Just when you thought that the situation in Russia couldn’t get any weirder it surprises you. The latest development is that Prigozhin and his Wagner Group detachment are no longer on the road to Moscow but seem to be heading for Belarus. That’s about as much as we actually know.
There’s some speculation that Prigozhin has reached some sort of agreement with the Russian Ministry of Defense and/or the Kremlin but at this point that appears to be speculation. For that to be the case you’ve got to assume that a lot of the activity of the last several days has been theatrics. What do I mean by that? Prigozhin’s speech alleging that the MoD had attacked his men; Putin’s speech castigating Prigozhin as a traitor.
The official U. S. position appears to be that these events indicate how weak and disorganized Russia is. Maybe. We should know more in the next several days.
There are other more important questions. How did NATO and the Ukraine Nazis cause this? Was this really caused and funded by the Biden crime family to draw attention away from Hunter?
Steve
Why did the U. S. and NATO reject Russia’s overtures back in the 1990s? Why did the Bush Administration reneg on the commitments that had been made to Putin? Why did we repudiate the Minsk agreements?
Russia never complied so we never got a chance to honor the accords. 6 days after signing Minsk 1 they invaded Deblatseve. The 2nd agreement built on the first. Russians did not give back territory and they never left East Ukraine and never stopped. fighting. Probably doesn’t help that Russia claimed they never signed when they did.
Steve
Did the US reject their overtures or did Russia decide to not follow up? They did join the NATO-Russia Founding Act and Discussion Council the latter of those in 2002. They would not have been able to join while at war with Chechnya. However after 2002 the hardliners objected, many of them making up what is sometimes called the siloviki. As you have noted many times, if Putin is replaced there is a good chance his replacement will be even more aggressive in rebuilding the Russian Empire than Putin. Maybe there was a small window in the early 2000s if NATO had aggressively pursued Russia and acceded to anything they wanted that they might have gotten them to join but its doubtful as by then it was becoming clear that having NATO and the US as enemies helped to cement Putin’s power.
In short, Putin made some comments about joining NATO in the early 90s but it ended up being more useful having NATO as an enemy. On NATO’s part there was foot dragging at least partially because some in NATO looked at Russia as defeated.
Steve