Players in a Possible Russian Civil War

We can feel it. But who exactly will play a role in a civil war? It’s important to understand two things. The possible players on the table right now are not the only possible players. Civil wars, by their very nature, unleash even more forces that lay just under the surface of any society. Civil wars are both disasters and opportunities for different groups within a society.

So let’s start with the obvious sides in a potential Russian civil war.

Kadyrov and Wagner

These two are not loyal to the Kremlin. Or rather not anymore. This extraordinary Newsweek piece points to the FSB Letters and Winds of Change but also to some confirmation of their validity.

Here:

The emails were shared in full with Newsweek by Igor Sushko, the executive director of the Wind of Change Research Group, a Washington-based non-profit organization. Sushko has been translating the correspondence from Russian to English since they began on March 4.

Previous FSB letters authored by the whistleblower, and published by Osechkin, have been analyzed by Christo Grozev, an expert on the FSB. He said he had shown the emails to two FSB officers who had “no doubt it was written by a colleague.”