I have a recurring image of Yevgeny Prigozhin strolling around his new digs, possibly in Minsk but somewhere in Belarus as a guest of one of those tiresome renovation shows on TV.
“Wow, floor to ceiling windows. And look, a range of herbal teas. This place is great.”
Vladimir Putin has said he can forgive almost anything besides treachery, but he let Prigozhin walk despite knowing Wagner fighters began a march to Moscow and shot down six Russian aircraft; five helicopters and an Ilyushin Il-22M Coot aerial command post until they pulled up.
Thirteen Russian crew died in the attacks.
Putin’s Bond villain is probably safe for now, but it is only a matter of time before he slips on the Novichok-laced socks and hits the deck.
It’s springtime for glaziers in Moscow and possibly also Minsk as Putin lines a few suspects up against the wall and has them answer some difficult questions under trying conditions about what they knew and when.
Around the world, Prigozhin’s violent tantrum was met with shock. One of the more sensible responses came from Latvia’s Foreign Minister and President-elect Edgars Rinkēvičs.
“I think that nobody has yet understood what is going on in Russia — frankly I have a feeling also that the leadership in Moscow has no clue what is going on in their own country,” Rinkēvičs deadpanned.
Meanwhile the hard Left and hard Right were left stunned, rendered silent and morose until they could make sense of it by clutching onto their conspiracy theory comfort blankets.
In our own backyard, Simeon ‘The Aussie Cossack’ Boikov — who is holed up in the Russian Consulate in Double Bay in Sydney’s east, evading a jail sentence after having been convicted of assault occasioning bodily harm of a 72-year-old man in December last year — assumed the role of Corporal Jones from Dad’s Army.
“To clear some questions,” Boikov wrote on social media on Saturday evening. “No, no coup was announced. No, there is no coup going on right now.”
Don’t panic! Don’t Panic!
Later in the evening, Boikov appeared to have five bob each-way on the outcome, flogging Wagner Group merch through his Telegram account.
“Meanwhile Wagner group T-shirts and merchandise are selling hot right now. Yes, we ship worldwide.”
Georgia congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor-Greene got on the toots and hinted at some US black-ops.
“After our government has been funding a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine for over a year, I sure hope our government isn’t behind a coup attempt currently happening in Russia,” she tweeted.
Not a skerrick of evidence but hey, let’s just get it out there.
By Sunday morning, Twitter boss Elon Musk thought the world had experienced a crafty Russian psy-op. Malaysian blogger Ian Miles Cheong agreed (as he always does with Elon) and suggested he and only he knew it all along. Later, Miles Cheong tweeted a photograph of happy Russians in the Moscow Metro, admiring their beaming smiles and noting there was not a pride flag in sight. Conflation 101.
A brief post-mortem on the Wagner mutiny:
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 26, 2023
If any element of the Wagner mutiny was a psyop, Prigozhin got played. He was let to cook as long as he needed to. Ironic, given his origins as a chef.
In all seriousness, I don’t think it was any sort of planned “psyop†in the… pic.twitter.com/CghBeR5dd5
It was less than ten years ago that many of those who sit on the outer edges of the Right were shrieking about the Islamification of Europe, the death of Western civilisation and why isn’t it taught in schools? But when European values were actually threatened by Putin, they went to water, demanding that the invaded Ukraine, its civilians massacred in air strikes and missile attacks, sue for peace.
Genuine conservatives understand the lessons of history. Putin’s folly in Ukraine can never be signed away. For all his myriad shortcomings as a political leader, Boris Johnson never put a foot wrong on Ukraine.
By the time the dust had settled and Prigohzin was admiring the views from his bolthole in Minsk, the hard Right had come to the tortured view that the Wagner Group boss was a CIA plant. The hard Left had previously jumped to a similar conclusion, portraying President Joe Biden as a puppet master.
Biden’s critics variously describe him as a doddering, even demented US Commander-in-Chief in one breath and then ascribe all manner of Machiavellian chicanery to him. He can be one thing or the other but not both.
It barely needs to be said but Prigozhin is not a CIA operative. The Wall Street Journal has produced a video on Prigozhin and the origins and activities of Wagner Group which I highly recommend. Variously and inaccurately described as a mercenary force, Wagner with Prigozhin at the helm is best understood as a vicious organised criminal cartel, active in four continents. Prigozhin’s rise from helping his mum flog hotdogs as the Soviet Union collapsed, climbing up the ladder of the Russian oligarchy to become one of Putin’s most trusted blaggers is catalogued in this WSJ video:
In the UK, the leftist Stop the War campaign responded to the Wagner insurrection with stunned silence. Dead air now surrounds former Labour leader and Stop the War spokesperson, Jeremy Corbyn.
Stop the War is a bit of a misnomer. While the campaign’s leaders babble about ceasefires, what they demand first and foremost is that NATO stops arming the Ukrainians. This wouldn’t stop the war but merely deliver Ukraine into the hands of Putin. If there was to be a settlement, Putin would be negotiating from a position of overwhelming strength.
But Corbyn’s sidekick, Andrew Murray, a leader of Britain’s Stalin cheer squad, managed to rouse himself to post yesterday that a ceasefire was even more important now than it was before Wagner started shooting down Russian aircraft. And then signed off calling for donations. Donations for what? Ukrainian refugees, displaced and traumatised by war? Nope. Maybe Corbyn needs a new office chair.
"Stalemate on the battlefield remains the most likely outcome. Under those circumstances, the calls from governments and peoples across the world for a #ceasefire and #peace negotiations need to be redoubled."https://t.co/d6jL9zAbHJ
— Stop the War (@STWuk) June 27, 2023
The Hard Left have always been appeasers.
“In whose interests is this war being fought? For what ends is this war being fought? Is the continuance of this war in the interests of the working people?”
That might sound like some of the Stop the War rhetoric from Corbyn and Co. But it comes from the pen of Rajani Palme Dutt, editor of the Workers’ Weekly, and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, a Stalin apologist to the day he died in 1974.
Dutt wrote those words two months after the Nazi invasion of Poland and after Chamberlain had declared war on Germany.
The hard Left hasn’t budged an inch since 1939. Like the hard Right they hate NATO and the US. They despise European values and deep down, hanker for a hard man to rule us all.
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