Was the Prigozhin Mutiny a Ruse to Set Up a Russian False Flag Rogue Nuclear Missile Strike From Belarus?

Two top Russian experts say yes with one of them saying NATO's Vilnius Summit which will be attended by nearly all NATO member heads of state on July 11th is the most likely target

Former DIA Analyst and Russian Intelligence Expert Rebekah Koffler on Fox News

July 20th Update: Putin reportedly met with Prigozhin and 34 other top Wagner commanders on June 29th less than a week following the supposed Prigozhin- led ‘coup’ during which he selected retired Russian Army Colonel Andrey Troshev to replace Prigozhin as Wagner Group’s new leader. The fact that Putin was willing to meet directly with someone he denounced as a traitor leading a rebellion against Russia seems to confirm reports that the Prigozhin mutiny was most likely pre-planned with Putin and the GRU to help them identify and purge disloyal Russian army commanders. I had predicted Putin would hand pick a new leader of Wagner that he viewed as more loyal to him after the mutiny was quickly resolved.

July 5th Update: Andrei Illarionov, former Chief Economic Advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin reports not a single participant of the Wagner mutiny has been arrested or shot confirming my previous assertion that this was not an actual coup and that Putin did not consider their major threat to his power.

One of America’s top Russia experts, renowned former DIA analyst, Rebekah Koffler, is blaming the Biden administration for starting a potential nuclear crisis with Russia with its dangerous decision to prolong its unnecessary proxy war against Russia in Ukraine which both she and I have been calling for the U.S. to end with a cease-fire agreement since last fall.

Koffler has been boldly calling out U.S. intelligence and former U.S. generals and senior intelligence officials, many of whom have had business or lobbying ties with China, as being consistently wrong about virtually everything including Russia and the war in Ukraine. In another recent tweet, she asks the question that I have been asking supporters of the war in Ukraine for the past year, which is if they think Russia is so weak that a modest sized country like Ukraine can defeat it, why do we need to keep sending billions more in aid to Ukraine when we have already sent them thirty-three times more money than they spent on their entire defense budget in 2021?

She has also derided neoconservative pundits for their unsupported claims that Prigozhin was on the verge of overthrowing Russian President Vladimir Putin when he abruptly turned around his motorized rifle brigade which was speeding towards Moscow with a mere 3,000 troops and what appears to have been zero Russian military support.

The fact that the Russian military could have wiped out the 8,000 "invading" Wagner troops within a few days but Putin ordered Russian troops not to fire on 'invading' Wagner forces as they occupied Rostov and drove on Moscow, causing them to suffer no casualties strongly suggests it wasn’t a real mutiny as I pointed out in my last article.

A few days ago, Koffler tweeted, “Here's what you just witnessed if you paid attention: The Art of Putin's Fake Coup Prigozhin en route to open 2nd front in Belarus that just got nukes from Putin. Wagner within striking distance from Kiev, in a DIRECT threatening position to NATO's border. Welcome to Reflexive Control doctrine.” During a recent interview, Koffler explained that Russia’s “Reflexive Control Doctrine” is a Russian concept based on maskirovka that is being used to reinforce false Western perceptions that Russia is weak to reduce Western popular support for continued aid to Ukraine while also serving as justification for Putin to invoke martial law and increase Russian army mobilization.

During her recent TV and radio interviews, Koffler has stated that the mutiny by 8,000 PMC Wagner Group mercenaries led by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was not only not a coup aimed at regime change in the Kremlin but was actually a Russian false flag operation orchestrated with the full support of Russian President Vladimir Putin. She has stated her belief that it was all a ruse to re-position the Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin and thousands of his troops to Belarus so he could conduct a ‘rogue’ tactical nuclear missile strike at NATO using a ‘captured’ Russian nuclear weapon.

Koffler commented on her Twitter account regarding a picture of Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin speaking casually with Russian Deputy Minister of Defense, Colonel General Yunus-bek Yevkurov and the commander of Russia’s Southern Military District on June 24th to negotiate an end to the standoff following the PMC Wagner Group “occupation” of Russia’s Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov-on-Don. In this video, Prigozhin can be seen holding a gun but the Russian Deputy Minister of Defense and the commander of Russia’s Southern Military District were unarmed.  Currently, about 25% of Russia’s conventional military forces are located in its Southern Military District.

Curiously, Prigozhin also met with Russian Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexevev who is reportedly the top GRU military intelligence commander responsible for the war in Ukraine, which might suggest that Ukraine could be the target of a ‘rogue’ nuclear strike from Belarus assuming Koffler’s hypothesis proves correct. Seeming to reinforce the theory that Prigozhin, who according to his last article met with the CIA and agreed to start a coup to overthrow Putin, Stephen Bryan, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy is reporting Prigozhin has flown from Belarus to Moscow to negotiate the details of Wagner’s future seemingly without any fear of capture, imprisonment, torture or assassination.

However, Koffler is not the only top Russian expert warning of a possible Russian false flag nuclear missile attack from Belarus in which Putin may be planning to use Prigozhin and his exiled PMC Wagner Group troops to seize control of one or more Russian nuclear weapon in order to conduct a tactical nuclear strike from Belarus. One unnamed Russian expert I spoke to yesterday agrees with her assessment that the whole Wagner mutiny was likely a ruse to get Prigozhin in position in Belarus so he could 'capture' Russian nuclear weapons but he believes the nuclear target will be the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius during the NATO summit on July 11^th.

Such a nuclear strike, if successful, would likely kill not only the President of the United States, Joe Biden, but up to 30 other NATO heads of state as well. Such an attack would be likely viewed by Putin as payback for Nordstream and the 50,000 Russian troops the U.S. helped the Ukrainians kill since the war began. Putin would presumably strongly condemn the nuclear strike committed by Wagner group terrorists and traitors having plausible deniability. How would a President Kamala Harris respond to such an attack? By nuking Belarus and starting a full-scale nuclear war with Russia? This export told me that Russian defector Dr. Yuri Felshtinsky author of “Blowing Up Russia” warned us back in April that Putin might be planning to strike NATO from Belarus claiming he bore no responsibility for rogue nuclear missile strike.

Such an attack could be the payback Putin has been waiting for in response to Biden’s destruction of the Nordstream pipelines, the sinking of Russia’s Black Sea flagship Moskva, the assassination of over a dozen generals and over 50,000 Russian troops we helped Ukraine kill with western arms. The Biden administration has given Russia every reason to engage in nuclear, super EMP attacks against the US and its NATO allies with these and other provocations since the war began. I have long been warning of what I view as the greatest near-term threat which would be a massive Russian cyberattack on the US and its NATO allies that could shut down our countries and cause them to collapse without the need for any kinetic attacks. Koffler is now warning of the same threat saying it would be part of a Russian strategy of “Cyber Armageddon.”

This Russian expert says there have been lots of rumors flying that Prigozhin is a CIA agent, and that Victoria Nuland has told Ukrainian officials that World War III, presumably the direct US and NATO military intervention that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been trying to orchestrate, will begin on July 11^th. It would be a Russian false flag nuclear strike using Nuland’s World War Three announcement as a pretext. Then Russia could claim that it was the CIA that was behind the assassination of NATO leaders and the destruction of the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius to try to provoke World War Three with Russia! If they responded by launching a retaliatory nuclear or perhaps even conventional military strike against military targets in Belarus or Russian territory, Russia would likely go on high alert and employ unconventional weapons against the US and NATO. I don't believe that the use of one Russian tactical weapon would start a nuclear exchange with the U.S. unless of course that nuke was used to assassinate Biden and other NATO leaders at the Vilnius summit as this Russia expert is now predicting.

If the US were to start a war with Russia, China and North Korea will join the fight and the United States would not survive an enemy nuclear and/or super-EMP attack. I think that the chances that these two Russian experts are correct that Prigozhin will conduct a ‘rogue’ nuclear strike are no more than one in four but of course the possibility is terrifying to say the least. Of course, the UK and France could also launch a nuclear retaliatory strike on Belarus or attack Russia in response to Prigozhin killing their leaders, but Russia could probably shoot down their nuclear missiles and then wipe them off the map. It's easy to see how this scenario could escalate to a full nuclear exchange. It is possible though unlikely that an attempted nuclear strike with a single Iskander-M launched at short range from Vilnius from Belarussian territory might be intercepted by any Patriot missiles the US may or may not have in place in Lithuania. Such a nuclear missile shootdown could avert the outbreak of World War Three.

Currently, President Joe Biden is set to attend the Vilnius Summit on July 11^th so it will be interesting to see if Biden takes this threat into consideration and sends Vice President Kamala Harris to represent him instead as he has done at a number of recent past NATO meetings. News reports indicate Belarus currently has nuclear Iskander-M SRBMs and nuclear capable SU-25 attack aircraft. I believe the attack would most likely be conducted with an Iskander-M Short Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM) which carries a low yield nuclear warhead with a yield of between 5 and 50 KT. If Putin relocates to one his nuclear underground cities before such an attack, it could provide some warning that this apocalyptic might be a real possibility although we would not know the actual target of such a ‘rogue’ nuclear attack until it actually occurred.

Of course, if such a false flag incident sparked the outbreak of a direct war between NATO and Russia, then China would likely invade Taiwan and North Korea would invade South Korea and then it really would be a Third World War. Wouldn’t it be a wiser option for US leaders to make peace with Russia by cutting off all US aid to Ukraine and implementing a Korean War style armistice to end the war as Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has wisely suggested to avoid a potential full scale nuclear war on July 11^th? Disturbingly, I think there are a lot of neoconservatives that would rather have the U.S. absorb a full-scale Russian nuclear strike so they can say at least we all died with honor, much like Japanese samurais committing hari-kari. That way, once they are dead, they could issue the empty boast that the U.S. never gave into “nuclear blackmail” rather than sign an armistice agreement with Russia ending the war in Ukraine in order to save the lives of up to 275 million Americans and ensuring the United States of America and our treaty allies survive.

However, I believe a more likely possibility is not that Prigozhin launches a nuclear missile from Belarus against Lithuania, which is a NATO member state, but rather that he launches a tactical nuclear missile against Kyiv instead to take out Ukraine’s top political and military leadership including Volodymyr Zelensky causing Ukraine to sue for peace. If that were to happen, Putin could finally end the war in Ukraine with a military victory with minimal risk of US nuclear or conventional military retaliation with plausible deniability. Would the US and NATO start World War Three with Russia if they had any doubt whether Russia was responsible for what might be a nuclear strike on Ukraine by rogue Russian forces? I would assess the chances of them doing so as extremely slim whereas a ‘rogue’ nuclear launch against NATO, particularly one that kills top Western leaders would entail far more risk to the Kremlin.

In my last article I stated my understanding that only Putin has the authority to launch even a tactical nuclear strike so Prigozhin would likely need Putin to issue the codes to arm a nuclear weapon before launching it. A recent article in Time magazine seems to corroborate my assessment which would mean that Putin could find it difficult to explain how Prigozhin a supposed Putin enemy was able to arm the nuclear warhead used to conduct his ‘rogue’ nuclear strike. However, just a few hours ago it was reported by Newsweek magazine that Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko declared that Belarus now has independent control of Russian-supplied tactical nuclear weapons and that he has instructed his high-ranking officials to develop an "algorithm for the use" of nuclear weapons deployed by Russia. If true, this could mean Lukashenko is acquiring the ability to launch them on his own.

In that case, Putin could claim Prighozhin stole the launch codes from Belarus enabling him to arm the nuclear warhead used against a NATO or Ukrainian target. Lukashenko stated that "most" of the tactical nuclear weapons Moscow plans to place in his country have already arrived but would not reveal how many weapons had entered Belarus. According to the article, Russian nuclear weapons will be delivered to the 2631st Missile and Air Ammunition Storage Base in Prudok, Vitebsk Oblast in northern Belarus which borders on the NATO member states of Latvia and Lithuania. Prudok is located 150 miles away from Vilnius so it is well within the Iskander-M SRBM’s nominal 300 mile range while the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv is also within its striking range. Meanwhile, Belarus is constructing several military base camps capable of supporting all 8,000 Wagner soldiers that mutinied last weekend in Mogilev oblast, located about 125 miles north of Ukraine, nearby Belarus’ new nuclear base, indicating that the Wagner Group forces are going to remain intact. Lukashenko has clearly stated he views the relocated Wagner mercenary units as a major military boon to Belarus’ defensive capabilities.

These revelations are setting up what could end up being the most dangerous chapter in US history, the first use of nuclear warheads since the U.S. fought and won its first and only nuclear war against Japan nearly eight decades ago, with the potential for nuclear escalation that could lead to the deaths of upwards of 700 million Americans, Europeans and Russian citizens. I am available for an interview if anyone is interested in exploring this topic further with me.

Upcoming Media Interviews

June 29th—Interview with Dr. Pascal Lottaz from Neutrality Studies to discuss Vivek Ramaswamy’s excellent new peace plan to end the war in Ukraine and split the Sino-Russian military alliance.

June 29th—Interview with Brannon Howse on his Worldview Weekend Broadcast Network to discuss the Wagner Group mutiny and whether it was a Russian false flag operation to give Putin plausible deniability for a rogue nuclear strike from Belarus against NATO.

July 4th—Interview on RT’s Crosstalk program with Peter Levelle to discuss whether Biden’s proxy war in Ukraine is becoming a forever war and the prospects for negotiating a peaceful end to the conflict.

© David T. Pyne 2023

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003, with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Deputy Director of National Operations for the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and as a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. He recently co-authored the best-selling new book, “Catastrophe Now--America’s Last Chance to Avoid an EMP Disaster." He also serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com and as a contributor to “The National Interest”. Here is a link to his interview archive. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.