If this were protracted (say going 2 weeks)...Wagner would stand to lose a minimum of a thousand men. But with the Army...a lot of marginally trained guys...it’s probably 3 to 1 loss situation for the Russian Army.
One other odd aspect (seeing the 2 helicopters shot down this AM)...Russia can’t afford to have two weeks of this and twenty-odd choppers removed from the inventory.
No one has stated security situation in Moscow...other than saying the road system from Rostov has been closed off (I’d guess about 500 km from Moscow). I would question how much security is left around Moscow, and if there’s marginally nothing...Wagner could put on a ‘pony-show’ and take the capital in three or four days.
Brings back the episode where the coup was attempted in 1990s...failing.
Weakest condition for the security of the city....since 1920s. No one expected this.
1991 coup attempt was extremely unpopular. They had very little support and hoped to rely on fear.
Prigozhin is quite popular and he attempted to create a narrative that the enemies are Shoigu and the Oligarchs, who are both very unpopular and tried to avoid mentioning Putin as an enemy - just a Czar betrayed by courtier traitors.
Now Putin came out with a statement against him so Prigozhin has to attack him, but he will choose “a good Czar, who got fooled by traitors”.
We’ll see how it will work.