Allegedly, #Prighozhin's march on #Moscow has ended in a deal brokered by #Lukashenko, in which #Wagner Group forces will head to #Belarus and ... become Lukashenko's #Varangian Guard, or something? Assuming of course #Putin doesn't wait for them to get strung out on the road and bomb them all to bits.
I can't help but be struck by how antiquated all this feels. The Varangian Guard reference above is deliberate—the whole thing is #Byzantine in both the original and modern senses of that word. Shades of #Belisarius and #Justinian. Yes, I know I'm mixing up periods, and the analogy is inexact in all kinds of ways: history doesn't repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.
#Kings and #emperors and shifting personal loyalties, not cold-blooded calculation of national interests. It's not the way #modern states make #war—even though #Ukraine may well be the first modern war of the twenty-first century, through future eyes. Something older, more visceral, rising from ancient slumber.
Hell of a time to be alive. I suppose that's always true.
@medigoth
Very few solid facts to be known. All involved had track records of lying.
It makes a bit more sense if you think of Prigozhin and Putin as loyal partners losing, while Sergei Shoigu is the person in actual power.
@medigoth definitely in the past..
@medigoth seems to me that this invasion of Ukraine has been multiple
century’s warfare. The new warfare, as has been show, is economic sanctions, mixed with remote control warfare with the rapidly becoming arachic use of ground troops.
Now I'm hearing the #Belarus deal only applies to #Prigozhin personally, and the #Wagner troops are expected to go back to fighting in #Ukraine. This does not make me any less confused.