Whither Goeth Yevgeny Prigozhin?
Won't know from reading the media
Yevgeny Prigozhin, master chef and delegated impresario of a band of mercenary fighters, set the stage for a 24-hour drama in a script written by the media. He only had to mutter some angry and highly offensive words and soon the media had his warriors seizing a key headquarters of the Russian Defense Ministry, starting a mutiny, shooting down seven Russian helicopters, killing the pilots, and on the way to take Moscow and install a new regime. Before the drama reached its climax, the director yelled, “Cut” and the script was shelved. Seems the hero is going on a vacation to Belarus where he will bake pizzas.
It is impossible to authenticate the dizzying assortment of “news reports” that evolved Yevgeny Prigozhin’s boisterous comments into an insurrection and brought Russia to an uncontrollable situation. MSNBC labeled it “as the most significant event in Russia in the last twenty years.” No need to validate the “news reports,” logic and common sense refute most of the reports and more properly explain what happened.
Facts that seem to be accurate are:
(1) Prigozhin sensed the Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) no longer had any use for the Wagner Group.
(2) Prigozhin, in a treasonous manner, “accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of having hidden ‘colossal’ failings on the battlefield from Putin, claiming that 2,000 Wagner men were killed as a result of strikes ordered by the Russian Ministry of Defense,” and “called Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces and the overall commander of the war on Ukraine, ‘criminals; who had “destroyed around 100,000 Russian soldiers.’”
(3) Prigozhin left the Donetz Basin and took the mercenary army to Rostov.
(4) Prigozhin’s mercenary army left Rostov and some of the troops headed to Moscow.
(5) Prigozhin declared, “This is not a military coup, but a march of justice.”
(6) Prigozhin halted the march to Moscow and is taking a rest in Belarus.
Russia has not initiated an offensive battle for several months and has shifted to economically destroying Ukraine. Obviously, the Russian MOD did not support Prigozhin’s mercenary army attacks on Bakhmut and no longer had use for a “lone wolf” military force. Greatly offended, Prigozhin, who is perceived as a hero, went bonkers and reacted to this rebuke in a manic and treasonous manner. Not receiving any attention angered Prigozhin and he took his military out of Donetz and led them to a military installation in Rostov, where they could get flush toilets and eat in a cafeteria. Reports have him seizing the military HQ without a shot. What was there to seize in the building and why would anyone deny his heroic army entrance?
Everything reported defies logic.
(1) Why would Prigozhin mutiny against the government that equips his army and pays him highly lucrative contracts?
(2) How could his relatively small army expect to slug through the concrete jungles and conquer Moscow? Is it possible that an army that fought months to take Bakhmut can defeat an entire Russian army and take Moscow? Is this a joke? The truth was as he said, “This is not a military coup, but a march of justice.”
(3) Why would Prigozhin, knowing he could not win, walk willingly into a hangman’s noose?
(4) Would Prigozhin expect his troops, many of whom were convicts awarded freedom by serving, to jeopardize their lives and freedom?
Reports that “seven Russian helicopters were shot down and its 27 pilots were killed,” and Prigozhin’s announcement that his troops shot down a helicopter appear on Telegram’s social media and have not been verified by the major media. The upshot of the whole incident is that the Russian MOD wanted to get rid of Prigozhin and his mercenary army and the Russian MOD got rid of Prigozhin and his mercenary army. The media once again exposed the obsessive, mendacious, exaggerated, and untrustworthy manner in which they operate. That’s the more interesting story.