Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst, made the remarks during an interview with IRNA conducted by Zahra Hamidia.
“The Anglo-American Axis wrongly expected that the combined pressure of proxy warfare and sanctions would lead to Russia’s collapse, but its military remains resilient as proven by the stalemate that settled in over the past half-year while its economy is expected to grow a bit unlike most Western countries,” Korybko said.
“These outcomes show that those two’s improvised plans failed and arguably backfired by weakening the EU instead of Russia. Had the special operation not been waged, however, everything might be different,” he added.
The following is the full text of the interview:
Last weekend, we witnessed a mutiny in Russia by fighters of the Wagner Group under the leadership of Yevgeny Prigozhin. This is a military group that had captured Bakhmut on behalf of the Russian army. Could you first give us a short history of the Wagner Group and its leader, Prigozhin?
Wagner is a Russian state-funded but autonomously run military company led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a powerful businessman who used to be personal friends with President Putin. Its membership is reportedly comprised of volunteers and veterans from the Russian Armed Forces. Wagner is universally regarded as a formidable fighting force and one of the country’s most elite units in its ongoing special operation. The group is also active in Africa and West Asia, where it helps defend allied governments.
What do you think really happened in Russia during those 24 hours that led to the banishment of Prigozhin to Belarus?
Prigozhin’s rivalry with the Defense Ministry over the best way to wage the special operation reached its climax after his inflated ambitions, personal interests, and paranoia were exploited by Western intelligence agencies via information-psychological warfare to plant the idea of a coup in his mind. His supporters claim that he only staged a mutiny aimed at pressuring President Putin to remove Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov for incompetence, but this isn’t true.
He decided to continue his so-called “march for justice” to Moscow even after the Russian leader condemned his actions as a treasonous stab in the back and demanded that he stop right away, which represented an undeniable challenge to the head of state and thus made it a bona fide coup attempt. The Russian elite, military, and society united around their legitimate leader and the Russian Constitution, however, which doomed the Wagner chief’s regime change plans.
President Putin mercifully gave him and his collaborators a final chance to save their lives via Belarusian President Lukashenko’s mediation in order to avoid the large-scale bloodshed that their country’s existential enemies wanted to see. Prigozhin accepted this deal, which also prevented him from becoming a martyr around which domestic extremists could rally in the future. The situation was resolved and a larger geopolitical crisis that could have been exploited by the West was averted.
So far, Russia has proven capable of defeating any threat from within. How do you think President Putin and his government are managing the situation? What has made his government and the Russian people united in this war in Ukraine?
Russia is managing the domestic and international situations the best it can, given the difficult circumstances. On the home front, the country proved its unity after Prigozhin’s failed coup attempt by rallying around President Putin and the Russian Constitution, which also showed that the vast majority agrees with their leadership’s handling of the special operation despite its prior setbacks since one of the Wagner chief’s goals was to escalate this conflict.
He’d complained over the preceding months about why he felt that the Defense Minister and Chief of General Staff weren’t doing enough to help their country win, during which time he also shared what he thought they should do instead. While some of these criticisms did indeed resonate with a segment of the population, most of those who were sympathetic to his criticisms didn’t support them strongly enough to endorse his coup attempt that was partially aimed at turning his suggestions into reality.
This observation goes to show that while differences of opinion exist over how the special operation is being waged, which is natural for any country involved in an armed conflict, there’s a difference between patriotically critiquing its conduct and treasonously trying to overthrow the government on that pretext. There are very clear red lines that the Russian people won’t ever cross, and destabilizing their country from within while it’s fighting for its survival against its existential enemies is one of them.
We have heard conflicting views on what triggered the war. We would like to hear from you too: Was it Russia that invaded Ukraine? Or was it the US that ignited the war?
Russia sought to politically resolve the security dilemma with the US that the latter provoked via its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2001 and everything that came afterward by proposing security guarantees in late 2021. These were ignored by the West, which continued with its plans to help Kiev reconquer Donbass by spring 2022, after which they wanted to prepare their vassal for waging a proxy war against Russia over Crimea by sometime later this decade.
President Putin preempted the first kinetic step of this active containment strategy by recognizing the Donbass Republic’s independence and then launching his country’s special operation to demilitarize Ukraine among other objectives. That former Soviet Republic was transformed into an anti-Russia country for the purpose of waging a combination of conventional, hybrid, and unconventional warfare against it via the planned proxy war over Crimea, separatist-terrorist campaigns, and the threat of biological weapons.
At the same time, NATO was clandestinely deploying to Ukraine and wanted to build so-called “anti-missile” systems there with the intent of eroding Russia’s nuclear second-strike capability per the original objective of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty over two decades ago. This comprehensive containment campaign was supposed to lead to the West ultimately blackmailing Russia through the abovementioned means as well as nuclear ones into commencing never-ending unilateral concessions.
The grand strategic goal was envisaged as neutralizing Russia’s role as an independent player in the global systemic transition to multipolarity with a view towards eventually Balkanizing it, all of which was expected to facilitate their subsequent replication of this containment campaign against China. Simply put, the US made an unprecedented power play that was supposed to restore its declining unipolar hegemony with time, but President Putin thwarted this scheme by preemptively intervening in Ukraine.
Recently, President Putin revealed that a deal to end the war was reached months ago between Russia and Ukraine, but President Zelensky did not abide by it. Why do you think Zelensky did not want to stop the war after he expressed a desire to end it on a number of occasions? Why did he find it difficult to act on his own desire?
The former Soviet Republic’s forces were defeated within the first month of fighting, which is why their leadership decided to participate in the Minsk and Istanbul peace processes that led to their representatives initialing a draft treaty. The Anglo-American Axis that controls NATO swiftly intervened to ensure that their proxies scrapped that deal so that their bloc could wage its previously planned proxy war with Russia over Crimea out of fear that this would be impossible later on if peace soon prevailed.
It was right after this that Ukraine was flooded with Western weapons, but observers can conclude that NATO didn’t plan to wage this proxy war last year but sometime later in this decade after Donbass was conquered, since it would have prepared its military-industrial complex accordingly in that case. This didn’t happen as proven by Western leaders, including NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg himself, admitting that their side is running out of weapons to give Ukraine after over a year of proxy warfare.
The Anglo-American Axis wrongly expected that the combined pressure of proxy warfare and sanctions would lead to Russia’s collapse, but its military remains resilient as proven by the stalemate that settled in over the past half-year while its economy is expected to grow a bit unlike most Western countries. These outcomes show that those two’s improvised plans failed and arguably backfired by weakening the EU instead of Russia. Had the special operation not been waged, however, everything might be different.
Kiev would have reconquered Donbass, after which it would have further accelerated its informal integration into NATO, including through the clandestine hosting of that bloc’s bases and “anti-missile” systems. Later this decade, a major proxy war over Crimea would have been fought, during which time Russia might have been at a strategic disadvantage had it not preemptively checked NATO’s proxy power in that neighboring country. China might then have been contained, and unipolarity fully revived.
How long do you think this war would last? What could be done to end it?
The “race of logistics” that Stoltenberg belatedly acknowledged in mid-February between NATO and Russia, which he also described as a “war of attrition”, proved that the latter has been able to successfully hold its own against an alliance of over thirty Western countries in this proxy war. Logistics are therefore the most crucial military-strategic variable for determining the outcome of this conflict, and the dynamics thereof have been trending in Russia’s favor since January’s liberation of Soledar.
Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive has failed thus far, which could lead to the West deciding to scale back the pace, scale, and scope of its armed support after the bloc’s upcoming summit in early July or possibly by winter if they want to still give their proxy a final shot at victory. Either way, the point is that the aforesaid cannot be sustained indefinitely since their stockpiles are running low and can’t be replenished fast enough due to their military-industrial complex not having prepared for this.
The above observation reinforces the assessment that the Anglo-American Axis opportunistically improvised their proxy war plans against Russia after President Putin preempted their original ones by commencing his special operation as was explained. Had they truly plotted to wage this campaign last year, then they’d have retooled their factories accordingly to ensure that their side had enough arms and equipment to keep Ukraine fighting indefinitely in the event that Russia didn’t collapse as expected.
The most likely scenario is therefore that ceasefire talks might informally begin sometime this summer or before winter at the latest, which could then lead to restarting spring 2022’s peace process that the Anglo-American Axis sabotaged in order to speedily end the conflict. Russia and Ukraine might formally retain their respective territorial claims even if they can’t achieve them and agree to a Korean-like armistice for freezing the Line of Contact instead, however, so as to “save face” domestically.
In either case, the point is that the West will struggle to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of its existing armed support to Ukraine due to it gradually falling behind Russia in the “race of logistics”, which could prompt either a pragmatic de-escalation as explained or a desperate last-ditch escalation. Regarding the second-mentioned possibility, Poland could potentially lead a formal NATO intervention up to the Line of Contact in order to prevent Ukraine’s collapse if Russia threatened to achieve a decisive breakthrough.
That would likely lead to nuclear brinksmanship, which makes it extremely risky but might still be attempted by those Western elites who could gamble that it’s a more “convincing” way to “save face” before their public than letting ceasefire and then peace talks smoothly unfold with Russia. There’s of course the chance that something unexpected occurs that defies these two predictions, but these are the most probable scenarios for the reasons that were explained.
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