Comments by "Gaza is not Amalek" (@Ass_of_Amalek) on "The Reason Prigozhin Stopped His Rebellion" video.

  1. yes, and that's why jake is almost certainly wrong here. what actually happened must have been irrevocable and not contingent on trust. I think it's most likely a combination of a physical transfer of a very large amount of money/gold/gems, and prigozhin or somebody else at the top of the rebellion having failed to secure one or multiple close relatives, whom the FSB captured, threatened to kill, and set free in exchange for the withdrawal.
    14
  2.  @katiehettinger7857  giving prigozhin belarus would be arming him further, which putin doesn't want - assuming that it doesn't cause belarus' government to collapse. furthermore, belarus isn't actually russia's to give away, lukashenka has real agency of his own and is largely personally necessary for the regime's stability. and he wants to hand over the country to his son eventually.
    6
  3.  @LasseEklof  billionaires like money, that's why they're billionaires. I haven't seen anything to suggest that prigozhin is still in belarus or will stay there, I just heard that he was supposed to exit russia into belarus. belarus doesn't seem like a good place for prigozhin to stay, and neither putin nor lukashenka seem likely to want him there. I think the "exile in belarus" thing is just an extension of the misdirection claim that lukashenka negotiated the withdrawal. lukashenka has no authority to negotiate for russia, and couldn't possibly have acted as anything other than a putin spokesperson in this situation, so even if he did talk to prigozhin, it's meaningless to acknowledge him as if he had been an independent agent in this affair. they mostly involved lukashenka in the announcements in order to soften the fact that putin did a 180° turn from what he said half a day earlier. it's all putin, they're just attributing part of putin's actions to lukashenka.
    5
  4.  @JakeBroe  he stopped because he got something immediately that can't be taken back - a physical transfer of money and/or release of hostages.
    4
  5. ​​ @yvonnetomenga5726 wagner's resource deals include ownership of a gold mine in the CAR projected to yield $3bn in 8 years of operation, and a 25% profit cut from the many oil facilities they recaptured for the syrian government. and wagner is active in many other african countries, such as libya, mali, sudan, and burkina faso. libya has huge oil production, whereas many sub-saharan african countries have huge relatively easily accessible mineral wealth because all throughout modern times, poverty, bad governance, and instability have prevented industrial mining efforts. wagner has made huge amounts of money by securing african regimes with a few thousand troops for mining rights, and then securing the mining sites and bringing their own industrial mining equipment.
    2
  6. ​ @LasseEklof I also think that threats from putin's people, probably via hostages, are likely to have been more important than any pay-off offer. though with a pay-off, you need to consider that by giving up on the rebellion, prigozhin has surrendered a huge portion of his and his family's wealth, probably much more than half (at least if you assume that any assets in russia are gone, though they may have been promised to remain in prigozhin's possession, for whatever that's worth). money in russian bank accounts and investments could be gone, both prigozhin and his wife own dozens of businesses in russia (mostly in saint petersburg) that would be gone, and likely most valuable of all is the likely total loss of the income streams generated by wagner's foreign deployments (mining and oil drilling concessions). even if prigozhin retained command authority over wagner, wagner has very little ability to enforce its claims on the resources granted to them now that russia not only does not support their claims, but opposes them (again assuming that continuing this was not promised in the withdrawal agreement, since the promise would not be reliable enough to make it worth considering). in weaker countries like the central african republic or mali, wagner may have some very limited ability to violently enforce its claims, but then they would be in a very different sort of business (at that point, it might make more sense to depose governments instead). in syria, wagner has no chance of keeping anything that putin doesn't want them to have. and really anywhere else, putin has plenty of leverage to make any contractual partner of wagner turn against wagner. without russian government support giving it access to all necessary military equipment and recruitment of personnel, wagner can no longer deliver on its security guarantees anyways. so basically, besides the possibility of hostages, prigozhin would have gotten a buy-out from putin calculated as surpassing the value of most of his possessions multiplied by the percentage chance of success if he continued the rebellion. if he actually did it for the money, with no hostages involved, then the payment must have been enormous (really not the sort of money that would normally change hands in physical form). wagner's holdings include stuff like ownership of a gold mine in the CAR that was projected to yield $3bn in 8 years of operation when they got it ~3 years ago, and a 25% profit cut on oil installations that wagner recaptured for the syrian government. prigozhin may also have a lot of money safe outside of russia and not tied to continued russian support for wagner, but wagner's holdings certainly are gone, unless putin promised that prigozhin could keep them and actually delivers on that promise. my guess would be that there was a payment, but much less than would compensate for the lost chance of prigozhin keeping his property, and the main part of the deal were hostages. not necessarily prigozhin's own family, family members of other essential coup perpetrators could also suffice to kill the coup. but if the russian authorities really did find that personal go-bag of prigozhin with the money, gold and false passports at the wagner HQ in saint petersburg, that speaks for rather shoddy planning that could also have included failure to secure prigozhin's own family. and there is the problem that trying to get all close family members of prigozhin and other important coup plotters out of russia in preparation would have been suspicious and would have posed a risk of information leakage. so perhaps they instead went with sending wagner personnel to those family members immediately before the operation to hide them in safe houses in russia, and perhaps that plan failed for some of them. if by "not without a parachute" you mean that any deal would have required security for prigozhin: money is the only security he could have gotten, besides weapons for his troops.
    2
  7. releasing family members of prigozhin or other wagner leaders would be worth something. I think the coup failed to secure somebody, and the FSB took hostages. putin's people finding prigozhin's personal go-bags at the wagner HQ in saint petersburg indicates bad enough preparation to make it plausible that they failed to secure some family members.
    2
  8. what feels most likely to me is that the coup-plotters failed to secure family members of prigozhin or somebody else critical to the coup, and the coup got stopped after the FSB captured and threatened to kill those people. the fact that the russian authorities managed to find so much money and gold and prigozhin's passports (his personal go-bags, apparently) at the wagner headquarters in saint petersburg is bizarre. very strangely bad planning. prigozhin also has a wife and three children - I don't know where they live, but his wife owns a bunch of businesses in saint petersburg, as does prigozhin himself. given the bad preparation shown by that stuff being found in saint petersburg, I suppose it is possible that prigozhin didn't even get his wife and kids out of russia before starting this. 🙄 and beyond those four, it probably really would have been difficult to remove all close family members of all important wagner coup leaders from russia in preparation without arousing suspicion. perhaps they tried to go the easier route of having wagner employees bring them all to safe houses at the beginning of the operation, and that went wrong.
    1
  9.  @vanessak.sanders1292  prigozhin isn't president material, by way of being a convicted felon.
    1
  10. bad analysis. there is no way prigozhin walked away for PROMISES. I reckon it was a combination of a very large physical transfer of money/gold/gems, and the release of family members of prigozhin or other wagner leaders whom wagner failed to secure and who were taken hostage by putin's people. or just the latter, without the money.
    1