What the hell is going on in Russia?
Was it an attempted coup? An intended insurrection?
Over the weekend, as we tried to wade through the news that the mercenaries of the Wagner group were marching on Moscow, I realized just how little I know about the on-the-ground news outlets that share information about Russia and Ukraine.
When Russia invaded Ukraine 16 months ago, I tried to cull through the usual suspects to find sources that would — as much as possible — share accurate information about the war. Reporting through the fog of war is uniquely challenging — and doing so in real time is even more so. Then there are the propagandists…
In rather short order last weekend, Wagner, led by bad guy (including as a U.S. election meddler and a butcher in Syria) and former Putin chef Yevgeny Prigozhin, did an about-face to stop pillaging Ukraine, and march his troops to take control of a south Russian war headquarters. His stated plan was to fight against the Russian military, whom Prigozhin accused of killing Wagner fighters. (U.S. intelligence said, however, that the butcher/chef had been building forces for just such an act for a while.)
Midway through Saturday, the news came that Prigozhin, after a deal cut by Belarus President Alexandr Lukashenko, had backed away and he and his were headed back to commit more war crimes in Ukraine. Most commentators said that probably wasn’t the case, that Lukashenko probably was not terribly involved. Most agreed that Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin is in deep s$(#, and Prigozhin is in exile, super-probably in Belarus, and that Wagner is no more.
As always, first reports from a battlefield are often wrong. There will be lies told and lies spread. Good luck to all of us and thank you, José Andrés, for the humor.
Putin’s chef had served Chicken Kiev but this past weekend he tested his new recipe for Vlad, “Coup d’etat”🍽️ priyatnogo appetita comrade!
Not exactly sure what Prigozhin had in mind. Whatever it was, it sure put the fear of God into Vlady. I'd bet Vlady is stocking up on depends for the next few weeks. I would bet that Putin will be gone before the end of the year. And there really is no clear successor. He is acting like a 15th century warlord (heard this via CNN a few days ago) trying to hold on to power. Russia will be thrown into the same kind of chaos that Chernenko and Andropov went through after the Berlin Wall fell. It is interesting and frightening at the same time.