Two identical private jets took off, one returned and landed while the other lay in smoldering ruins. Yevgeny Prigozhin was said to be on board… one of them.
This detail popped into my head as I read the MI6 quote to the Independent.
[Putin is] making clear to everyone inside and outside of Russia that he’s not going to brook any challenge. If there’s a slim chance that he’s not dead and he wasn’t on that plane, he will be soon.
But does he really have to be dead soon? If he has a public death then lives in total obscurity, secretly retired on a Putin pension plan, what’s the real difference?
A slim chance of survival that MI6 mentions certainly could come from being on the other plane, which Russians seem to be talking about.
According to Russian sources, Prigozhin was well-known for trying to deceive any would-be assassins, and often “confused everyone” by running additional flights while he was officially checked in on another charter. The Readovka news agency, which has been linked to the warlord, even said it was “premature” to jump to the conclusion that he had died.
If Prigozhin is not dead, but everyone thinks he is… Putin not only gets what he wants with people assuming there must have been a targeted revenge strike (so very like Mike Pompeo), he also gets to secretly keep his loyal ally in his pocket in case of later need.
One thing that still bugs me about the “attempted coup” narrative that was puffed up around Prigozhin was the lack of any heated meaningful criticism directed at Putin. Blanks were being fired.
His comments were so candid and off-message for a Russian leader that it seemed as if someone had mistakenly handed him a speech… Prigozhin did not criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin by name, focusing instead on the broader Russian elite…
Mistakenly? More like intentionally.
The breathless commentary always read to me like Prigozhin was lamely following a campy coup script that was handed to him by Putin, not even trying to make it look real. Focusing heated rhetorical attacks onto Russian elites makes basically zero sense for any supposed campaign actually planning to dislodge Putin, and Prigozhin is no dummy. Lazy and greedy, yes. Stupid? No.
Plus the “exile” to Belarus plan sounded like an inside joke, given groveling obedience of that state to the Russian dictator. What better place for a fake exile script than a country that says and does whatever Putin orders? Imagine if Snowden tried to exile himself from the US by flying to Texas (the land of all hat no cattle), for a simple comparison.
I’ve studied hundreds, maybe thousands, of coups around the world and the Prigozhin news never sounded to me like he truly opposed Putin. It rang hollow.
Anyway, maybe that second plane has details worth digging into. Two bodies are missing and two have identification issues. “Keir Giles, Senior Consulting Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House” certainly seems to think it’s too early to judge.
Maybe Prigozhin is right now acting like a beached beluga under a palm tree in Africa, sipping banana juice and laughing about pulling a reverse-Hammarskjold by having his own plane sabotaged.
I’m just saying “Sir John Sawers, 68, who served as Chief of the MI6 between 2009 and 2014” doesn’t throw uncertainty about Prigozhin to the Independent readers without a very good reason.
And in relation to that point, it’s noticeable how Elon Musk consistently appears as a supporter of dictatorship and Putin in particular. The notoriously untrustworthy CEO frequently takes a stance against Ukrainian independence, not out of concern for Putin such as being assassinated, but due to a wealth-driven connection to China. The United States has not taken substantial actions yet to counter the influence of Chinese military intelligence, which has gained significant leverage within Tesla, SpaceX, and now, unsurprisingly, Twitter. This issue becomes apparent among high-ranking officials who oppose Putin; they now find themselves hesitant to engage with Musk’s three highly turbulent and declining for-profit geopolitical corporations. This hesitation stems from the way the Chinese consistently maneuver the coin-operated Musk towards aligning with Putin’s interests.