is. That the Russian Army in that war zone is letting it happen really shows the danger the Putin regime is in.

PMC Wagner withdrawing military equipment from occupied parts of Luhansk region https://t.co/xMdZrVYrMk pic.twitter.com/E8c08MdKCa

— Liveuamap (@Liveuamap) June 24, 2023

Voronezh Falls to Wagner Group

Wagner Group seized control of government offices in Voronezh, according to BBC.

BBC cited a source close to the FSB’s central office as saying #Wagner has seized control of key gov’t buildings in Voronezh, just like #Prigozhin’s forces did in Rostov-on-Don. Reuters previously reported the same thing. https://t.co/9l50t5x1n2https://t.co/WiS54haink

— John Hardie (@JohnH105) June 24, 2023

Russian Army Units Rally to Wagner

There are many reports of Russian Army units either rallying to Wagner or agreeing to play “not my circus, not my monkey.” In fact, there are just way too many reports to write them off as a clever information operation by George Soros and Victoria Nuland.

As follows from this video message, the 217th Guards Parachute Regiment switched to the side of the Wagner PMCs. pic.twitter.com/iRnECohxWN

— 301 Military (@301military) June 24, 2023

More Barriers Going Up Around Moscow

If the social media Putin bros are claiming that the threat is overblown, the Russian security forces don’t seem to share the same confidence.

Columns of military equipment are already on the streets of Moscow pic.twitter.com/V4RgUbGiOm

— RoINTEL (@RoINTEL) June 24, 2023

Lipetsk region, pro-government Russian forces are allegedly digging the road towards Moscow to slow down the advance of Wagner's columns. pic.twitter.com/0nJBBX1tje

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) June 24, 2023

Prigozhin On the Cusp of Being a Nuclear Power

Wagner is poised to seize control of a Russian nuclear weapon storage facility outside Voronezh. This won’t give him the arming codes, assuming the Russians have such things or delivery systems, but it will give the regime a huge black eye.

"Wagner" is preparing to seize warehouses with nuclear weapons, "Atesh"
The advanced detachments of the PKK went to the outskirts of Borysoglibsk, Voronezh region. There is a warehouse with nuclear weapons "375 object "C", 12 management of the Russian Navy. It is likely that the… pic.twitter.com/769M0yFIO8

— Feher_Junior (@Feher_Junior) June 24, 2023

How Did We Get Here?

One of my favorite Twitter personalities, Kamil Galeev, who is, IIRC, a Crimean Tatar whose family was deported by Stalin, lays out an interesting theory. A lot of people are coming to the conclusion that this coup attempt has been a while in the making and that the ammunition shortage Prigozhin was streaming about a few months ago that the Defense Ministry claimed did not exist was actually Wagner commander husbanding ammunition for this coup. Enjoy.

Raising a mutiny in the south, far off from the capital may sound like a dumb plan. Unless this was not a plan at all. My hypothesis: it looks like a false start

23 June – Wagner mutiny
24-25 June – "Scarlet Sails" in St Petersburg

Both Putin and Medvedev were expected to come pic.twitter.com/9cmJW5nOto

— Kamil Galeev (@kamilkazani) June 24, 2023

What’s Next?

All hyperbole aside, the Putin regime is on the cusp of destruction. There is no evidence that Russian elites are moving to defend him. The security forces aren’t fighting. In that environment, the defection of Russian Army units to Wagner could rapidly change from a trickle to a deluge.

Right now, you have to say that Putin is the favorite to win. If this goes on another 72 hours, the odds start to change, and the oligarchs will begin looking for a way out.

There is no immediate battlefield effect that we can detect, but you can bet no one will be very aggressive when the government could change, and the war could end. You don’t want to be the guy memorialized as the last guy killed in a rather dumb war.