Comments by "peabase" (@peabase) on "Should the West and Ukraine be worried about Wagner in Belarus? | DW News" video.

@suportbghelp4938 You have a short memory. The Taliban let Al Qaeda use Afghanistan as a base camp for its September 11 attacks, triggering NATO's Article 5. A 20-year war followed. Putin would be stark raving mad if he were to open up another front, this time against the most powerful military alliance known to man. He can't deal with Ukraine as it is, so why make matters infinitely worse for Russia?
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If Prigozhin's march on Moscow was about reinforcing Lukashenko's presidential guard and repositioning troops to Belarus, it was a very, very elaborate scheme indeed. I don't think Putin appreciates being humiliated for something so trivial, however.
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@Daoway-f7o Who's paying them and for what exactly? Is Putin going to foot the bill for Wagner to sit idle in Belarus?
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@Daoway-f7o You put too much faith in BRICS. There's no incentive for what is essentially just an economic co-operation forum.
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@First-Last_name That may be true, but in Africa, Wagner has a job to do, shady as it may be. What exactly would Wagnerites do in Belarus to earn their keep? Moreover, these mercenaries are used to salaries that are an order of magnitude higher than those of Russian army Kontraktniks. You don't keep mercs farting around without a mission.
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@Daoway-f7o Pigs will also sprout wings and fly away from their pens. Anyhoo, we shouldn't be talking about BRICS any longer. BICS is more appropriate. But not to worry, Russia is still in, be it as a colony of China.
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Sure, Lukashenko could gain a Praetorian Guard in Wagner. Like many Roman emperors, Lukashenko could lose his life to them, too. I doubt Prigozhin is much of a classicist, but he could draw inspiration from how the Praetorian Guard killed Emperor Pertinax and auctioned off the imperial title.
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@MM-un3ob Prigozhin may still have his contacts, but he's become toxic to them. His assets in the West are already frozen. I wouldn't be surprised if the same is now true for his Russian assets as well. And even if he manages to keep his mercenaries in tow, who's ultimately paying them and for what? For farting around in Belarus?
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@AORD72 You're either an anachronism or you're blessed with a vivid imagination. You're proposing that a band of mercenaries can subjugate a whole people, like the Teutonic Knights conquered the Baltics in the Middle Ages. Yeah, that would work in this day and age.
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@AORD72 You're pretending that we'd be dealing with a coup d'état. A foreign actor, Prigozhin, seizing power in another country, Belarus in this case, is another thing altogether.
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