The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been speaking about the situation in Russia to the BBC's US news partner, CBS.
It's the first major reaction from a senior US official to the Wagner mercenary rebellion.
Here are some key quotes from his interview on Meet the Press with presenter Chuck Todd.
What should we believe, with what we just witnessed in the last 48 hours in Russia?
"We've seen more cracks emerge in the Russian façade. It is too soon to tell exactly where they go... but certainly, we have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead."
Do you believe [the Wagner Group] is being dismantled?
"We'll see if this means that Wagner forces are coming out of Ukraine.
"The very fact that over the weekend, Wagner forces were coming out of Ukraine and going into Russia and toward Moscow, in and of itself is, is extraordinary.... this is just the latest chapter in a book of failure that Putin has written for himself and for Russia."
The leader of Belarus apparently mediated [the deal]. Are we underestimating Belarus here?
"It may be that Putin didn't want to debase himself to the level of negotiating directly with Prigozhin. So it was useful to get someone like Lukashenko [the leader of Belarus] into this on his behalf. But again, that is speculation. We want to avoid that."
MjBranch on June 26th, 2023 at 04:47 UTC »
People are acting surprised when mercenaries do mercenary things
Scrugulus on June 25th, 2023 at 16:42 UTC »
Submission Statement:
This short segment from the BBC reminds people that Wagner is not just active in Ukraine, but also in all sorts of places, particularly in Africa. In all those places they were indirectly furthering the Kremlin's interests. From this fact, questions arise as to the fate of these "far away" Wagner troops and the geopolitical fallout for those countries/regions. So BBC correspondent Joe Inwood asks the same question I tried to raise here yesterday, before the rogue Auto-Mod deleted my post in clear contradiction of the sub’s rules.
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What I am hoping for is for people “in the know” to help me understand how Wagner’s forces abroad (mainly Syria and Africa) are “structured”, and how dependent they are on official Russian military support, intel, and supplies.
For Syria, given Russia’s sizeable military presence in the country, I expect the Russian military will have no problem taking over Wagner's operations and seamlessly integrating the mercenaries into their regular forces if necessary.
I also believe that Russia’s geopolitical interests are such that they will put in an effort to simply take over from Wagner in Libya.
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But what about the Wagner mercenaries that are now, de facto, "stranded" in places like Mail or the Central African Republic. The Russian military might not have much interest in these places and/or not really able to stage any operations there right now. Will Prigozhin be able to hold on to them and run a (much smaller) company out of Belarus? Or will the Kremlin select some oligarch to try to take over those mercenaries and put them on his payroll?
And how would the geopolitical situation in these parts of Africa develop, if these mercenary forces stay cut off from Russia? Will they disappear? Or will they go rogue and try to "self-finance" through drug trades and diamond theft, etc., destabilising the region?
AutoModerator on June 25th, 2023 at 16:25 UTC »
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