This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1461681
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1461681
“Puncturing Putin’s strongman image” is a severe understatement. Russia has gone from being a feared military juggernaut that was believed to be second only to the U.S to being a failed, defenseless state with the second most powerful military in Ukraine. Russia is now a hollowed out shell of a nation on the verge of collapse and likely won’t recover from this.
Putin’s days are likely numbered and that number is very short. Perhaps the only thing keeping him in power now is the fact that almost no one in a position to replace him wants to inherit the mess he’s made.
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I think the Kremlin knows that they need to get rid of both of these losers. It’s probably a mater of who they get rid of first. Do they let Putin get rid of his henchman first then get rid of Putin? Or do they get rid of Putin then deal with the Wagner gang? Either way I don’t these 2 thugs lasting very long.
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The retired admiral who comments on MSNBC said Prigozhin is a dead man walking.
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This is great news for John McCain!
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The FSB has been at the heart of Putin’s power for his entire career. It will be interesting to see if they continue to support him. FSB can’t put “boots on the ground” but are good in sticking daggers in people’s backs (or poison gas in their houses, or similar).
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Currently known to be visiting the homes of Wagner fighters.
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Be all that as it may, Putin’s continued grip on Russia’s nukes and other weaponry of mass destruction gives him, as well as his rapidly failing state, formidable staying power.
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Putin’s regime is also propped up economically by massive oil and gas exports that the sanctions haven’t put a real damper on. Many countries like India and China still buying. It’s also propped up by being the second largest arms exporter in the world behind the US.
It’s hardly a failed country on the verge of collapse. Not yet. It’s going to be many years before the world gets off the oil and gas teat.
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Putin’s career as a KGB officer was anything but distinguished. Instead of turning him loose as a Red James Bond (as he had dreamed of being), he was given a desk job in East Germany and assigned to recruit Third-World students studying in the GDR to become Soviet agents when they got home. KGB agents in the GDR had far less prestige and lived at a distinctly lower living standard than the Stasi, which certainly didn’t improve Vladimir Vladimirovich’s morale or image. When the USSR collapsed, VV lost his job and for a while was reduced to driving a taxi in his hometown, St. Petersburg. A loser, in other words. His chance to rise came from becoming a “fixer” for the mayor St. Petersburg, at which point the FSB (successor to the KGB) showed fresh interest in exploiting him. But he certainly wasn’t a Dark State favorite until late in the 1990s.
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I don’t know who posed this - but those 2 women are wearing identical t-shirts, pants and shoes - either waitresses grabbed from a nearby restaurant, or whores - they don’t seem that thrilled to be there, and I’m guessing they got a couple of rubles for it.
“Our holy war has turned into a racket,” he said.
That’s rich from a guy who recruited the meanest prisoners he could find from jail then released them into the populace if they survived their time in the ‘army’.
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No doubt Putin’s latest chef is putting together a good batch of polonium tea to send in a Belarus care package for Prigozhin.
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“Mistake”:
Prigozhin argued that the Ukraine war was a mistake from the beginning, launched to benefit the personal interests of Defense Minister Shoigu and an inner circle of oligarchs. Prigozhin brushed aside all the ideological claims Putin has made about the war — the need to denazify Ukraine, the threat of NATO expansion — as just cover for self-interest. “Our holy war has turned into a racket,” he said.
That word “mistake” doesn’t mean what you think it means. The imperial, genocidal, atrocity-filled Russian war of aggression in Ukraine wasn’t a mistake, regardless of how stupid and disastrous for the Russians. “Mistake” not only does not cover this, it is irrelevant.
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I’m betting Yevgeny Prigozhin is a dead man walking.
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