this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
94 points (92.7% liked)

Asklemmy

43761 readers
1368 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This is a guy who was known to hire body doubles and he had numerous passports.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Probably exactly what has been reported. Putin waited for things to settle, weakened Wagner troops by taking their weapons and splitting their numbers, then they killed leadership. Occam's razor certainly points to this.

But, of course, the way it was done certainly leaves the door open for conspiracies.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Even if he's not dead, his mercenaries believe that he is. If they're getting paid, they'll do what leadership tells them. If not, they won't. Simple as, he's not an elected leader, his death just means his company has shit to figure out, but his non-death means shit will keep going as it was.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Wagner is not a PMC and wagnerites not real mercenaries. Most of them are ultra-nationalists and that's their primary motivation to fight. There are some weird Nazi/cult elements. Prigozhin has built up that cult, he's not easily replaceable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Not necessarily. The mercenaries are spreading a lot of these conspiracies through Telegram. I don’t have polling available, so idk how many of them think he’s alive.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Given the current state of Russia, almost all of the (conspiracy) theories are currently not completely impossible and nothing can be said with certainty.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Russian politics is a bit like watching a couple of pitbulls fighting under a carpet. You can certainly see movement, and hear that something is happening, but you don't really know what happened till you see the bones of the loser tossed back out.

That was said in the 30s or 40s by Churchill, and I probably butchered the quote, but it leads me to believe that this has been the state of Russia for a long time