I’d be interested to know what actually made him stop honestly. It’s hard to believe that he genuinely thought he could pull a stunt like the convoy and have it only effect his rivalry with the military brass.
But part of me also wonders if his presidential run announcement was actually the straw that broke the camels back, rather than the psuedo-uprising that felt more like an overly dramatic attempt to say “Look how incompetent the military is, they can’t even stop us driving right up to the Kremlin”. I don’t know if he genuinely wanted to overthrow the Kremlin even when he set out.
Conspiracy theory ahead: I think the whole mutiny was planned to involve atomic weapons, which would have given Wagner a waaaaay bigger bargaining chip.
Between the southern headquarters and Moscow is a nuclear storage site. To arm the warheads one needs a code which is only known to three people: The president, the minister of defence and the chief of the armed forces. It just so happened to be that the latter two where expected at the southern headquarters at the day of the mutiny. Except they were nowhere to be found, possibly tipped off by someone.
Now Wagner had a problem: They failed to capture the codes but couldn’t simply back down without some form of deal. So the convoy to Moscow went ahead anyway to put pressure on the government.
They initially succeeded as in they secured an exit strategy via presidential pardon but lacking the nukes, there is no chance of any meaningful retaliation by Wagner. This means the pardon was easily “rescinded”.
I’d be interested to know what actually made him stop honestly. It’s hard to believe that he genuinely thought he could pull a stunt like the convoy and have it only effect his rivalry with the military brass.
But part of me also wonders if his presidential run announcement was actually the straw that broke the camels back, rather than the psuedo-uprising that felt more like an overly dramatic attempt to say “Look how incompetent the military is, they can’t even stop us driving right up to the Kremlin”. I don’t know if he genuinely wanted to overthrow the Kremlin even when he set out.
Conspiracy theory ahead: I think the whole mutiny was planned to involve atomic weapons, which would have given Wagner a waaaaay bigger bargaining chip.
Between the southern headquarters and Moscow is a nuclear storage site. To arm the warheads one needs a code which is only known to three people: The president, the minister of defence and the chief of the armed forces. It just so happened to be that the latter two where expected at the southern headquarters at the day of the mutiny. Except they were nowhere to be found, possibly tipped off by someone.
Now Wagner had a problem: They failed to capture the codes but couldn’t simply back down without some form of deal. So the convoy to Moscow went ahead anyway to put pressure on the government.
They initially succeeded as in they secured an exit strategy via presidential pardon but lacking the nukes, there is no chance of any meaningful retaliation by Wagner. This means the pardon was easily “rescinded”.