In connection with the terrorist attack Putin staged to kill his own soldier, Prigozhin, I want to say a few words about decency, cunning, and strategy.
Decency. Just a couple of days ago, I was writing to someone, explaining what lay behind Prigozhin’s ability to survive. Most likely, it was simple. A personal deal, and Putin’s thug-style “word of honor.” Prigozhin promised Putin that he would bend over backward for him and for his war. That he would be his most reliable commander, ready to do anything for victory. Putin, seeing what was, to put it mildly, a lack of enthusiasm from the Ministry of Defense, appreciated that. He gave Prigozhin support on an unprecedented scale (no joke—thousands of convicts were pulled out of prisons in a single day). And so there was, I assumed, some classic exchange:
— I’ll do anything for you, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Victory will be ours at any cost. But you mustn’t let me down either, and don’t throw me to the wolves.
— Zhenya, you have my hand and my word. Carry out the mission, and I’ll always be behind you. My support is guaranteed.
During the “mutiny,” Prigozhin snapped—and not without reason—but that did not change the essence of their relationship. Putin’s word, I thought, still stood.
What stupidity it was to write that. What naivety—to assume that Putin might be capable of any kind of decency at all: an officer’s, a street thug’s, a gangster’s.
There is nothing there but constant lying about absolutely everything. Lie, steal, seize, kill, run.
Cunning. Here again, it is worth laughing at those who believe in the precision craftsmanship of the security services, in elaborate multi-step plans, and in the idea that “if they want to kill someone, they know how to do it so flawlessly that no one can pick holes in it.”
Here is the fine workmanship of Putin’s killers: to shoot down or blow up a passenger plane over Russia—that is, to carry out a real terrorist attack—while also killing completely uninvolved people, including the pilot, flight attendant, and others.
Strategy. Across the country, there are 50,000 to 60,000 former convicts and other former war participants walking around covered in Wagner patches.
And there are several hundred thousand more followers of this cult. It was officially glorified, and it is fairly popular: “Wagner,” “the orchestra,” “the musicians,” “our guys in Africa,” advancing Russian interests, and so on.
Prigozhin and Utkin are awarded Hero stars. Two presidents—of Russia and Belarus—give them security guarantees. And now, here is what happened through the eyes of Wagner’s admirers: Russian hero-officers spared no effort in the war in Ukraine. They were elite super-professionals. They were deceived by traitorous generals. They were sent off to Africa—and even there they declared that they would strengthen Russia’s power, begin expansion, and once again make the world reckon with Russian arms.
But the traitor and coward Putin, sitting in his Kremlin, envies these Russian heroes for their popularity among the people and the troops, and hates them for it. So he gave the vile order to kill them.
As a result, in the eyes of many of those guys who love dressing up in camouflage at every opportunity and none at all, Prigozhin and Utkin have become martyrs.
They have become the “legends” of this war.
And in the eyes of historians, by the way, they too will be legends—the most interesting characters. There will be films, books, and conspiracy theories claiming they survived and are fighting in the jungles of the Congo.
But the point is not even that, for some of the most aggressive supporters of the war against Ukraine, the story of this war is now a saga about how Putin betrayed and killed his loyal officers.
It is that this is exactly the kind of ingredient from which the dish called “civil war” is made.
They created a gang. They armed the gang. They disbanded the gang. They killed its leaders.
The metaphor “spiders in a jar” is often applied to those sitting in the Kremlin. But another one fits better: “a monkey with a grenade.”