The most surprising thing here is that nine people were willing to get on a plane with Prigozhin. That's arguably much closer to actual suicide than any of the convenient window deaths that keep happening.
It’s not like Putin and his closest cronies are in any way competent. They are removing anyone who dared to criticize. Before the coup Prigozhin, Girkin were allowed to say whatever they wanted as long as they did not undermine the general effort. Now Putin’s inner circle will ultimately disconnect themselves from reality: govern the country and the war from a bunker filled with scared yes-sayers with no alternative voices.
There would be no clean replacement. It would get very bloody and chaotic. Not a bad hypothetical scenario. But that ship has sailed when Prihozhin surrendered (he didn’t stand much of a chance anyway).
Yeah, but he was stripped of all of his power. Wagner group is being rolled into the state military. The opportunity for Wagner to push back and or give Putin the boot has passed.
And, this dude was also an evil corrupt piece of shit. If he overthrew Putin, Russia would’ve still been an authoritarian disinformation state.
He was a straight-up Neo-Nazi and named the group after Hitler’s favorite composer. So yeah, he would have been infinitely worse than Putin… and that’s saying something.
Anything you hear from Russia, you can just as well forget, it’s nothing but propaganda, lies, spin, and disinformation. They use Nazi guys like Wagner to fight what they call “Nazis” in Ukraine. It’s the “we fake it so hard that people couldn’t believe it someone would lie that bad” tactic. Never engage with Russia / Russians who aren’t publicly opposed to Putin and the status quo. You can only waste time.
Wagners are straight up fleeing into neighboring countries and Africa. They must have read the history books about what happens when one warlord assimilates another’s forces (they kill them quietly and easily now that they’re disarmed).
Seems like most reasonable folks didn’t think he’d reform Russia. The only “good” he’d cause would be unrest that would force Russia to pull out of invading their democratic neighbors.
But it would have been a comparatively bloodless coup by a powerful military figure that would likely have ended the current war in Ukraine. As opposed to the likely outcomes of
putin finally loses it and hits the red button (which is actually a lot harder in russia, to my understanding, but is still a threat)
Some less powerful individual(s) attempt a coup and we end up with warlords vying for control of russia’s nuclear arsenal
Like, there is no good outcome of this. But prigozhin probably would have been the lesser of the evils as it would start another cycle of russia preparing for war (and ravaging The Global South but… nobody cares about them) and allowing The West to try and prop up a more palatable person to take control in a future coup.
Technically, they just say that a Wagner linked Telegram channel said it got shot down. They’re probably waiting for better proof/additional sources before they take the full step of saying it was shot down themselves (at which point I think it’d get added to the headline).
Because the only source for that (at present) is the Wagner Group, who have a (dead) dog in the fight and are not bastions of truth. NYT will be trying to confirm it before saying so.
It stands to reason the lining up process was all that was keeping him alive… I know that we have our own political assassinations in the West but this whole affair is still wild.
I don’t even know how to react to this news: On one hand Wagner Prigozhin is a person who is ideologically much worse than Putin (basically full-blown fascist as opposed to imperialist), but on the other hand he could have helped with increasing unrest in Russia which could technically mean chaos on Russian side of the front and opportunity for Ukraine to make some gains, but of course that’s long time due, due to giving up on march on Moscow.
it was shared online that wagner Prigozhin had a die hard following of people within his private army, and that they may retaliate in some way.
What I’m concerned about, is that further destabilization of putin and his power, only increases the likelihood of him resorting to nuclear weapons. To people in power, their greatest fear is losing said power. I just hope whoever is in charge of turning the keys and pushing “The button,” is strong enough to disobey orders.
Selenskyj was right: Prigozhin will be dead after two months. And he isn’t the only hardliner. I think within the last month six out of ten of the hardest hardliners fell out of the window. Or out of the sky.
Seems like Putin is currently liquidating the hardliners so there will be no negative feed back when he ends his “special operation” in a couple of weeks. Message at home will be: Wow, we did great, nobody objects and the world is in awe! And who disagrees will find an open window to jump through…
I am not saying he is ending it. I say he will try to prepare to end it without getting removed from power, to get away with a black eye. He might offer some sort of shady deal which Ukraine rightfully will reject. And finally he will end the operation, not getting most of his demands. But as he had all his hardliners removed he can still claim whatever he wants. Because not the winner but the person in charge decides what the truth is.
Ah. Well, they seemed to hate, fear, and love him at the same time, so… anything more credible, would be a source with no stake in the matter, or at least multiple sources with different stakes each.
As thing are, Prigozhin could be hiding somewhere, maybe with a cut off finger or not, maybe paid off to lay low, or just with enough money to retire, maybe helped by the Kremlin, maybe by his own people.
While i dont like people being killed and everyone should get a fair trial, the world certainly isn’t a worse place with this guy dead and i aint gonna shed a tear for him
His mercenary army is going to be run by a Putin stooge. I’m not completely sure that’s better. Not exactly bawling over here, but I would have rather seen him march on the Kremlin instead.
I read it more like “he tried to roll the dice without anteing up”. Who the hell does that? Russia definitely wouldn’t be better with Prig, but it’s a hell of a thing to watch either way.
It would have been better if they took each other out or at least if he started enough unrest so russia has take to more military out of ukraine to deal with him
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