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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29776 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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Prigozhin's death was quite an expected event, it is rather surprising that it happened now, two whole months after the failed coup. But I suspect his story is not over yet. Ignoring Yevgeny's personal qualities, he was not a stupid person, and therefore, even if he believed in the secret agreements that was made on June 24, Prigozhin necessarily kept or created an additional reason not to kill him, and soon we will find out about it. The reason may be some compromising material, military secrets, or, if he had confidence in the loyalty of his people, the threat of a second "march of justice" from the Wagner PMCs. The latter scenario is unlikely, further complicated by the death of Dmitry Utkin, but according to the rule of "interesting events" in Russia it may very well happen.

It is also interesting how exactly the "plane crash" occurred. Stories about bad pilots or incredibly successful Ukrainian terrorists may of course appear in the Russian media, but it is obvious to everyone who is responsible for the elimination of the mercenaries leader. From the point of view of constructing plausible deniability it would be much more correct to kill Prigozhin during his stay in Africa, recent one or in the future. There you can find hundreds of different convenient culprits with motivation and weapons: from the French to the Islamists. Instead, his plane "crashed" in the middle of European part of Russia, not so far from Moscow.

Plausible deniability is bad in one case - when you want to convey a message by your action. This is what the kremlins most likely planned. As many said at the end of the deflated coup: "if it turns out that you can occupy one city, march in columns on Moscow, and then if you fail you will not suffer any consequences, then there may be many who will want to try to do this themselves. No harm if you failed in the end." The message from the ruling clan concerns the second part - the consequences will be much more severe than mere exile to Belarus. The official version will still find a way to declare Prigozhin's death a "fatal accident", but the real message, barely fitting between the lines will be visible to everyone.

Will the death of the former chef become a last note in his life story or just the beginning of the third act? - we'll find out soon.

The reason may be some compromising material, military secrets, or, if he had confidence in the loyalty of his people, the threat of a second "march of justice" from the Wagner PMCs. The latter scenario is unlikely, further complicated by the death of Dmitry Utkin

It seems plausible that this is no coincidence - Putin was worried about Wagner trying to take revenge, and he thought this would be led by Utkin, and thus he struck when he saw the opportunity to take out Utkin together with Prigoshin, decapitating Wagner and thus preventing a coordinated response from them.

The reason may be some compromising material, military secrets,

That would make sense, except - what compromising material is possible about Putin? Short of discovering something really shocking - like he's literally a cannibal who eats babies (not that cannibalistic dictators are anything new by this point...) - all possible materials about Putin have already been published. Everybody knows he's a grotesquely corrupt, murderous psychopath - it's just most Russians don't care and many prefer it this way.

As for military secrets - I think Western intelligence sources already have most of military secrets Prigozhin could have access to. It's unlikely he had access to something like nuke launch codes or other really important stuff - he's been a cook with a side business, after all, not an army general.

the threat of a second "march of justice" from the Wagner PMCs

And then what? Without a leader and a goal, the worst they could do is spill a bit more blood. Blood costs nothing in Russia, nobody cares about it. Especially now, when Putin has proven his power over them, they can not be seen as a viable alternative power center by anybody.

Putin sends his regards to Prigozhin’s family.

This seems more personal than any eleven dimensional chess. Prigozhin had to die, but the exact timing and location weren't going to change the message anyone received an iota. It's as likely to have happened because Putin had missed his morning coffee and needed a pick-me-up or because of having to go through banal bureaucratic paperwork as any deep tactical thought.

Opens up a potential Pantangeli scenerio. If their group is still functional.

Prigozhin necessarily kept or created an additional reason not to kill him, and soon we will find out about it.

The logical assumption is that that's why it took two months--to get rid of his safeguards before killing him.

The first thing they did was leak those photos of him in disguise after raiding his house.

On the one hand, it's surprising he made it to two months. On the other hand, what in the hell was he doing in a plane anywhere near Moscow, instead of running off to a Pacific Island or as far away as he could conceivably get?

I think everyone believes "Yeah, Putin did it".

He was at the Russia-Africa summit last month, which he wouldn't have gone anywhere near if he didn't think he was back in Putin's good graces. Putin really did pull off a Hadingus here.

There's also a chance this was someone in the MOD, rather than direct orders from Putin. I don't know terribly much about aviation but the description of the crash seems more like mechanical issues (sabotage) rather than AA missiles.

As with most tyrannies - where we sometimes literally have to read from the tea leaves - this thing with Prigozhin is also quite an opaque situation. So far I gathered multiple possible explanations related to the crash, each depending on different assumptions and each opening more questions than it answers:

  1. Shooting down of the airplane was indeed a mistake, which feeds into the narrative that Russians are incompetent and all that.

  2. The plane was shot down by Prigozhin's enemy without Putin's approval. There are plenty of people in the army who can do this including low ranking soldiers. This escalates power struggle in Putin's orbit.

  3. The plane was shot down as a gift to Putin, a gift Putin did not want to recieve.

  4. The plane was shot down on Putin's direct order and with his full knowledge, but even then there are multiple possibilities related to the fact that it happened two months after the "coup"

  • 4a) Putin needed two months to try some alternative nonviolent path, it did not pan out so he took Prigozhin down. What did he try to do and why?
  • 4b) Putin needed two months to do something to Prigozhin's power base before he dared such an open move as shooting the plane down. Is Putin so weak that he could not do what he wanted sooner?

These are just a few possibilities and assumptions, you will of course see more including theories that the plane was shot down by Ukrainians or CIA or Prigozhin's enemies inside Wagner and who knows what else. The whole situation is a mess and nobody knows the truth. Which is a reason why we will see all sorts of people fitting the story to their already preexisting narrative. Beware.

you will of course see more including theories that the plane was shot down by Ukrainians or CIA

Considering the rather obvious symbolism of the incident happening on the Ukrainian official Day of Independence, I think this is the likeliest possibility.

3b. The plane was shot down as a gift to Putin, a gift that Putin has no problem with.

The plane was shot down as a gift to Putin, a gift Putin did not want to recieve.

My intuition is that this was the case.

4c) Putin waited this long because he wanted the guy to be sweating every day and night looking over his shoulder for when the hit would come and/or lull him into a false sense of security that he really was safe after this long, so he'd do something dumb like "get on a plane flying near Moscow".

All hypothesis seem somewhat valid, excepted the first. Like, there are a lot of plane flying in Russia. Perhaps less of them now with the sanctions, but still a lot. No civilian plane was downed for months or years if I'm not mistaken. So what is the chance that it happens to the one plane that has Prigozhin on board, just two months (day to day) after his revolt? Moreover, it would be a very weird mistake, because downing a civilian plane is the last thing you do after a long list of others. Seriously if it indeed was a mistake, I wish them luck to prove it because nobody will ever believe it.

Yep, the first one seems to be the official explanation so far. It seems implausible but it is the one that may be pushed, so we will hear about it.

I'd challenge the claim that he was not stupid. Marching against Putin and then claiming to have reached an agreement was stupid, but setting a foot in Russia was even dumber.

If only those events could serve as a lesson that there is no agreement to be reached with Putin: not for NATO, not for Ukraine, not for Georgia or Moldova. Putin just doesn't respect the agreements he makes.

Why this method? Here's one possibility:

Prigozhin shot down Russian aircraft.

Therefore, Russia shoots down Prigozhin's aircraft.

Or because they had the opportunity this way and they took it. Putin isn't a god who can choose the day, the place and the way you will die. There is still a lot of logistics.

I do not believe there is anything like that, not anything that can do real damage at least. Putin just killed him, in the same manner he probably killed General Lebed decades ago, to feel more secure about the upcoming elections, exactly 2 months after the beginning of the coup – the old KGB rat likes these stupid calendar jokes (Nemtsov was famously killed on Special Operations Forces Day). Prigozhin had no leverage since it became clear that the army isn't joining in on the mutiny (partially Surovikin's call, for which he's been rewarded in the usual manner Kremlin rewards loyalty), and was banking essentially on some combination of Putin's sentimentality, cowardice, and getting a chance to slip out before the kill order is executed. I am not aware what he was thinking he's trying to dodge when he took off in that private jet; maybe radioactive poisoning, maybe an unstoppable, anonymous Ukrainian Shinobi like the one that took down Yevhen Zhylin.

Let's look back on my unconfident «analysis», so to speak. 23rd June

Prigozhin is straightforwardly a warlord (with vague Imperial sympathies) who's trying to avoid getting deep-fried like early LDNR leaders who were deemed a threat by Kremlin. This kill-your-military-heroes pattern is a staple of the Russian state and its dickless-but-psychopathic apparatchik leadership over the last century, so he has no way out but up. It very likely won't work, but it very likely heralds the final episode of our very special military operation:

26th June:

I believe we don't yet know how this will shake out. The default outcome, corroborated by the renewal of treason case against Prig, is that Putin+Luka have prevailed and shooed everyone into apparent compromise, which just means postponed execution for Prig and likely his inner circle. Maybe not – the murky current status of Wagnerites suggests there's uncertainty remaining. It was close anyway. Prig has failed in securing his maximalist terms (removal of MoD heads who directly threaten him) but has successfully demonstrated that their worthlessness is a Schelling point and the army's integrity is hanging by a thread. It's just a thicker thread than he hoped. Maybe it's thin enough for Putin to fear touching him again.
My prediction is 60% Wagner dissolving and Prigozhin being eliminated in some manner (maybe not killed but actually convicted, maybe he offs himself), 25% Prigozhin, Utkin etc. somehow weaseling out of it, brokering some deal with Luka and either just chilling in Belarus, «going missing», or escaping to… Africa?, and 15% «anything goes», because Russia is, after all, a magical place.

In this light, we can surmise that the thread got reinforced in the meantime and that's it.

I'll take the opportunity to reiterate that anyone supporting the Russian regime in any way or form advocates for an irredeemable abomination. There are only two well-informed perspectives from which such support makes sense: A) if you believe Russian genocide is inherently desirable, even at substantial cost to other peoples; and B) if you think there's an urgent need for Western mobilization against a vicious but not genuinely dangerous enemy, maybe as preparation for the war with China. If you're some galaxy-brained cynical Western right0id antiglobalist who thinks that Putin provides a «multipolar» check to the hated GAE, you're still wrong, he's ineffectual in this capacity since he prioritizes regime stability over any external power projection (he's just not competent enough to pick moves that are worthwhile on either axis) and irreversibly erodes the future possibility of such checks.

The blackest of blackpills is that you really can just kill all your enemies and stay in power for the rest of your life.

this only seems true if you control nukes. saddam was running this playbook but it didn't keep him alive.

He ran into the "don't make the USA your enemy" exception.

(Even he got away with killing rebels after the first Gulf War and likely would have stayed in place despite sanctions if not for 9/11 and the free shot it gave Bush and Cheney)

That’s only true if you’re able to successfully kill all your enemies. It’s very easy to fuck up once and lose everything, including your own life, the lives of your family, and the lives of all your allies. Live by the sword, die by the sword. I much prefer being a nobody than a dictator or mob boss.

I mean you can, but it tends to unravel pretty quickly if you ever get behind the 8-ball

Only a blackpill if you for some reason have no respect for strength or power, which would be odd given how important they've been for all of history.

Smallpox has been extremely important throughout history, but I neither respect it or would welcome it's return to relevance.

One can respect power while acknowledging its many tragedies.

@fuckduck9000, does this qualify for naked power worship? How much Truth Signal is there in Putin's ability to slaughter everyone who judges him as a ruinous czar whose mediocre and craven character is only exceeded by his ruthlessness?

Not much of a signal, assassination is a pretty egalitarian weapon. The main difference is not the power differential imo, it’s that putin’s enemies don’t wan’t him dead as much as he wants them dead. I’m sure Prig could have organized something, but he chose to rely on the warm-heartedness of putin instead.

Prig, you, hillbilly and me, we all first have to recognize that the dictator might kill us easily, and it will help him – is that worship, or respect, of power?

Does anyone else think there's a strong possibility Prigozhin had a 'security blanket' of kompromat to be released in the event of his untimely death? It would have been prudent of him to create a dead man's switch like that, but I don't have any evidence that this was the case. Even if it was created, it's location and destruction may have been necessary before any assassination attempt was made.

Is there any possible string of characters which could predictably lead to meaningful damage to Putin if leaked? I kind of doubt it.

As many said at the end of the deflated coup: "if it turns out that you can occupy one city, march in columns on Moscow, and then if you fail you will not suffer any consequences, then there may be many who will want to try to this themselves.

On the flip side, making a deal and then killing your competitor anyway ensures that people will be a lot less likely to make deals with you in the future, even in cases where you don't intend to defect. Having the killing be blatant then might actually work in your favour, as it won't be seen quite as sneaky and underhanded.

Utkin's dead too. He was number 2 to Prigozhin. Wagner's basically been decapitated and will probably get annexed into the regular military now, or get more pliant leadership. Very highly doubt that anyone's going to paint a target on their backs now and start a 'march of justice'.

And Igor Girkin/Strelkov has been imprisoned for over a month now. Unlike Prigozhin and Utkin, he probably had close to zero actual power, but he was a very vocal critic of the regime (in particular, a very direct critic of Shoigu, but also an only somewhat less direct critic of Putin) and was beginning to try to build an "Angry Patriots' Club" of ultra-hawks disappointed with the regime's incompetent handling of the war.

The most open pro-war critics of Putin/Shoigu (well, to the extent that Prigozhin was actually pro-war, which is not completely certain) are vanishing from the Russian political landscape. The anti-war ones already either fled or are keeping silent.

The most open pro-war critics of Putin/Shoigu (well, to the extent that Prigozhin was actually pro-war, which is not completely certain) are vanishing from the Russian political landscape. The anti-war ones already either fled or are keeping silent.

There's a lesson here: never be loyal to a regime that doesn't return the favor. It's ironic that patriots often face harsher crackdowns in Russia under Putin than even leftists now. Also says a lot about the sclerotic state of Russia. The elite doesn't even seem to care about winning so much as about self-preservation.

There's a lesson here: never be loyal to a regime that doesn't return the favor. It's ironic that patriots often face harsher crackdowns in Russia under Putin than even leftists now.

This was always the case.

"Russia Will Always Betray You, Son"

What confuses me are the unnecessary gangster methods. Prigozhin was on Russian territory and this time around, not even surrounded by a few thousand of his own soldiers. The Russian regime could have just seized him and Utkin, imprisoned them, and then sentenced them to death. Or, if that would be too bad for PR, then just imprison them indefinitely and maybe arrange to have them die a few years down the road. Or, if they had to be silenced quickly because in prison they would talk too much, just flat out have them shot by law enforcement and then claim that doing it this way saved lives which otherwise have been lost during the Prigozhin march on Moscow.

Any of these methods would lead to people trusting agreements made with the Russian regime less in the future, but blowing up the plane with only a thin degree of plausible deniability about who did it is going to lead to the exact same result.

Western regimes also sometimes surreptitiously kill people, like Iranian nuclear scientists. Some would say maybe Jeffrey Epstein. But they don't seem to revel in this sort of unnecessary, show-offy gangsterism about it. The Skripal case, if the Russian regime is indeed responsible for that one, is another example. Why use a chemical weapon? There are so many less dramatic ways to kill someone. I don't think that the gangster methods add any degree of additional intimidation factor. On the contrary, they just seem amateur compared to more professional approaches that could be equally effective in sending a message.

It's the visibility of it to send a message: you can't ever get away with it. There is nowhere you can run. Nobody will protect you (does anyone think there will be any serious consequences from the West apart from disapproving announcements?). You will never be safe anywhere, and you will never know how or when it will happen. We don't forget and we don't forgive.

Waiting until the guy steps on Russian territory so you can arrest him etc. doesn't send the same message - our power extends everywhere, we can do what we want, and nobody will or can stop us. Arrests and jail are mainstream political acts every regime can do and are bound by laws and all the expectations around how individuals have rights and the government cannot overstep its bounds; the gangster hit method is to show fuck the law, we are the law.

There is also a psychological element in it. It means that supporters of the regime have to tell blatant lies. "No it was just an accident, we didn't do it". It trains them to say just whatever their masters want them to say.

It also discredits them with the dissatisfied. This is why Putin was so angry at Naryshkin's slight hesitance to invade Ukraine. They don't want anyone that can even appear to be a rallying point later on.

Everyone signs the death warrant. That way no one can later go to the mob and playact innocence.

Yes, it seems like Putin's modus operandi with these killings is to assiduously maintain a layer of plausible deniability, but to deliberately keep it paper thin.

I can only think it's a power move: "Not only will I have you killed by the means of my choice, but afterwards, no one in Russia will even dare publicly accuse me of doing what everyone can plainly see I did."

Yes, it seems like Putin's modus operandi with these killings is to assiduously maintain a layer of plausible deniability, but to deliberately keep it paper thin.

The book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible gives a harrowing example of this being done on a legal level to random competitors of regime allies. I can't see how this isn't a regime tendency towards deliberate humiliation by forcing people to come face to face with brazen mendacity backed by total force, a la Senator Rourke

The only reason she got out of it iirc is her tormentors annoyed another regime grandee.

Then the detective came in. His name was Vaselkov, which sounds like the Russian word for “daisy.” He had a face like a bulldog.

“We are charging you with a particularly serious crime,” said Vaselkov.

“Which one?”

“Read this,” he said and handed her a folder of ninety pages or so. “And then sign that you have understood everything.”

Yana looked at Vaselkov. He stared into nowhere like an automaton. She opened the folder. Inside were photocopies of her company’s accounts and transactions. Bills for buying and selling. Page after page of them. Just their accounts and bills. What they did normally every day. She couldn’t understand. What was she being charged with?

“You have been trading in diethyl ether,” said Vaselkov.

Diethyl ether was a chemical cleaning agent. Yakovleva’s company had built its business around it, importing it from France and selling it on.

“Yes.”

“It’s an illegal narcotic substance. You are being charged with the distribution of illegal narcotics.”

Some misunderstanding, thought Yana, just some misunderstanding.

“But we have a license for it,” answered Yana, almost laughing. She was being charged with trading what she traded. Since when was a cleaning agent used in every factory a narcotic substance? It didn’t make any sense. She had been trading in diethyl ether for over a decade. It was like telling a chocolate bar factory that chocolate was illegal. Or a jeans factory that jeans were illegal. She looked at Vaselkov, but he just stared back dumbly.

She continued reading through the charges. The paperwork was just her everyday accounts; that’s what the men in masks must have been taking from the office. In the folder, page after page said the same thing: “bought 150 liters of diethyl ether, sold 100 liters of diethyl ether.” It was what she did every day. What was she being charged with?

“If you have familiarized yourself with the charges, please sign,” said Vaselkov.

She signed, but she didn’t understand. Everything was starting to spin. Her synapses couldn’t make sense of what was going on, a short circuit in logic. Chairs seemed lighter, walls flimsier. The world around us is made up of the association of words to things, and hers was buckling. She kept on trying to square the logic in her head but kept slipping and falling whenever she tried.

.... She was crying all the time by now. All the time. Couldn’t they see she wasn’t a criminal? Every cop she looked at, she tried to catch his eye. Couldn’t they see she didn’t belong here among all these criminals? Wasn’t it obvious? Maybe if they could just see she wasn’t meant to be here, it would change something? Everything?

But they just looked at her as if she were a parcel. In the morning she had been a businesswoman driving a Lexus in a frilly white dress. Now she was a parcel.

They put her in a dark cell. There were three bunks. She lay there for a while, stunned. When she turned to the wall, someone called through the door: “Turn around so we can see you.” The next day they would take her to court to decide on bail.

“The court will sort it out,” thought Yana. “The court will sort it out”: she had grown up with that phrase. Courts were places where things were sorted out. She assumed she would get bail. She had no convictions. She had done nothing wrong. Why wouldn’t she get bail?

They drove her to court in the back of a van. She hadn’t slept or eaten. Her hair was a mess.

At court they put her in a cage in the accused stand. The judge looked matronly, with her hair in a bun and glasses. She looked like a sensible person. She would sort it out.

“Well?” said the judge.

“I don’t understand the charges,” Yana began. She tried to sound authoritative, but as she spoke she started to cry again. She didn’t want to, it was just the absurdity of it all. The tears came from the effort to make sense of it. “I’m being charged with trading what I trade. It doesn’t make sense. . . . ” She was sobbing now.

“All right,” said the judge. “Prosecution?”

The prosecutor was another man in a polyester suit.

“Yakovleva is a highly dangerous criminal. She has been hiding from us. We had to hunt her down. She needs to be put under arrest until the trial.”

What had he just said? Hiding? Where? Where had she been hiding? At the gym? At work? What were they talking about? The prosecutor just smiled at her. The judge nodded and repeated what he had said word for word and said no bail was granted. She would await trial in prison. The next hearing would be in two months.

Everything was spinning again. The prosecutor walked up to Yana and whispered, “Bad girl, why did you hide from us?”

Black is white and white is black. There is no reality. Whatever they say is reality. Yana began to scream. The more Yana screamed, the more guilty she looked: she saw herself for a second, a redhead with red eyes screaming in a cage in a courtroom.

They took her back to Petrovka. They took her prints. Her hands were covered with ink. She cried out for some soap. Some soap! They laughed at her. Then someone threw some soap at her: a gnarly corner of industrial soap that was dirtier than her hands. Then they said, “When you’re done with the soap we need it back.”

They put her in another police van and drove toward the prison.

I could sit here and list practical reasons why these so-called "gangster methods" are preferable to banana republic show-trials, but I want to emphasize something else. They're just cooler.

Ethical concerns aside, it's hard to overstate just how badass the polonium-210 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was. Russian informant and known enemy of Vladimir Putin shows up at a London hospital with strange symptoms. Doctors can't figure out what's wrong. Radiation poisoning is suspected, but Geiger counter readings are negative. It takes military-grade equipment to detect radiation in his blood samples. Unlike almost all other radiation sources, samples of polonium-210 only emit alpha radiation. Alpha particles can't penatrate skin and can barely penetrate air. That's why the Geiger counter couldn't detect anything, but when emitted from inside the body, alpha radiation causes massive DNA damage. He never had a chance.

I don't think it's just a matter of "Putin wants to look cool", though. The problem with a big arrest and show trial is that snyone can do it, to anyone in a position to get arrested, which lets future enemies imagine they might be safe so long as they have an escape plan afterward. Litvinenko, and to a much lesser extent Prigozhin, demonstrate that Putin is willing and able to get more creative with murder than that.

However terrible Prigozhin may have been, the fact remains that there were other innocent crew members at least on that plane who were killed for nothing (I reserve judgement on the moral worthiness of the other passengers). This is yet more evidence that the evil at Barad-dûr the Kremlin needs to be destroyed.

Do you feel the same about the crew members of Yamamoto's plane when we assassinated him in WW2?

I would feel the same if Yamamoto were being flown by an American air crew, yeah. I'd feel it a national disgrace to intentionally directly kill any quantity of American citizens to kill an enemy general.

Yes, I find it morallydifferent to lose a randomly selected number of soldiers to enemy fire to achieve the same objective.

Nah, that was fair game.

Soleimani would be a better example, and I’ll still bite the bullet on that one.

Yamamoto was an active general flying in a military transport with a fighter escort.

This is not really the same.

They're literally in the middle of a war. Are a few people on a plane really tipping the scales that much?

I think it depends on whether the plane crew were Wagner or just some random plane crew. Killing random plane crew in order to kill Prigozhin and Utkin would be a pretty bad look. If the plane crew were Wagner loyalists, then not as much.

If the plane crew were Wagner loyalists

Almost certainly. What warlord would trust his safety to anyone who was even slightly suspect?

Well, he seems to have trusted his safety enough to Russia, the country controlled by the regime that he had launched an insurrection against just two months ago. I can imagine him maybe thinking "well, they could just have just killed me as soon as I crossed the border" and as a result, not worrying too much about what plane and crew would carry him inside of Russia.

I say seems... I guess it is also possible that he has basically been in some equivalent of house arrest since two months ago and he was forced to go on that plane trip.

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