Slow-Rolled Ukraine War as Strategy, not Incompetence

 "What I see is the slow, gradual, and inevitable reformation and clean up job that the MOD is doing on the entire systemic framework and infrastructure of the Russian armed forces and its various attendant apparatuses. It’s a colossal scale re-organization, a purification, ablution. This has been an ongoing process since the start of the SMO. We’ve talked at length about how Russia was not structurally sound enough to handle the magnitude of events today."

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/special-report-the-curtain-closes

 Russia could have pushed much harder in Ukraine. Could have sealed e.g. the Polish border with Russian troops, preventing weapons deliveries through Poland. In the long run it wouldn't even have cost Putin noticeably more casualties.

 A shorter war would have cost the West far less of its armory. With NATO sending new stuff now, Russia gets to see how it performs in live-fire combat (thanks Ukrainians for being living target practice) and can take their time developing counters. A shorter war would have produced far fewer veterans for Russia. Meanwhile, Ukrainian veterans are largely ending up in boxes after a second tour. If they didn't, even America can't requisition eastern European soldiers for NATO bombing campaigns. (Which is why foreign troops keep being found when Russians clean enemy casualties off the battlefield.) Whatever propaganda 'victories' Ukraine is scoring against Putin, Biden is self-owning twice as hard every time he approves another military 'aid' cheque for Ukraine.

 Putin can slam America's nose directly into the grindstone and hold it there. All he has to do is be kinda lazy about the aggression. Oh hey, look. Conveniently, doing a full-spectrum assault would have also meant fully extending the Russian military, which is risky if the enemy has surprises for you. It turns out they didn't - the entire theatre was fully theorycraftable in advance - but you can certainly see that someone like Putin wouldn't appreciate theorycraft or employ anyone capable of it, and would be leery of those odds.

 Note that as of July 13 "So it’s over soon? Six months to surrender, approximately." Works cited: the Empire always lies.

 That said Simplicius has tarred all mercenaries with the Wagner brush. It's not cosmic fate that causes bad management of private military forces, it's the same things that cause bad management in any organization. "Public" militaries are not somehow immune, they face bigger obstacles, not smaller ones. At most, there's some self-fulfilling prophecy going on with stuff like Wagner, where everyone piously mouths the Simplicius-like platitudes, and as such only criminal crankheads try to found a PMC. The correct thing to do is to fire Wagnerites earlier instead of later. Nurture good management instead of bad at the seed stage, instead of waiting for a problem to occur.

"Everything and everyone must serve the state, which itself serves the Russian people." lol wut
  I'm sorry have you ever seen a government in real life? The more you harp on it the less true it becomes.

"Now they must be absorbed and reined in as the state builds a new, historic level of centralized focus and alignment of vision and action."
 It's a special world where humans are outright nonverbal. The army and the mercenaries can't talk to each other. Further, the army can't stop paying the mercenaries if they stop doing their job. Just too stupid, I suppose. Same way lots of folk are subscribed to things they never use because they forgot to cancel, except in units of billion/year.
 I'm on record saying that governments regularly treat their soldiers like slaves, and the problem is that mercenaries are businessmen, not slaves. Simplicius, as a good slave, assumes slavery is the only way you can play soldier - and thus all non-slave soldiers have to go. From a different post:
"Some may think this is crazy, but it would be a huge morale boost to men who’ve now been fighting for almost a full year to know that they are going home to their families. It will give other servicemen something to fight for, knowing that their military term will be limited and not “until death.”"
 Um, is the entire Russian army conscripts? Can they not quit their job? Obviously you face restrictions mid-deployment, but nobody expects soldiers to stay effective in an active war zone year-round. Or are they supposed to be pure NPCs who are wholly incapable of taking the self-directed de-mobilization option?

"A private company technically only serves the interests of its own members"
 Pure Romantic nonsense. Governments are also private companies, you ridiculous fangirl. (Unironically this is why it never bothers me that women can vote. What's the diff, tho?)

 Okay here's my conspiracy theory. Prigozhin staged a weird fake coup because Putin wanted to discredit mercenaries in general, for nefarious reasons. They planned together to fake Prigozhin's death later, meaning half the reason for the plot was to create a plausible story behind the fake death. Maybe as a safer retirement deal for Prigozhin - nobody can come after you in revenge if they think you're dead. Hard to get off the tiger if you're a mercenary captain, after all.

 A plane crash is perfect, as it both looks extremely suspicious and it's tremendously easy to brush the human remains under the rug. State crash inspectors are not exactly known for their firebrand independence, and instead known for small teams, a small field, and their home address. Especially legible. Secondly in a plane crash much of the time they're so mangled you need DNA to even confirm it's human, and not a deer they hit on the way down or whatever. The inspectors don't have to lie, they merely need to do their job with less than 200% diligence. "You want to bribe me not to collect teeth and try to jigsaw them back into a jaw shape? Um. Hmm. Oh yeah that'll, uh, cost ya..." 

 Bonus: maybe Putin put some folk he actually wanted dead on that plane. Or maybe he needs to murder some innocents now and again or he gets the shakes. 

 There's also the double-conspiracy theory. Putin agreed to help him fake his death, and then had him killed for real anyway. 

 

 In any case, the one thing you can be sure of: what we're told happened with Priggy is not what in fact happened with Priggy. The narrative is not the story.