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.
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.
@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.