In the video released by Prigozhin on the Telegram channel of Wagner last August 21, the first and last after the “suspended” or aborted coup just two months earlier, the one who was Wagner’s father-master armed to the teeth had launched a promo to claim the centrality, abnegation and intact operation of his fearsome mercenaries.
The location is its undisputed kingdom, l’Africawithout detailed clarifications, the clear and persuasive words “we are working at more than 50 degrees, as we like to make the Russia even bigger on all continents and Africa even freer. Wagner is continuing to perform the tasks assigned to her to the fullest.” The practical purpose of the appeal the recruitment of new soldiers. But above all the video reconfirms that the man who had reported the most obvious symbolic victories in Ukraine had no intention of adapting to the peaceful exile in Belarus planned by the Kremlin, for him and for the Wagner fighters who resisted enrollment in the regular army , already in the aftermath of his interrupted march.
While for two months the brand of traitor and the backstabber punctuated through gritted teeth by Putin continued to bounce around in the Russian media together with the label of opportunist and profiteer to the detriment of the country’s finances, the “exiled” continued in his private plane to go back and forth between Belarus and Russia for a series of meetings, among which the one with the Russian president in the Kremlin stands out. Almost a circumstance on the edge of realityof which it was learned after some time, with the participation of the general staff of the Wagner and that is inclusive of the charred in the crash which occurred for who knows what singular coincidence exactly two months from the march with Prigozhin’s turnaround. And above all, a meeting of more than three hours between the betrayed and the traitors, that of last June 29, in which a furious Putin would have railed against his “heroic” mercenaries who, by making a fatal mistake, would have interpreted the outburst as the closure of the “case ” and they would have deluded themselves that they had really been pardoned by the supreme master.
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So Prigozhin believed he could start doing almost everything again, like allowing himself to attend the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg without official credentials or putting his face on the recruitment of soldiers in Africa. And he also gave up the most basic precautionshow to avoid having all the Wagner bosses travel on the same plane.
As the Tsar’s most loyal ally commented with macabre irony, more or less intentionally, “the head of Wagner thought he was unassailable and stopped paying attention.” He disregarded Lukashenko’s “recommendations” and did not continue to stay in hotels without windows as in the early days of the “transfer” to Belarus, even though all those who have been dealing with Putin for at least twenty years promptly predicted that that would not have been enough.
As in the aftermath of the coup, when he promptly returned, in commenting on the end of the most obviously emblematic creature of his criminal system, Putin revealed much more than he intended. With lowered and elusive gaze and the mask of contrition dismissed him permanently as “a man of difficult but talented fate” and then left the official repeater Peskov with the tragicomic task of branding the West’s speculations about Prigozhin’s death as “absolute lies” and of airing the possibility of his participation in the mercenary’s funeral ” hero of Russia”. In the aftermath of the “private funerals”, which in fact were secret and armored without glories and honors for Prigozhin and Utnik, founders of Wagner and awarded the highest honor of state heroes which provides for the highest military honors, Dimitry Peskov said: “The investigators are considering various possibilities, including that of a deliberate atrocity”, however excluding the possibility that the investigation can be extended to foreign investigators.
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The management of Prigozhin’s funeral – which in the end took place quietly, dribbling the stalking of reporters, in a cemetery on the eastern outskirts of St. Petersburg, well away from the central one of Serafimovskoe where many high-ranking soldiers are buried – was under the banner of concealment more than “confidentiality”, in absolute contrast with the obsessive media exposure inherent in the character.
If as the hot Russian nomenclature was keenly observed it was uncertain “whether to praise the elimination of a ‘traitor’ or mourn the ‘fall of a hero'” (Anna Zafesova, the print) to prevail as the days went by was the option of a gradual one damnation of memory, of a veil of hypocritical opacity and silence to wrap the body of a co-star become too popularuncomfortable and unmanageable.
Thus the blurred visibility of the last passage out of fear, first of all, of widespread expressions of condolence and anger was inversely proportional to the maximum display of strength and of inexorable vengeance that Putin wanted to give with a spectacular “accident” that could instill terror in any “traitor”, rebel, antagonist, opponent. It is difficult to disagree with the observation that “When the State decides to act in a demonstrative and terrorist way, it demonstrates weakness. It is a sign that within the system a strong paranoia is spreading, along with the constant quest to assert one’s power and seek loyalty.” (Nona Mikalidze, the print).
Unfortunately, we must bear in mind that the state in question is Russia and that according to more or less reliable polls, only 8% of the population believes that the blatant attack with which Putin punished his indomitable alter ego and issued a death to all was planned by the Kremlin. What has emerged even more clearly, beyond assessments of possible reactions within Wagner with repercussions on the army leaders, is that peace agreements with Putin appear at the moment even more unlikely and therefore more distant in time.