The Chaser Report - RUSSIAN COUP RECAP!

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Charles provides the inside story of this weekend's events in Russia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. I've got a cold, so please bear with me. There's been a lot going on. Charles, how have you cope with the absolute roller coaster of the past, I don't know, 48 hours or so? Oh, look, I haven't slept except at night.

I mean, that's how, I mean, the Russian... It's been tense. It was a nail biter, except that when I needed to... to get asleep, I just went to sleep because, you know, ultimately. Yeah, I mean, look, it's kind of hard to know what happened in Russia. Putin's private army of mercenaries turned on him in scenes reminiscent, I guess, of Game of Thrones. Had he not watched Game of Thrones, Charles?

Did he not realize that creating a private army just means that at some point in the plot that it's going to turn? Well, actually, there's been some underreported details about why that guy acted when he did, progoshion. All right. I smeller Charles, a patented theory. We'll get to that in a second. And an update on the 6 millionth downloader.

Oh, yes. We've had a lot of people wanting to be recognized as the information. We've had about 6 million people. A.k.a. getting free shit. 6 million people, I reckon, have already applied to be the 6 million downloads. Yeah, it's already up to 12 million downloads just because of this exciting promotion. So all of that in a sec. All right.

So let's just deal with the 6 million business because people are intrigued by the idea of a 6 million people actually listening to this thing over the last few years, but also we're actually not making up. Normally when we give big numbers like 6 million to do with the Chaser, it's completely fictitious. This is actually true. We have genuinely had 6 million downloads of the podcast or almost. And we asked you to email podcast at chaser.com.com and explain why you should be recognized as 6 millionth because there's no other way to tell other than just making up. Well, so the thing that I'd say is when you listen to this explanation of the people who've applied to be the six millionth downloader.

Can you not tell any advertisers or, you know, other people what I'm about to tell you, okay? We'll just keep it between ourselves, right? Yeah, yeah, keep it sacred. Which is pretty much every single person who's applied goes, well, the reason why I should be the six millionth downloader is because I download it twice on my phone using different apps. I download it once on my computer.

I download it, you know, three times on my work computer or something. And so I have a feeling that we might only have about three people listening to it, but they downloaded it six million times across various different devices. I mean, as long as they're listening to it each time, that's okay, isn't it? I mean, people on Netflix re-watch comedy specials 10 times. Yes, that's what's happening. Yes, people are listening. They're not just downloading it and then not listening to it.

They're downloading it and then religiously listening to it eight times. Every time. Each day. But, Charles, to be fair to us, the fact that anyone bothers, to do that to this podcast. It's probably the most flattering thing I've ever heard that people will help us defraud the numbers. I mean, they must genuinely like what we're doing

or they can't be bothered turning off all the auto-download features. They set it up years ago and it's just like, whatever, it cares. And they can't be bothered putting in the event. But the other really interesting detail is I think 100% of people, so we offered to give people

an avocado pool toy Like whoever won the 6 millionth download was going to get an avocado pool toy. The least one to chase a merch in terms of sales, but giving it away for free, I would have thought we'd have huge interest charge. So what has been remarkable is the number of people who have emailed going, look, I don't really want an avocado pool toy, but can I have something else from the chaser shop instead? If only you'd done a tiny bit of market research, Charles, I think next time you ponder launching a product, maybe just ask on the podcast, is this concept a terrible one?

Well, I just think you miss an. understand the whole point of this promotion. The point of this promotion wasn't to celebrate 6 million downloads. It was to get rid of another avocado pool toy. And the fact that none of you wondered, that is a low blow. We can't even give them away. I mean, as someone who, hypothetically, as a part owner of this business, could have taken one for free.

I haven't, as yet. I have a pool. I mean, I've got a pool in my communal building. Just haven't really seen that my life would be better with an inflatable avocado. Let's just say, we haven't. You know how usually you have a problem when you've got products sitting on a shelf in a warehouse? It's called shrinkage where employees steal your merchandise. We have not suffered that problem.

Do you want to come up with some sort of discount code? Yes. Just in the hope that someone somewhere wants one. Yes. Do you want to just come up with a code like pathetic or desperate or something? Yeah. People can type it to get a big discount and chase the shop.com. If anyone wants to have a cutout, I mean, if you don't, we understand.

I feel the same way about it. It's got to be something that denotes totally poor value and like a complete... What about market failure? Market failure, yeah. Let's blame the market on this one. Okay, so market failure is the code to get a discount on the inflatable avocado. Charles has shells full of these things. It's costing you money to store them at this stage.

I know that that's the top story of the last 48 hours. Yeah, that's the main story, but Russia's had a few things going on as well. There's been a minor hiccup there. And I just want to talk about Wagner, the history of Wagner for a second. So the guy, Yevgeny Progosen, launched this coup against Putin over the weekend. Well, it wasn't actually against Putin. It was against the military forces. It was against the commanders.

He said it was the Russian Ministry of Defense he didn't want, rather than the commander-in-chief thereof, Vladimir President. And that's because he accused them, And especially the guy who was running the southern military command, who will get to in a sec, he accused that guy of actually bombing the Wagner forces in their positions in the Ukraine. Like essentially, he was accusing them of turning against him, right? And so there was no other choice that he had than to sort of storm into the office and go, hey, what are you doing?

You're bombing my sort of thing. But I want to talk about Wagner first, which is, so it was founded in 2008 by a guy called Dmitri Uttes. Right. And the reason it was called Wagner. Do you know this, Dom? Do you know, do you know? No, I don't. I'm assuming it's got something to do with the composer who got adopted by the fascist. They thought that would be a really great source of sort of imagery for a military group. Is that right? So Atkins's call sign was Wagner, right? And the reason his call sign was Wagner was because Wagner was because Wagner was Hitler was Hitler's favorite composer. And so he went, well, I like Vargas. Wagner. And the Wagner group, the troops there, they call themselves the musicians, right? They are the people who... I have chilling. Yeah, yeah. So can we just remember, Charles, that part of the justification for the invasion in the first place was to denatify Ukraine.

Putin claimed that the Ukrainian government, despite being headed by Vladimir Zelensky, who is Jewish, was full of Nazis. So to distort out that problem, he's sent in a bunch of people called Wagner who idolized Wagner. Okay. That's not weird at all. The thing is, some sort of pro-Russian people have said, no, no, no, no, that's ridiculous. They're just Wagner, because Richard Wagner was a great composer, nothing to do with Nazis.

And the suggestion that Utkin was ever a Nazi is that that's up for debate, basically. Sure. The one thing that might be a bit of a giveaway is that Utkin apparently does have four Nazi tattoos. Oh, look, Charles, I've always said it's five. If you've got fewer than five, you're not a real Nazi. Yeah, right, okay. That's the rule. So anyway, so they're the people who rose up, and they were mercenary forces.

And essentially, what happened was this Progoshan guy, who was Putin's chef, you know, back in the 1990s. That's the weirdest part of this, isn't it? It's basically like Gordon Ramsey becoming a man with his own private army. Well, you wouldn't want to give Gordon Ramsey his own private army. Have you seen his behaviour in the kitchen? Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. He'd turn on you. Yes, he would. He would ultimately turn on you and call you a fucking fucker. The thing that is sort of a little bit underreported about this whole thing is everyone's going, why did he do it? Why did Progoshan turn against the military forces at this case? He'd just taken out, like, so in terms of Ukraine, Ukraine was going really badly, and the Wagner forces were brought in because the conventional Russian military wasn't doing very well. Well, Wagner had already done lots of clean-up jobs for Putin over the years militarily.

They'd essentially taken over most of the Russian operations in Africa. They'd also done a few sort of... Yeah, in place like Mali, yeah. Yeah, but also, you know, places around Eastern Europe, they'd sort of done a few sort of dodgy-dodge things. And... War crimes, I think, is what you're preferring to. And so back in 2014, when they, when Russia first...

first invaded Crimea, they needed a way to hold that space with a bit of plausible deniability that Russia was in fact doing it. And so what, it was a really convenient thing. It was like outsourcing. It was like, well, we're not, we're not actually invading your country. It's just that these completely unconnected, private company, who happens to have a lot of guns, just happens to be roaming around there enforcing Russian. Just looking for a place to stay.

the ring cycle. Yes. She's coming in town by town, you know, master singers of Nuremberg. Yes. It's staging operas for the populace. That's what they were doing.

Basically a travelling troupe of musicians. Yes. The travelling Wilburys. Yeah, that's right. Traveling Kilbury is all like it. It's sort of, in the same way Taylor Swift comes into Australia, charges a fucking fortune,

and you're all required to go and see her. Well, and she has tanks. And guns. But she's got tanks as well, yes. So 2014 is when they, they started getting involved in that whole melee, right? Yeah. That then meant that the Wagner forces

and the Russian military command were never really, they didn't really like each other, right? Like they, they, it was sort of a bit like office politics, which is so they brought in this external consultant who then sticks around for years and years and years and has the sort of favorite. They're the PWC. Yeah. They're the PWC

of the Russian military. Yes, that's right. And they and they get all the boss character, Putin, gives them all the good staplers and offer stationary and whenever there's poster notes to go around, they get all the yellow ones. Yeah, isn't it also true that a lot of the Wagner mercenaries are taken directly from prisons in Russia? So basically the deal is you can stay in this miserable soul-destroying prison or you can go out and kill.

And presumably if you've got convicted murderers, they've got some skills in that area already. And it's just a much better deal going and raping and pillaging and looting in places like Ukraine, rather than having to stay in a Russian prison. I mean, I think I would even take that up as a lot of us. Well, this is one of the funny things, right, which is not very funny, which is that Progoshan himself spent 10 years in jail in the early 1990s and apparently quite enjoyed the experience as you do. And so he personally goes around and recruits the prisoners, right? Like, and he doesn't recruit all of it. Like, I thought he'd sort of offered a sort of generalized amnesty, which is, if you do six months at the front, you get

off your crime. But actually, apparently it's a little bit more, there's a bit more of a threshold to pass, which is, Progosion's got to look you in the eye and go, will this guy kill for me. Yes, he will. Okay, you've got the offer. Don't forget in Russia, Charles,

you've got a lot of, you know, Nambi, Pam, human rights sympathizers and journalists and people who like democracy, they're all in jail too. You don't want them. They're not going to kill them from it. You're sort of liberal intellectuals are not going to become killing machines

when he's sending to Ukraine. They're not going to enjoy the murdering bit. They're just complain. about carbon, you know, emissions from the tanks or something. Oh, it's a war crime. We can't possibly. Oh, the Geneva Convention, Yevgeny. We couldn't do it.

What boys? No. Exactly. So there's now, the funny detail is there's now 40,000 ex-prisoners who have been released under the streets of Russia under this new amnesty plan because they've done enough time at the front, one of whom, as he was. was heading home after the Battle of Bakhmud on about Thursday of last week. He had been in jail for murder. He'd been pardoned. He was coming back from the front. So he was facing a life of

no more murdering, basically. And so what he did is on the train coming home, he went on a rampage and stabbed 25 people killing three of them. The images are, this is just about 24 hours before the coup. I haven't seen this. Wow. And it was unbelievable. It was unbelievable. The amount of blood that comes from stabbing 25 people is just remarkable. Like, there's sheets on the beds because they're all in these bunk bed things, were just red.

It was just unbelievable. So it's worth noting that some of the people who are in Russian prisons actually need to stay there. Yes. As much as you joke about the human rights sympathizers, and there are plenty of those, I'm sure, in labour camps and stuff, yeah, keep the murderers in prison is generally a pretty good rule. for a civilised society? Well, yeah, I think one of the things

that Putin has been contending with is that by prioritising the Wagner forces, you are actually unleashing a whole lot of really quite dangerous people onto the streets and there is a growing problem in that thing. Anyway, get to Friday. Why did Progosen move against the Russian military forces then? Right?

Why was it then, and not a week later or a week later? So there's two things. There's two theories. First one, Wagner forces had just very successfully taken the town of Buckmoud. It was the big offensive that Russia had to do. They took eight months to do it, but they finally did it. And it was the Wagner forces who did that, right? And so they were very victorious, but they then very quickly handed it all over to the Russian military command

because Progosen didn't want to be stuck then having to defend this city that they just caught. Oh, such a bore, such a bore having to administer a country rather than to storm it and break it. Yeah, having done that, the Southern Miller. commander, when, okay, that means we don't really need Wagner anymore because they've done the hard task and we're now in charge. So, and he convinced Putin, he convinced Putin to come up with a decree that meant that all private military contractors had to fold themselves in and contract themselves to the Russian military and be under Russian military command from July the 1st, i.e. in a week's time, right?

So suddenly, suddenly the head of Wagner, Progoshin, was going to be under the command of Colonel General Sergei Kuzovlev, who he hated, who since May he's been going on social media saying these guys are absolute fucking morons. We took Bakhmud, he can't even, you know, command a stapler, right? So he absolutely hates these guys. And suddenly Putin had said, oh, no, no, you. Wagner's going to be dissolved and instead you're going to come in under the command of this guy.

So, you know, like if you, what I suppose what I'm saying is you can read this as, oh, this was a move against Putin. Oh, this was some sort of big strategic coup. Or you could say that this was basic office politics 101. Yes. That makes plenty of sense. It's just like, you know, if PWC had been told you've got to all be hired by the public service. Yes. No one wants to become public servants.

Charles, you shouldn't make someone become a public servant. But particularly as, by all reports, the Russian military are absolutely hopeless. They're untrained old guys who've been called out of retirement involuntarily and don't want to be there. Whereas your mercenaries would be loving every single day they're not in a Russian prison. Yes, that's right. Yeah, I mean, imagine if you're a high-flyer PWC tax partner and a government decree came down that you had to go and, you know, become a public service. You wouldn't like that. You'd march on Canberra.

And the whole thing is that everyone's going, oh, he must be a strategic genius because he went into Rostov, like this is a progosian, went into Rostov and basically took the entire military headquarters really easily, right? And they gave all the mercenaries food. Did you see this? All the locals were like, oh, my God, competent people. Have a sandwich. Yeah. But you got to realize they did it on a Friday afternoon. Everyone was out of the office down at the pub.

Like, literally. Oh, they were all having vodkas. It was all vodka. Classic Russian vulnerability. They'd put on their out of office, you know, for the weekend on their email. So they probably already knew. They'd probably emailed ahead going, oh, by the way, we're going to pop in and have a little conversation, which is what.

I'm murdering a beer, not a civilian. Yeah, that's right. And so at one level, you can say, oh, this Wagner guy, he's amazing. Like, he just took two cities. He took the entire. There's only five military. districts in Russia, he took... Yes, and he knocked one of them out.

And made it apparently half way to Moscow. Yeah, he took out what is considered, widely considered, the most competent of the five military districts. The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. The other criticism is, why, if he was going to head to Moscow, why did he start 1,200 fucking kilometres south of Moscow? Why would you take out Rostov? Why wouldn't you go a little bit further north?

and then launch your invasion from there. This is my second theory, right? Which is that I think, and this is just a theory, I think that they thought that Putin and Medvedev, who's like the second in charge in Russia, would both be in St. Petersburg, much closer on that weekend because in St Petersburg on that weekend is the ceremony of the Red Sails, right, which is this huge Russian ceremony,

a fucking amazing. You know how Sydney, you know, Sydney Harbour does, you know, New Year's Eve and they have a few fireworks and they look amazing, right? Think of that, but done by a nuclear superpower, right? Are you saying the sales red because they released a murderer and the sales used to be white? That's right. You should have 20 people that turn red?

No, no. It sounds like that's why Russia works east. You should look up the ceremony of the red sales. It's amazing. These yachts, these old style, like Captain Cook style boats. Oh, wow. With sales, elaborate sales, go out in the harbour there in St. Petersburg. And they've got fully red sales.

They look incredible. And then all these fireworks come up. And so Putin goes down there every year. He's an old St. Petersburg guy. Like the whole gang who took over Russia back in 2000 from St. Petersburg. So he, so Progosion probably thought, well, they'll definitely be at the ceremony of red sales. We'll just be able to nab them there, capture them. We can take Russia.

one fell swoop, boom. And instead... I mean, that's interesting, too, Charles, but let me pose an alternative. Yeah. If you have a tech support contract with somebody,

and it's about to expire, let's say on the 1st of July, isn't it an amazing thing to just come in, do a whole bunch of tech support, and then say, look, you can take this over if you want to. Wasn't this a display

of how good their troops were and basically saying, don't disband us, we're the only effective power in the region. So they get half the way to, Basically, it's a sales pitch. Yes. You're halfway, half the way to Moscow.

Yes. You know, the Russian armies used us, they couldn't stop us. We knocked them over in no time. Yes. Are you sure you want to cancel the contract? Yes. Yes. But then Burton did cancel the contract.

Has he cancelled it, though, fully? Like, what's the latest? Because Progerton's gone off to Belarus, which is a puppet state. Yeah. So he's not really going. I mean, is Wagner just going to sneak their way back in in the next few weeks? Well, or are they done? I'm pretty sure they're done.

Dom, like, you can't move against Putin and then have Putin call you a traitor live on TV and pull that back. That's not, that's like, that's imagine, it's like, I don't know, I'm trying to think of the analogy here. Like, like, that would be, like, calling an elbow a cunt and then trying to steal, like, Jim Chalmers calling Albo a cunt and then trying to stay being treasure. It's just not going to happen. Well, except that I'm looking up the latest news and the Wagner forces have headed back to Ukraine.

So the Wagner forces back to Ukraine, but from July the 1st, they'll be under the command of the Russian military, you know, incompetent people. Meanwhile, Pugosian has headed to Belarus wouldn't be particularly feeling that safe if I was Pogosian. The funny thing about that is. You might want to stay away from windows. You know windows can be very dangerous for enemies of Putin. So, okay. So I'm looking at this. Yes.

So they're all, you're right, they're all joining the military. But there are two, there are two pieces of information coming out about progosion. The first one, the New Yorker reported that he had taken 10,000 of his troops with him to Belarus. Oh, okay. So maybe he'd run Belarus within another week. A little bit, you know, a little bit paranoid that maybe something would happen to you. If you had to take 10,000 of your closest mates with you, murderers. Well, it is the one place you wouldn't want to.

Like, it's the one place you know you're definitely not safe from Putin, right? Like as a third-party country. Yeah, but then it's... No, no, but Progosion and the, what's his name, Lukashenko, they're mates. So actually... Oh, thank God they're all mates. Yeah. So I think, I don't think he'll necessarily be murdered immediately.

I mean, Putin has a history of allowing things to quieten down and then murdering people. Like... I just think his next birthday cake will have polonium in it, that's all. Yeah, exactly. But then the other news that I heard this morning, so I haven't had a chance to verify it at all, but is that nobody seemed to actually know where Progoshan has gone. Oh, so he may already be dead.

He agreed to go to Belarus, but whether he's actually turned up there, I think is still, just watch this space. So you think it was genuinely an attempt at a coup? Because I really wasn't sure. I thought it was sort of a little bit of... No, no, I think it was office politics. He wanted the guy who was sort of acting like his boss, but actually the bigger boss, you know,

he knew that he was in the favour of the bigger boss. He wanted to bring it on with him. And then I think was surprised by the fact that he was able to take Rostov so easily and then realized, oh, there's actually no troops in Russia. They're all in Ukraine. Like, this is the funny thing. Like, you go, oh, what a remarkable achievement.

He got within 200 kilometers of Moscow. Well, the answer of that is, there's no troops in Russia all the Russian troops are in the Ukraine. So Moscow is essentially undefended. Like if you saw what was happening, so Putin ordered blockades to be set up around Moscow. Like it was a genuine sort of security situation.

But the blockades was being set up by the police. They were not being set up by the military. Well, presumably a lot of Russia's best troops are dead, right? Like they've lost a lot of troops in Ukraine. Yeah. So, okay, so progoshans might be there. I think I'm looking at here, Charles. So I suppose what I'm saying is, yes, he launched a coup, like, he attempted to sort of launch a march for justice, sort of threaten Putin.

But that was simply because he thought he was going to get Putin over in St Petersburg. He failed and he was improvising. That was like plan B. He didn't intend to march on Moscow. But it was like, I have to do something so that I've got a chip to trade so that I can get out the fuck out of here without being killed. I mean, this reminds me, Charles, of the battle that's been going on between Apple and its workers. This is basically union rights. Yes, yes.

You know, the employer Russian military is trying to sort of vertically integrate everybody and not have any independent rights. He's basically a fighter for labour freedom. Oh, yeah. He's the friend of the worker. Friend of the worker. The worker is locked up for murder. Yeah. When your work is murdering, he's on your side.

He's the union boss of the murderous. The other thing that people are noting, bearing in mind that we don't know if he's still the law, is that because if you look at Belarus on the map, because it's to the north of Ukraine, there's a suggestion that there might be another offensive involving him from the north, so thereby, who knows what will happen. But I guess we'll find out of the state or not. I even saw a suggestion that maybe the trade was actually, well, why don't you go to Belarus and then just murder Lukashenko and take over as president of Belarus?

Oh, that's a good deal. If you want to run a country, run that country, not this one. Yeah. That's not a bad. And then Ukraine's got enemies on both sides. But I don't think Putin rewards traders like that. I don't think, and also, why would you launch, like, it took eight months to take the regional town of Buckmoor, which, you know, is a significant town, but it's like taking, I don't

know, Golbon or Geelong or something in Australia. Let's say Geelong, because if you try to take Geelong, you get some. You'd get some resistance. Yeah. They're tough down there. Yeah, but I'm just saying it's not like, you know, it's not like taking Key. It's not even like taking Wollongong. So if you're saying, oh, well, why doesn't he launch an attack on Keeve from the north?

Well, the answer is, so you want him to completely redo all his supply lines. It doesn't make any sense. Just another conspiracy theory. The thing is with it, Charles, this is yet again shown how shithouse Russia's army is. This is the thing. We all, for so many years, we're in terror of the great Russian army with its ruthless, relentless sort of march. Yes. That's not it at all.

Even if it had any capabilities, they've left a lot of them disabled or dead in Ukraine. I mean, this is a shadow. Putin looks even weakened now, doesn't he, then he did at the start of this particular misadventure? Oh, yeah. No, there's two losers that it is. First one is Putin. Second one is China. China?

How does China? I thought you were going to say progoshin, who's not looking at it? So good. How does China lose? Well, you know, China backed in Putin. Like China, I mean, they've been sort of a little bit sort of discreet about it. But essentially, Shijing Ping has spent the last few years essentially endorsing Putin's sort of thing and making an ally out of Putin and getting advantage over that.

And what a bad bet. What a bad bet. I mean, unless Russia now becomes a client state of China. Yeah. Anyway, it's certainly been fun following this on Twitter Because any sense that it's a reliable news source now Has been completely destroyed By every single person who might know what they're talking about

Just gets immediately swamped by an army of blue tick idiots I don't know what you did over the weekend But I spent most of my time setting up accounts That sounded plausibly Russian sounding Buying a blue tick and then getting to the top of everyone's feed Amazing Yeah, it's great fun It's free speech in action

Yeah, exactly Such a great way to know what's going on Well, thank you for explaining all that, Charles. I now feel that I know more or that I'm completely wrong. I don't know which it is, I suppose, time will tell. Why not both? If you haven't listened to the submarine episode, as macabre and sad as the whole thing is, you weren't wrong.

You weren't wrong. I'm going to say, it's not often that I say this of you, Charles, but on this occasion, a tragic, awful occasion of hubris being visited with the terrible result, you weren't wrong. So I'll give you a credit. How curious from Road. We're part of the Iconiclass Network, and we'll keep you posted. Apparently, Charles Firth, the most reliable commentator on geo-politics.

Yeah, that's right. You can find him here every day. And you can check me out at Eagor on Twitter. Look for the blue tick that guarantees reliability. See, yeah.