In connection with the terrorist attack Putin carried out 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 the secret of Prigozhin’s survival. Most likely, it was simple. A personal agreement 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, to put it mildly, the lack of enthusiasm in the Ministry of Defense, appreciated that. He gave Prigozhin support on an unprecedented scale (no joke—thousands of convicts were being pulled out of prisons in a single day). And 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 or throw me to the wolves.  — Zhenya, here is my hand and my word. Complete the task, and I’ll always have your back. Support is guaranteed.  During the “mutiny,” Prigozhin snapped for understandable reasons, but that did not change the essence of their relationship. Putin’s word was still supposed to stand.  How foolish it was to write that. How naive to assume that Putin might be capable of any kind of decency at all—whether officer’s honor, street-code loyalty, or criminal “honor among thieves.”  There is nothing there except constant lying about absolutely everything. Lie, steal, seize, kill, run.  Cunning. At this point, it is worth once again laughing at those who believe in the jewel-like precision 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 cleanly that no one can pick holes in it.”  Here is the fine craftsmanship of Putin’s killers: shoot down/blow up a passenger plane over Russia—that is, carry out a real terrorist attack—while also killing completely uninvolved people on board: the pilot, the flight attendant, and so on.  Strategy. Across the country, there are 50,000–60,000 former convicts and other former participants in the war walking around covered in Wagner patches.  (Continuation of the post in the carousel) ------- There are also several hundreds of thousands more fans of this cult. It has been officially chanted, and it is quite popular: «Wagner», «orchestra», «musicians», «ours in Africa», they promote Russian interests, and so on. Prigozhin and Utkin are awarded hero medals. Two presidents, of Russia and Belarus, give them security guarantees. Now, what happened through the eyes of Wagner fans is: that Russian officers-heroes did not spare their lives in the war in Ukraine. They are super professionals. They were deceived by traitor generals. They were sent to Africa and even there they declared that they would strengthen Russia's power, start expansion, and again make Russian weapons to be considered. However, the traitor and coward is Putin in his Kremlin who envies the popularity of these Russian heroes in the people's eyes and the army and hates them for it. So he gave the vile order to kill them. Thus, Prigozhin and Utkin turned into the eyes of many of those dudes who like to dress up in a camouflage outfit even if it is out of place, into martyrs. In the «legends» of this war. In the eyes of historians, by the way, they will be legends and the most interesting characters as well. Movies, books, and conspiracy theories that they survived and are fighting in the jungles of the Congo will be there too. The point is not even that for some of the most aggressive supporters of war with Ukraine, the history of this war is now the saga of how Putin betrayed and killed his loyal officers. It's that these are the ingredients used to create the dish called "civil war". They created a gang. Armed the gang. Disbanded the gang. Killed the leaders. The metaphor "spiders in a jar" is often applied to those who sit in the Kremlin. However, another metaphor — "monkey with a grenade" — is more suitable.