Early Intelligence Suggests Prigozhin Was Assassinated, U.S. Officials Say
WSJ skrev:The plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, crashed as the result of an assassination plot but doesn’t appear to have been shot down by a surface-to-air missile, U.S. officials said.
The preliminary U.S. government assessments, which officials stressed are incomplete, suggest that a bomb exploded on the aircraft or that some other form of sabotage caused the crash northwest of Moscow.
Enligt vissa källor inom den amerikanska försvarsmakten kraschade planet på grund av en explosion. Explosionen kan ha fått en vinge på planet att lossna.
US officials see missile strike, other theories, behind crash of Prigozhin plane
Reuters skrev:Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that it was likely a surface-to-air missile originating from inside Russia likely shot down the plane
The officials stressed that the information was still preliminary and under review, and did not rule out a change to the assessment.
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported a different theory: that a bomb aboard the aircraft or some other sabotage caused the crash.
Enligt andra källor inom den amerikanska försvarsmakten det rör sig om en nedskjutning med en luftvärnsrobot. En bomb hade skapat ett svart rökmoln.
US has not seen indications a missile downed Prigozhin’s plane, officials say
CNN skrev: On Thursday, Putin expressed his “sincere condolences to the families of all the victims” of the crash. He said had known Prigozhin since the early 90s and that he was a “talented businessman.”
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“In my experience, Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback. So I would be surprised if Prigozhin escapes further retribution for this. So in that sense, the president’s right. If I were Prigozhin, I wouldn’t fire my food taster,” Burns said in July.
“If I were Mr. Prigozhin, I would remain very concerned. NATO has an open-door policy; Russia has an open-windows policy,” Blinken also said in July.
Putin bryter alltid avtal. Det finns absolut inget i hans politiska gärning som visar att han någonsin har respekterat ett ingått avtal. Kan Prigozjin
ersättas?
Putin’s Deadly Revenge on Prigozhin
The New Yorker skrev:Various social-media accounts linked to Wagner suggest that acts of revenge will follow the deaths of Prigozhin and Utkin and other Wagner members, but this seems unlikely. For all the distrust and even contempt of the way that the Russian military has prosecuted the war in Ukraine—a complaint that became Prigozhin’s signal issue and has now spread throughout the armed forces, security services, and even society at large—Prigozhin never managed to turn his profile and burgeoning popularity into a coherent movement. The public won’t mourn him, and the remaining Wagner commanders will likely understand the lesson of Prigozhin’s killing clearly enough. In any case, Wagner turned over much of its heavy weaponry to the defense ministry, and its fighters are now scattered across Belarus, Russia, and a handful of African countries. Its operations will be absorbed by Russian oligarchs eager to get into the mercenary business and by various arms of the Russian military and intelligence services. In short, a mutiny 2.0 is unlikely, at least not yet, and not because of Prigozhin’s death alone.
I reached Marat Gabidullin, a former Wagner commander who fought in a number of campaigns with the group in Syria and later wrote a book about his experiences. He left Wagner several years ago, before the Ukraine war, but retains connections with some of its fighters. “They are confused, at a loss,” he said of his conversations with his contacts in the wake of Prigozhin’s and Utkin’s apparent deaths. He didn’t expect major protests or discontent from within Wagner’s ranks. “They will serve the one who pays them,” he said. But, he added, the future of the company’s missions abroad may soon come under pressure. If Wagner has been largely absent from the Ukrainian front in recent months, in Africa, its mercenaries represent the largest and most influential Russian presence. “Without the tandem of Prigozhin and Utkin,” Gabidullin said, “how dedicated will everyone else remain?”
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But Prigozhin’s fate is ultimately of limited significance to Putin’s political survival. It was a settling of scores that may work to keep people in line for a bit, but doesn’t address the deeper sources of stress to the system. For starters, demoting top generals and blowing mercenary leaders on whom you’ve long depended out of the sky, all in the middle of an ongoing war, are not the actions of a confident, efficient, stable autocracy. A longer-term rot has set in, which, over time, will need ever more dramatic, and risky, action to try to cover over. Once the spiral is set in motion, it can only intensify in one direction. That is not to say the Putin system awaits great weakness or catastrophe; these dynamics can play out over years, if not decades.
Most decisive will be the war itself. For the moment, Russian defenses have held up better than expected against the Ukrainian counter-offensive. If that continues, and this summer’s Ukrainian campaign fizzles without taking back considerable chunks of Russian-occupied territory, Putin’s authority and sway over the élite will likely remain. But if that changes, and Russian lines collapse or are considerably weakened anywhere along the front, especially in striking distance of Crimea, then suddenly Putin’s legitimacy would weaken in ways that could quickly surpass the challenge posed by Prigozhin.
Putin behöver inte bara ersätta Prigozjin i Afrika, utan även i Ukraina! Som bekant fortsätter Ukraina att avancera, och tiden är inte på Rysslands sida.