Prigozhin’s dead
C’mon, Vlad! Having your enemies fall from buildings is suspicious enough. But having their plane fall from the sky is incriminating.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first public comments Thursday on the plane crash believed to have killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, saying the Wagner leader was ‘talented’ but made ‘serious mistakes in life.’
The crash Wednesday took place northwest of Moscow and killed all on board, said Russia’s aviation agency. … The crash of Prigozhin’s plane happened two months after Prigozhin and Wagner staged their insurrection, the biggest challenge to Putin’s authority during his long rule.
(CNN, August 24, 2023)
Reports are that Putin had his assassin plant a bomb on Prigozhin’s plane. But that Putin killed Prigozhin is not the story. After all, even I wrote that “deal or no deal, Prigozhin is a dead man walking.” Granted, it turns out he was a dead man flying.
How are world leaders treating Putin?
The story is that many world leaders are still treating Putin with dignity and respect.
We accuse GOP leaders of cult-like worship for supporting Donald Trump, a mendacious, twice-impeached, four-times indicted rapist. So, what should we accuse world leaders of, especially when they mingle with Putin? And he’s a mendacious, land-grabbing, genocidal fascist.
Granted, fear of being arrested prevented him from attending this week’s BRICS summit in South Africa. But the leaders of Brazil, [ ], India, China, and South Africa still made him feel a part of their gathering via video link.
Mind you, it’s vintage Putin to time his assassination of Prigozhin during this BRICS summit. After all, this timing is perversely similar to his invasion of Georgia during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
To be fair, President Biden famously called Crown Prince MbS a murdering thug and said he should be treated like a pariah for killing journalist Jamaal Khashoggi. Yet he ended up fraternizing with MbS in ways far more fawning than schmoozing on Zoom. So there’s that.
Ultimately, though, in killing Prigozhin, Putin only did what dictators do. Hell, African dictators like Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Omar Bashir have done far worse. Indeed, they make Putin look like a choir boy. So there’s that too.