Yevgeniy Prigozhin- Arrogance and ignorance in one thuggish package
Vladimir Putin doesn't tolerate underlings whose reach exceeds their grasp
Something reduces the speed of the world and that something is stupidity! Stupidity is a boring friction!
Mehmet Murat ildan
You can have a certain arrogance, and I think that’s fine, but what you should never lose is the respect for the others.
Steffi Graf
A tale of arrogance in two acts:
Act I: Kobe Bryant
One of the things I admired about former NBA great Kobe Bryant after he retired was that he understood he was a good basketball player who still had much to learn about life. He understood that he was somewhat one-dimensional and endeavored to add more amplitude to his life.
Though his life was tragically cut short in a helicopter crash, he ultimately succeeded in adding more dimensions to his toolbox of gifts. He learned how to play the piano, he was an involved and loving father, he recovered from some youthful f**k-ups and became, by all accounts, a loving husband. And there were many more things he was trying to learn and add to his arsenal. Though he had only a high-school diploma, Bryant never stopped trying to learn and grow.
It was, I think, because of his thirst for knowledge that he came to respect those he came into contact with. He understood he had much to learn and others could be his teachers in their own way.
Kobe Bryant earned respect not only for his surpassing talents on the basketball court but also because he respected those he came into contact with. He understood that while he may have been genuinely sublime between the lines, he still had much to learn from life. He’d only just embarked on that journey when his life was cut short.
Act II: Yevgeniy Prigozhin
At the opposite end of that spectrum is the late Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Thug, career criminal, and oligarch who’d risen to the top of the new, über-corrupt Russia. Prigozhin was the former head of Russia’s Wagner Group, an army of mercenaries known for its brutality and utter lack of respect for the laws of war. Prigozhin began his career as a thug, caught the attention of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and was elevated to a Thug who commanded respect through fear and loathing.
Prigozhin, who died last week (along with nine other innocent victims- collateral damage) in a plane crash near Moscow, is the latest in a long line of Putin servants whose arrogance outstripped their intelligence. Ultimately, they’d forcibly shed their mortal coil, usually by being poisoned or pushed out a penthouse window.
Or, in Prigozhin’s case, being blown out of the sky at 28,000 feet. That Putin took nine other (mostly innocent) lives to take out Yevgeniy Prigozhin demonstrates how badly he wanted “Putin’s chef” to join the ranks of his late underlings.
Russian officials have announced that genetic testing confirms Prigozhin was among the ten bodies recovered from the crash site. The West will never see the evidence, of course, and they’ll certainly never stifle the rampant speculation that the “crash” was, in fact, an assassination of Prigozhin.
Russia’s investigative committee, which investigates serious crimes in the country, has confirmed that the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was among the people killed in a plane crash.
The committee said on Sunday that after forensic testing, all 10 bodies recovered at the site had been identified, and their identities “conform to the manifest”.
Russia’s civil aviation authority said previously that Prigozhin and some of his top lieutenants were on the list of those onboard the plane that crashed on Wednesday.
The announcement prompted days of speculation over the fate of Prigozhin. He was known to have body doubles and to use multiple passports and disguises while travelling. There had been false reports of his death twice before, including after a plane crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2019.
On Friday the UK Ministry of Defence said in a daily intelligence update that while Prigozhin, 62, had been known to “exercise exceptional security measures”, it was “highly likely” that he was among the dead.
Prigozhin, unfortunately, was equal parts ignorant and arrogant. Despite his crude stupidity, he’d managed to rise through the ranks of the Russian thugocracy, becoming quite wealthy and powerful in his own right. Once the war in Ukraine started, his Wagner Group played an increasingly important role in covering for the incompetence and ineptitude of the regular Russian military. Once feared as one of the world’s most potent fighting forces, the Russian Army proved itself to be a paper tiger- poorly armed, embarrassingly undertrained, and frighteningly corrupt.
The Wagner Group, however, was professional, capable, and ruthless. The role of Prigozhin’s private mercenary army created several powerful enemies within the Kremlin and the Russian military. Prigozhin was too blind and/or stupid to understand the threat they posed to his continued existence.
Vladimir Putin believed Russia had an army that, had it been equipped and trained as he thought it to be, should have rolled into Kyiv within a week. Instead, it became bogged due to outdated equipment, ridiculously long supply chains, poor leadership, and unit morale hovering below zero.
It was into this rolling clusterfuck that Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s Wagner Group stepped. Because of Wagner’s relative professionalism and utter disrespect for the laws of war, it stabilized Russia’s military situation. Because of their use of large numbers of prisoners and foreigners, Prigozhin considered most of his forces disposable. “Human wave” attacks became increasingly frequent, a tactic for which the Ukrainian Army had no readily available solution.
As the war dragged on without a glorious and decisive Russian victory, Prigozhin became progressively more frustrated with senior leadership in the Ministry of Defense, whom he accused of not properly supplying Wagner. Prigozhin claimed- not incorrectly- that since Wagner had been responsible for much of Russia’s military success in Ukraine, it should be given priority for ammunition and other supplies.
Personality conflicts and petty squabbles too often tear Russia’s political system into competing factions. Prigozhin, not known for his diplomatic skills, demanded that the Wagner Group be treated as a priority when many senior Russian politicians wanted nothing more than to see him fail miserably.
Then came the moment Prigozhin did the unthinkable- two months ago, he tried to stage a coup against Moscow. Of course, he never stood a chance and may have even realized that. But, unwilling and unable to take a more diplomatic route, Prigozhin used his private army to make a statement.
The moment he did that, he placed a target on his back. Prigozhin may not have realized it then, but he was living on borrowed time.
Vladimir Putin, throughout his long career, has definitively proven two things:
He will brook no challenges to his authority. Period. Any show of disloyalty, whether real or perceived, is dealt with decisively…and there’s no coming back from that.
Concerning step #1, Putin believes that revenge is a dish best served cold. He can be a man of surprising patience when it comes to meting out punishment, but he doesn’t forget. In the two months since Prigozhin’s rebellion, he may have been stupid and arrogant enough to think he was in the clear. That was almost certainly his undoing.
Russia’s statement on Sunday did not provide any details as to what may have caused the crash, which came two months after Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny in which Wagner troops captured a defence headquarters in Rostov and marched on Moscow.
US and western officials have said the plane was probably brought down by an intentional explosion, leading to it crashing into a field about 185 miles (300km) north of Moscow.
Suspicions swiftly centred on Vladimir Putin, with US and western officials saying it was very likely he was the architect of the incident, as Prigozhin’s armed revolt had ranked as the most serious challenge to the Russian leader in his 23-year hold on power.
The US president, Joe Biden, told reporters after the crash: “I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised. There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.”
President Biden is, of course, spot on. While some on the Far-Right have criticized him for “flippancy,” the President is correct. There’s little in big-picture terms that happens in Russia that Vladimir Putin isn’t aware of or responsible for.
Putin’s been in power for 23 years…and it’s not because of his benevolence.
Because the Kremlin maintains such tight control over information regarding the crash of Prigozhin’s plane, the only message getting out is the one Putin wants. And that’s no surprise: It was a terrible accident, and HOW DARE the West accuse Russia of nefariously murdering a Russian patriot.
Indeed; how dare they? Especially when that’s almost certainly what happened.
The Kremlin has denied that it assassinated Prigozhin, characterising western intelligence assessments of Putin’s potential involvement as “an absolute lie”.
Reaction has been relatively limited to the point of indifference in Ukraine, as Prigozhin was no longer seen as a significant figure after the failed mutiny. His Wagner Group, once a key unit operating in Ukraine, had withdrawn from the country three months ago after the capture of Bakhmut.
Putin has since moved swiftly to capitalise on Prigozhin’s death by issuing a decree requiring Wagner and all other private military company fighters to swear an oath of allegiance to Russia.
On Thursday, he appeared to eulogise Prigozhin in a televised interview, saying he had known the Wagner head since the early 1990s. He described Prigozhin, a former hotdog seller from Putin’s home town of St Petersburg, as someone who had “made some serious mistakes in life” but praised him as a “talented man, a talented businessman”.
It’s all just a little too convenient, as if all the Kremlin needed was to arrange for Prigozhin’s untimely demise. Once that happened, Putin could bring the Wagner Group under the control of the Russian military.
It’s almost like someone planned it to happen that way.
Sadly, Wagner’s brave, patriotic leader has perished, but Russia still needs their soldiers to fight Nazis in Ukraine, right?? Because the fight to protect the Motherland continues.
Something like that.
I don’t know about you, but I find Act I infinitely more worthy of respect. Kindness, compassion, and humility will always win…unless you’re part of the Russian nomenklatura. In that case, those qualities will only land you in an early grave…as will their opposite character traits.
Kobe Bryant will be remembered fondly by many in and around the basketball world. Yevgeniy Prigozhin? He’ll be remembered as a thug and a criminal, but will anyone outside his immediate family miss him? That seems unlikely in today’s Russia, where life is cheap and highly expendable.
Prigozhin was a disposable cog in Vladimir Putin’s wheel; his mistake was thinking he was critical and irreplaceable.
In the end, Putin always wins.
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Russian command has not learned anything since prior to WWI, all of their tactical concepts revolve around the human wave assault against an entrenched opponent. They succeed (when they succeed) by sheer mass of numbers.
By the bye, the M60 machine gun was developed out of our experience in Korea against the Chinese human wave assault battalions. The older, water-cooled '30 from WWII could not keep up. The M60, on the other hand, comes with a spare barrel, an asbestos mitten, and a quick-change system so that when the barrel starts to melt down from sustained fire, you can swap it out and resume firing.
I enjoyed your novel way that you reviewed Prigozhin by unfavorably comparing him to Kobe Bryant, because they both perished in aircraft. That's impressive, I'd not seen Prigozhin's legacy examined this way via such a comparison.