Russia, One Sprawling Mafia

"It's not a state, it's not Russia. It's just one sprawling mafia, one tentacle of which is colliding with others."

"Prigozhin could have been quietly poisoned and he would have died of a heart attack, like many previous opponents of Putin or his generals."

"But apparently it was intended to serve as a show of uncompromising control over the situation."

"It is clear that just removing one person is not enough, you need to remove his key people, because they probably had a Plan B in case of losing their boss."

"Therefore, the ideal option is to eliminate them all together, which, in fact, happened."

Dmitry Oreshkin, professor, Free University Riga, Latvia 

"[The failure to punish Prigozhin initially had served to erode Putin's authority, sending] an open invitation to any potential rebels and mutineers."

"They [Russian spy agencies] could have worked on it for a long time and had the opportunity only now."

Abbas Gallyamov, former Putin speechwriter

A woman lays flowers at a makeshift memorial in Moscow for Yevgeny Prigozhin, believed to have been killed on Wednesday. Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

 

Others of high influence, besides Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary group chief, were on the plane that so mysteriously crashed in flight just a short distance from Moscow. The flight manifest included Dmitry Utkin, an ex-military intelligence officer who directed Wagner's operations and the group's security chief, Valery Chekalov, along with four other Wagner elite officials. Best not to leave unscathed anyone who could invoke authority among the Wagner troops.

Leaderless, the fighting group could be persuaded to meld with the official Russian military. The Wagner group fighters are considered to be a more effective fighting force than the regular military and their additional numbers could benefit a military that has demonstrated its incapacity to succeed in its assigned 'special military operation', unable to effectively counter Ukraine's counteroffensive, much less ensure that Ukrainian drones were kept from plaguing Muscovites.

President Putin's previous order to his old pal Prigozhin, to integrate his forces with the Russian military were challenged by Prigozhin. Vladimir Putin does not tolerate insubordination, nor does he forget and forgive a former ally whose bravado and tactless insinuations and declarations brought chagrin and international attention to the Russian dictator's inability to control his appointed proxy turned challenger even if the challenge differentiated between Russia's military leaders and its supreme political leader.

 

Yevgeny Prigozhin a businessman with ‘difficult fate’, says Vladimir Putin – still from video

 

The embarrassment was Putin's at the hands of the swaggering, swashbuckling buccaneer who considered himself more fit to lead the military than Putin's appointed military elite. First it was General Sergei Surovikin, commander of the Russian air force, a collegial ally of Prigozhin's whose loyalty was suspect when he failed to order the Wagner convoy heading to Moscow bombed to stop their advance. 

 

Instead the Wagner convoy succeeded in shooting down Russian planes and killing Russian pilots. Surovikin's absence from public view in the months following the aborted insurrection was notable, and his dismissal preceded the crash of the business jet carrying the top leaders of the Wagner group.

 

Wagner mercenaries sit atop a tank outside the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on June 24. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces were making a "march of justice" to Moscow.

 

All ten bodies, passengers and three crew were recovered, taken for forensic examinations. There could be no visual identification, they were burned beyond recognition. The crash widely accepted as a mass assassination, payback for the June mutiny that challenged Vladimir Putin's authority. The Russian president expressed his condolences for the deaths of those aboard the jet, in a televised interview. The field was cordoned off by police, where the plane crashed and burnt a few hundred kilometres north of Moscow, for investigators to study the site.

Pro-Wagner messaging app channels saw supporters of Prigozhin asserting the plane was deliberately destroyed, that it might have been hit by an air defence missile or targeted by an onboard bomb. "The downing of the plane was certainly no mere coincidence", declared director of NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, Janis Sarts. Witnesses watched as the plane plummeted from a large smoke cloud, wildly twisting, missing one of its wings. The jet "exploded in the sky", "something sort of was torn from it in the air", said one of the observers.

According to a preliminary American intelligence assessment, the crash was intentionally caused by an explosion, but further than that blunt assessment no additional details were offered. For Putin, "revenge is a dish best served cold", observed CIA Director William Burns, speaking of the Russian leader as "the ultimate apostle of payback". The plane crash represented a signature tactic of dictatorial regimes to "bring an enemy or a traitor closer before destruction", as criminal clans do, in the opinion of Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Endowment.

"It is no coincidence that the whole world immediately looks at the Kremlin when a disgraced ex-confidant of Putin suddenly falls from the sky, two months after he attempted an uprising."

"We know this pattern in Putin's Russia -- deaths and dubious suicides, falls from windows that all ultimately remain unexplained."  

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock

People carry a body bag away from the wreckage of a crashed private jet, near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. (AP Photo)

The Truth Shall Set You Free

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in a photo released by Russian state media, addresses military units at the Kremlin following the Wagner group rebellion.Credit...Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik, via Associated Press

"[The president also] listened to the explanations of the commanders and offered them options for further employment and further use in combat."

"The commanders themselves presented their version of what happened. They underscored that they are staunch supporters and soldiers of the head of state and the commander-in-chief, and also said that they are ready to continue to fight for their homeland."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov

"When you look from the point of view of Russian elite, it's ridiculous."

"It's just so unbelievable and just so shocking."

Tatiana Stanovaya, senior fellow, Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center

"[The delicate dance with Prigozhin is] a further compromise on Putin’s part and reflects his unwillingness to take tough and ruthless personnel decisions."

"He is willing to see Ukrainians bombed by the dozen, but not confront any of the figures in his own circle."

Mark Galeotti, head, consulting firm Mayak Intelligence

 

Hard to say what was more spontaneously contrived, Prigozhin's march on Moscow, or Vladimir Putin's concessionary assurances that all is well and under control. Forgive and set aside the forget part, at least for the moment. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's rehearsed dedication of the Wagner group's loyalty to President Putin, aside and apart from his hostile resentment of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Gerasimov against whom he's been railing for months demanding their dismissal, has been accepted at face value. Mr. Putin's patronage of Prigozhin's private army so helpful in Ukraine guarantees no reprisals against Prigozhin -- for the time being.

 

A swift, but hardly damage-alleviating solution to an inconvenient contretemps on the part of two old colleagues. A rebellion, short in life, as the culmination of a long-drawn-out tantrum, put to rest in the greater interests of cooperative collegiality. At the three-hour June 29 meeting, hard on the heels of the pullback from Moscow by the Wagner convoy which had shot down and killed a number of Russian air fleet servicemen, trust and comradeship was restored.

 

Members of the Wagner private army guard an area as one of them helps to load a tank onto a truck in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on Saturday, June 24. (Vasily Deryugin, Kommersant Publishing House/The Associated Press)

 

President Putin delivered his assessment of the Wagner actions on the Ukraine battlefield, summing up the successes and failures of the mercenaries fighting alongside regular Russian troops. And addressed the apprehended revolt. The magnanimous tone setting the stage for loyalty earnestly pledged to Putin by the Wagner forces. The world knows this because Dmitry Peskov has revealed it to be so. The Kremlin under its Czar is firmly in control.

A mere temporary aberration, branding Prigozhin a traitor, vowing harsh punishment in retribution. Criminal case, what criminal case? Negotiations remain, behind closed doors. Russia's Defence Ministry published a video which featured military chief General Valery Gerasimov, one of the rebellion targets, the first time the general has been seen since the fizzled revolt. Some observers, predicted Tatiana Stanovaya, would be stunned by this truly peculiar turn of events.

The hands-off pretence favoured by Vladimir Putin of an absent link between the Russian state and Prigozhin's forces out of the cold and into the fold. That mercenaries are illegal in Russia belies the fact that Wagner has fought for Russian interests globally, its role vital in Bakhmut's capture in the longest and bloodiest battle of the Ukrainian invasion.Wagner does bestially brutal in fine style. The Russian military resented playing catch-up.

And how has that 'special military operation' been proceeding? It's been a costly venture for Russia. According to the first independent statistical analysis of Russia's war dead, close to 50,000 Russian men have been killed during the prosecution of the conflict. Relying on a statistical concept and drawing on inheritance records and offical mortality data, Russian media outlets Mediazona and Meduza along with a data scientist from Germany's Tubingen University used data from the Russian government itself to highlight one of Moscow's closest secrets; the human cost of the Ukrainian invasion.

Officially, Russia has acknowledged deaths of just over 6,000 of its soldiers. Moscow routinely -- and Kyiv as well -- is close-mouthed about its dead. Documenting the numbers of dead is recognized as an act of defiance; to illuminate the truth is to invite harassment and potential criminal charges in Russia. The BBC's Russian Service working alongside a network of volunteers made use of social media postings across Russia for a database to be built of confirmed war deaths. The truth will not be denied.

 

Stanislav Rzhitsky, 42, was killed while jogging. He is accused of launching strikes on Ukrainian civilians including one that left four year old Liza dead. Picture: Social media/Alamy

 

"The submariner [senior Commander Stanislav Rzhitsky of Russia's Black Sea fleet's Kilo-class submarines capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles] was jogging in the ’30th Anniversary of Victory’ park in Krasnodar. Around 6 a.m., he was shot seven times with a Makarov pistol. As a result of the gunshot wounds, Rzhitsky died on the spot."

"Due to heavy rain, the park was deserted, so there were no witnesses who could provide details or identify the attacker."

"Obviously, he was eliminated by his own men for refusing to continue to carry out combat orders from his command regarding missile attacks on peaceful Ukrainian cities."

Ukraine Defence Intelligence

 

A view shows a building destroyed by a Russian air strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Orikhiv, Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine July 10, 2023. Head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration Yurii Malashko via Telegram/Handout via REUTERS

The Seriousness of the START Situation

"[Vladimir Putin's decision on tactical weapons] followed the failure by Kyiv's allies to heed previous serious signals [from Moscow because of the] fundamental irresponsibility of Western elites before their people and international security."

"Now they will have to deal with changing realities."

"We hope that NATO officials will adequately assess the seriousness of the situation."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Moscow

The Russian Foreign Ministry initially said Moscow would keep notifying the U.S. about planned test launches of its ballistic missiles, but Ryabkov's statement reflected an abrupt change of course.  CBC

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided that Moscow is no longer obligated via treaty to honour the United States' decision-making by trustfully alerting it through advance notice regarding Russian missile tests. This, at a time when the Russian military under Kremlin orders deployed mobile missile launchers in Siberia as a demonstration of Russia's massive nuclear capabilities a highlighted link to the invasion of Ukraine and the fortunes of a conflict that has left both countries in a veritable stalemate condition.

Russian news agencies carried Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov's remarks that all information exchanges under the START agreement with Washington have been halted by Moscow, completing the distancing of the two countries in their nuclear responsibility pacts following on the suspension of Russia's ongoing participation in the last remaining nuclear arms pact with the United States.

Data relating to the current state of both countries' nuclear forces -- up to the present routinely released at six month intervals complying with the treaty -- both parties also exchanged advance warnings of test launches. Notices of this type represent an essential element of strategic stability and have for decades. This cooperation allowed Russia and the United States to properly interpret each other's moves, making certain that neither would mistake a test launch for a missile attack.

Termination of missile test warnings represents another effort on Moscow's part to discourage the West from continuing to strengthen its support for Ukraine. Emphasizing Russia's massive nuclear arsenal is a most transparent threat, one occasioned by the fury of stalemate and the isolation imposed by the U.S. and NATO upon the Russian Federation.  Augmented by President Putin's announcement of tacticl nuclear weapons deployed to Belarus territory, as a regional trusted ally.

 

This photo made from video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, March 29, 2023, shows a Yars missile launcher of the Russian armed forces being driven from a shelter in an undisclosed location in Russia. The Russian military on Wednesday launched drills of its strategic missile forces, deploying Yars mobile launchers in Siberia in a show of the country's massive nuclear capability amid the fighting in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

 

The New START treaty was suspended last month, with Mr. Putin stating that U.S. inspections of Russia's nuclear sites was unacceptable at a time when Washington and its NATO allies have committed to Moscow's defeat in Ukraine. While not withdrawing entirely from the pact, Moscow stated its intention to continue to respect caps on nuclear weapons set by the treaty.

 

 

To the present, until Ryabkov's statement, it was understood by the United States that Moscow intended to continue notifying the U.S. of planned test launches of ballistic missiles, now upset by an abrupt change in orders. 

 

Russian drills will see Yars mobile missile launchers manoeuvre across three regions of Siberia involving measures to conceal the deployment from foreign satellites and other intelligence assets. No mention from the Russian Defence Ministry was given of how long the drills would last, nor were any practice launches mentioned of the nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic Yars missile with its range of about 11,000 kilometers. The Yars missile represents the backbone of Russia's strategic missile forces.

The tactical nuclear weapons deployed in Belarus are useful on the battlefield with their relatively short range and considerably lower yield, in comparison with the long-range strategic missiles fitted with nuclear warheads capable of obliterating entire cities. This latest decision by President Putin follows repeated warning that Moscow is prepared to use "all available means" -- referring to its nuclear arsenal -- to fend off attacks on Russian territory.

A still image from video, released by the Russian Defence Ministry in October 2022, shows what is said to be a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile launched during an exercise at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. (Russian Defence Ministry/Reuters)

Destroying Ukraine : Russia's Mission

A Ukrainian soldier takes cover during Russian shelling outside the city of Lysychansk on May 23.

"The decision to launch our special military operation was something that we were forced to do, they forced our hand. [The decision had been] difficult [but reaffirmed the Kremlin’s commitment to achieving its military goals]."

"All the missions we have set for ourselves and all the goals of the special military operation will be completed in full."

"This [inflation] has started long before our special military operation in the Donbas, and they’re blaming us. They made their prices soar and they’re blaming us."

"[The country -- Russia -- remains open for business] with those who want it.""The economic blitzkrieg against Russia was doomed from the beginning."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

President Putin also implored Russia's major businesses to keep working in Russia  Reuters

We are going to liberate all of the Donbas."

"Of course it is difficult to predict the withdrawal of our forces from the southern part of Ukraine because we have already experience that after withdrawal, provocations start."

Russian Ambassador to London Andrei Kelin

That's the Russian message to the world at large in a nutshell. It is Russia's right and obligation to de-Nazify Ukraine, to remove its fascist government, and all the reactions that have taken place, imposing sanctions on Russia, providing Ukraine with high-grade, powerful weaponry to counter Russia's superior military technology is gross interference and as such, inexcusable. As is Ukraine's reaction to the invasion, choosing to react through defensive conflict rather than sensibly surrendering to the inevitable. 

The destroyed bridge connecting the city of Lysychansk with the city of Syevyerodonetsk on May 22.

And if the world is aghast at Russia's 'scorched-earth' policy, it should be known that the vast infrastructure destruction, the flattening of towns, the ruination of civilian buildings and  homes and industries was brought on by Ukrainian stubborn intransigence, in countering Russia's humanitarian mission by its insistence on retaining territory meant for Russian occupation. Ukraine's incessant urging of its Western allies to continue sending it lethal weaponry goads the Kremlin to its commitment to liberate Ukraine; it must take responsibility for the duration of the war, as a result.

This Orwellian introversion of logic may appear puzzling to rational minds, but speculation that Vladimir Putin has become a monster of irrationality is beyond dispute to even the most casual of onlookers. Creating a mission of deliverance from a non-existent threat to Russia while its leader transforms his country into a lethal wrecking ball, flattening and destroying another country, killing tens of thousands of people and condemning the world community for its horrified reaction and support for Putin's victim, reflects his paranoia.

A man sits next to his horse during mortar shelling in Syevyerodonetsk on May 18.

Ukraine remains intent on its own mission, to protect its public, to defend its territory, to strike its enemy as hard as it can to impress upon Moscow that its viciousness has consequences that will threaten its own stability and longevity, not merely Ukraine's alone. Mr. Putin plays his trump card, the dependence of European countries in the West on his energy resources. That much of the impoverished world is also dependent on grains and edible oils for its existence and food security, now threatened by the Kremlin's blockading of Ukraine's shipping of those resources is another story.

At a Group of 20 meeting, Western diplomats urged Russia to allow Kyiv to ship blockaded Ukrainian grain to the hungry world awaiting relief from food shortages. Leaving Sergei Lavrov, Vladimir Putin's top diplomatic representative to strike back in angry denial. Russia's Ambassador to Britain hinted not of a pull-back from Ukraine's east and south now increasingly under Russian control, but the possibility of an increase in the severity and a possible widening of the conflict.

Ukrainian soldiers ride atop a self-propelled howitzer amid Russia's attack on Ukraine in the eastern Donetsk region on July 8.

 

And Over To You, Comrade Capitalist Putin ...

"The Kremlin's mistake was to underestimate Navalny's level of support," 

:[When people saw Navalny's arrest on live TV on his return to Russia on Jan. 17, as well as the online release last week of a documentary about President Putin's alleged corruption], it provided a strong emotional impulse to take to the street."

Russian political observer Andrei Kolesnikov, fellow, Moscow's Carnegie Center  

A still image taken from video footage shows law enforcement officers speaking with Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny before leading him away at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow on Jan. 17. (Reuters)

"I am sick of this government of thieves."

"This is a police state that gives nothing to the people. [Putin] builds palaces for himself."

"What is this?" 

68-year-old pensioner Galina Zolina, Moscow

 

"[The protests are] not a knockout blow to the state. We shouldn't start moving into hyperbole, that this is the beginning of the end of Putinism."

"[It's a] coalition of the fed-up. People have all kinds of reasons to feel unhappy with the way things are going and [Navalny] kind of becomes the catalyst."

"It's hard to maintain the momentum [of the protests] week after week."

"One way or another, the state wants to slowly de-legitimize the protests and make them less appealing, and by outlasting them, make opposition look increasingly pointless." 

Mark Galeotti, London-based Russia analyst, host, podcast In Moscow's Shadows

Russian President Vladimir Putin does a video conference call with university students at a state residence in Zavidovo, Russia, on Monday. (Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters)

"Hypocrites continue to inflate the fake Navalny case to interfere into internal affairs of our country."

"This is a professionally prepared provocation, encouraged by embassies of Western countries."

Russian embassy, U.K., Twitter

 

"That's what terrorists do. They put women and children in front of themselves [accusing demonstrators of placing children at the fore of the protests]." 

"Nothing that is listed there [Black Sea palatial palace] as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did."

Russian President Vladimir Putin 

Law enforcement officers stand in front of participants during a rally in support of Navalny in St. Petersburg on Saturday. (REUTERS)

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking to university students through a video conference addressing the unrest of unprecedented numbers of protesters in Russian cities, the mass anti-Kremlin protest organizers are "terrorists", and there is no need to investigate -- as Alexei Navalny, returned from Germany to Russia demands -- the president's personal wealth. An issue that is the stuff of urban legends, a conspiracy theory launched by those opposed to Mr. Putin's continued rule, the best president that Russia has ever had and as far as Mr. Putin is concerned, to be the longest-governing.

The issue of a Black Sea palace supposedly owned by Vladimir Putin is nothing but slander, according to the man himself, one that first emerged years ago, and now reborn to slur his reputation. Reputed to have cost a billion dollars and described as "Putin's Palace", the deed to the immense mansion may or may not be in Mr. Putin's strong-box possession, but state funds were apparently diverted in a scheme by his loyal allies to invest him with a palace worthy of his stature, held in trust perhaps for his eventual public ownership.

In 2010, Kolesnikov claimed that a luxurious estate near the Black Sea was for Putin. A Russian website published pictures, including the one above, which it said were of the mansion. The Kremlin denied Putin had anything to do with the building. Reuters is unable to independently verify the authenticity, content, location, source or date of this photograph.

 

Tens of thousands of Russian demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday protesting against the arrest of Alexei Navalny who was determined to return to Russia after  his convalescence in Berlin, recovering from an attempted assassination with the use of the Russian military chemical nerve-agent, Novichok which failed to fatally poison its target. The second time the poison was used for a similar purpose; the first occasion in London targeting another Russian dissident who also recovered as did his daughter, poisoned by default.

For the most part, state-ordered assassinations -- of journalist-critics, political critics, oligarch critics, and any high-profile pests who feel it their right to criticize the Kremlin and Russia's president can be certain that one way or another an attempt will be made on silencing them -- are proven to be successful, whether by drive-by shootings, sharpshooters, poisoning or mysterious disappearances. This was the ultimate challenge by Navalny, to return to Russia and dare the Kremlin/Putin to take additional action.

GRAND DESIGNS: One of the pictures described by a Russian website as showing the mansion dubbed “Putin’s palace.” The Kremlin has denied Putin has anything to do with the building. Reuters

 

Which they speedily did, and Putin's current most-prominent and popular figure of opposition complicating his life now faces trumped-up charges that in a Russian court, may earn him ten years in prison from his current pretrial detention. New mass demonstrations in protest of Mr. Navalny's arrest are scheduled for the coming weekend, similar to Saturday's protest where over 3,000 people were detained. There were relatively restrained clashes by protesters against baton-wielding police with no serious injuries reported.

 

Mr. Putin had in his address to the students on Monday, referred to authorities' claims the opposition had persuaded minors to become part of the rallies, remarking that young people had no place in such situations, nor should they be manipulated for the opposition's political ends. As a master manipulator speaking to young people, the president obviously knows whereof he speaks. An investigation into the claims failed to turn up evidence of the presence of young people in the chanting, determined protest crowd.

 

Mr. Navalny and his political group opposing ongoing rule by Mr. Putin, brought even wider global and internal focus to the situation when they released a video just hours after Mr. Navalny's arrest, pointedly accusing the president of amassing wealth for himself, draining the country's treasury. The immense, sprawling Black Sea mansion was highlighted as an opulent manifestation of the grandiloquent role Mr. Putin sees for himself as a modern-day Czar of the Russian Federation.  

 

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is set to visit Moscow in the coming month to impress on the Kremlin that by arresting and imprisoning the opposition leader, Russia resembles nothing less than a dictatorship, and to urge the Russian authorities to reconsider this action in light of the harm they do themselves on the international stage. An EU meeting of European foreign ministers had reached the conclusion that a friendly visit and friendly advice to Russia might turn the situation around.

"The council considered it completely unacceptable and condemned mass detentions and police brutality over the weekend."

"We call on Russia for the release of Mr. Navalny."

Joseph Borrell, EU Foreign Policy Chief 

Riot police drag away a protester in Moscow on Saturday. More than 1,400 people were arrested in the capital alone, with 3,700 arrests reported nationwide. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)