Not two months ago, I wrote a blog post about Evgeny Prigozhin’s Mutiny. Immodestly, I allow myself to quote some lines from that post: “Make no mistake: Putin can squash Prigozhin like…
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Oh, No!!….. Prigozhin Goes Down, And Nobody Cries.
Immodestly, I allow myself to quote some lines from that post:
“Make no mistake: Putin can squash Prigozhin like an insect if he thinks the madman has to go. But Putin is prudent, and Prigozhin is popular, and Putin is not really into squashing people like insects”.
“Another guy would have been dead by 10am”.
Whilst we still do not have the official confirmation, it seems clear enough: Prigozhin (and Utkin) have crashed in one of the former’s private jets just hours ago.
We still don’t have all details. We don’t know if a missile hit the plane, or there was some other sort of problem. Allow me to believe this was not totally accidental.
Who dun’ it? Difficult to say. If Putin had decided that the guy had to go, he would do it not immediately after the mutiny, but some time afterwards. If this is the case, boy it was fast. Remember Putin’s words after the mutiny? “Unavoidable punishment?” I do.
But I also remember the number of enemies this man had made. His relentless feud against Shoigu and Gerasimov. His constant berating of the regular Russian forces. The several planes that went down on that day. Last but not least, the investigations against him for the very lucrative contracts he had with the Army.
This guy was a difficult one. Clearly a patriot (in his own peculiar way) he had made a Garibaldi reputation for himself. You can’t just put him to the wall like he is a poor bastard, like any Ceausescu. You need to be subtler about it, whilst leaving no doubt among the smart cookies that traitors and mutineers get punished.
Was it Putin? Was it Shoigu? Was it Gerasimov? I’d say 2. and 3. still lead to 1., as none of the others are likely to take such personal risks, much as they must have hated Prigozhin’s guts. The only alternative I can imagine is angry fractions of the Armed Forces, extremely angry at the way Prigozhin had treated them and the country, furious for the planes that went down on the day, and thinking that whoever takes him and Utkin (great basterd, this one) out will likely not be punished for his patriotic act after, again, several aircrafts went down on the day of the mutiny, with up to 30 people killed (I do believe this was not intentional, but perhaps I was wrong).
“Mistake”, you say? Well this is a game two can play, I suppose.
Garibaldi has died. Lord Byron has left his mortal coil.
If he gets a state funeral, we will know the government was involved
I will keep my sadness confined to between 1 and 1.4 seconds, like Mr Clarkson above.
If I were the Supreme Commander, an arrogant billionaire mutineer staging such a show as he did would not live anyway. I’d have had him (and Utkin) killed by 10am.
But then again Putin is so smart, and so are Shoigu and Gerasimov.