More angry, subversive messages expected from Vladimir Putin after attempted mutiny | The World

yes it's not the first time chromatosk has been hit there was an absolutely uh horrific strike on chromatosk that you might recall from last year on the train station and I think this this may be the Russian military leadership very keen to show that the uh Insurrection over the weekend and the intrigues occurring amongst their generals and their defense minister uh will not uh cause them

to pause the campaign and of course on top of that we have also seen Ukraine's army take advantage of the chaos to some degree they've made advances around the city of buckmut in the East where they are threatening to encircle the Russian forces that took the city last month and we've also seen some rather small scale perhaps opportunistic but nonetheless very interesting Crossings of the nepro

of the the country they are they have a limited number of air defense systems and of course you have to choose how you allocate those systems between a number of priorities and they have to choose between defending the capital city Kiev depend defending other population centers defending military bases and things like ammunition Depots which are of course very important during an offensive and finally defending the

front line troops who are conducting attacks often are pushing forward beyond the range of their air defense systems at the front and of course Ukraine has an increasing amount of air defense we're seeing new commitments coming in particularly by the Germans who are offering new gephard short-range air defense systems which is which is great but but of course there's only a limited number the front lines

are 1200 kilometers long and Ukraine is an enormous country so these systems cannot protect everywhere at once yeah you've been digesting the weekends events and of course every day we hear more and more Snippets as you pointed out maybe that the Russian top brass might have been aware of precautions plans um what are you making of it how do you how do you look at it

as to what really was happening well I've got to confess a humility I don't know what happened I don't think anyone does even even the officials we're talking to here I think don't have the full picture at this stage but what really struck me um Bev from the weekend was watching that conversation which some of you may have seen between pregosian in in his little uh

mutinous camp in rostov and um General Alexia who's the deputy head of Russian military intelligence the Gru and we saw them joking pragosian saying can I have Sergey shoigu and Valerie garasimov the defense minister and the chief of general staff are you going to hand them over and alexayer said oh you can take them which is a pretty Punchy thing for a general to joke about

uh a warlord capturing and abducting his defense minister in his chief of general staff and I think that is emblematic of the divisions being laid bare here of course the latest story you alluded to is that American intelligence is said to have reports that Sergey sorovicin who also appeared in a video over the weekend urging progosian to stand down on uh um was was was aware

of these plans in advance and sort of Eakin of course um uh was said to be close to pagosian uh he was appointed commander of the overall war effort for a brief time in the Autumn before being demoted and replaced by garasimov later on but he was considered to be a competent Commander so um you know I think these these divisions these intrigues um at the

very top of Russia's High command are probably going to be the most significant consequence of this Rebellion over the weekend it's gonna it's gonna have reverberations for weeks and months to come I think yes and and I think perhaps Shashank you point to Putin's dilemma who does he point to who does he punish how does he actually manage what does look like Mutiny in the ranks

that's right he's got he's got a trade-off here because of course the Wagner group where Russia's most effective Fighters inside Ukraine uh my colleagues were speaking to Ukrainian soldiers in bakmut who said these guys were the real deal they were good at advancing not like those Russian regulars who who were you know basically coerced into fighting and of course um he can choose to disband the

organization and force them to sign contracts and to defang them as he seems to be trying to do but he will he will potentially break up the cohesion of Wagner as a fighting force but if he allows them to continue if he allows edgeny pregosian to maintain his power from Exile in Belarus I think that could pose a significant challenge to his power down the line

let's not forget this is a force the Wagner group that has just shot down seven Russian planes and killed about 13 Russian Pilots that's a big deal so if they go unpunished what ideas does that give other potentially rebellious parts of the Russian Force if this war continues to go badly for Putin and that trade-off I'm afraid is one and more and more tightly for Putin

as time goes on yes because you can see just even the way for example Alexi navalny is being treated thrown into jail for 20 years um for far less than pregosian um Putin does not really know how to manage pragosa and he he potentially doesn't know how deep his support goes no you know what's interesting is um there's a political scientist an expert on Russia Mark

galiotti wrote an essay for for my newspaper The Economist a few days ago in which he argued ultimately this shows you how Putin is dithering you know and I I think that's right he dithered for example over the announcement of national mobilization last Autumn he only did it once his forces had been uh forced to withdraw from her son and then he mobilized too little too

late once again the feud with progosian had been escalating for months we could see this for months you know you I think you and I have discussed some of these uh Angry rants that progression has been launching against the defense minister and against the Russian leadership for several weeks um so this was a long time in the making and Putin did not deal with it early

and even now having announced that the Wagner group were traitors he has allowed progosian to effectively go unpunished what's the next thing he's going to dither on and I suspect the next question is another round of mobilization he needs to do it he needs the men he has no real offensive potential left uh whether or not Ukraine takes anything I don't think Russia can go back

on the offensive anytime soon so when will he mobilize but of course he knows that if he does he's going to have to do so in the teeth of a population that has now seen exposed publicly just how weak his leadership really is yeah and uh what do you think how how safe is pagosian in Belarus would he be you know being relaxed to think that

he isn't going to be a Target at some point well the joke of course is that pagosian has asked to be housed in a bungalow because uh you don't want to get on any High Windows uh if you've got on the wrong side of the Russian leadership uh of course Belarus is a subordinate partner of Russia let's not pretend otherwise um it's a little brother to

Russia the Belarusian KGB uh is probably working very closely with the Russian FSB uh so I if the Russian State wants to cause harm to pragosian they won't have any trouble doing so in Belarus he's going to be under their thumb uh but I think that the the the the real question is um um what happens to his fighting force will he take thousands of armed

men with him because let's not forget Wagner was a creation of the Russian military and specifically of the gru the organization I mentioned earlier Russian military intelligence they provided most of the heavy weapons in ammunition so unless they give him those things in Belarus he's going to be sitting there stewing and I suspect we haven't heard the last of him yet in terms of angry subversive

messages indeed Shashank always a appreciate your analysis thanks so much thank you