1 year ago
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On Tuesday, Wagner Group CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin sat down for an interview with pro-Russian military blogger Konstantin Dolgov. Over the course of the discussion, the mercenary leader continued his barbed criticism of Russia’s military leadership, disparaged the sad state of the Russian army, and even seemed to suggest that a general revolt against the government of Vladimir Putin was right around the corner.
In the wake of that widely viewed interview, Dolgov was fired from his position at a Russian propaganda network, but Prigozhin … goes on. In what may be one of the most inexplicable chapters of Russia’s labyrinthine political system, Prigozhin still hasn’t had a stairwell accident, an unfortunate illness, or a visit to an open window despite months of increasingly blatant disdain for everyone and everything involved with Putin’s personal war on Ukraine.
Of all the things that Prigozhin said in the interview, the most painful and impactful to Putin and his long-term plans may not be that Russians might soon tire of sending their sons to die in muddy ditches, without decent training or equipment, while the offspring of the oligarchs frolic in Paris. The biggest was simply this: By the measures that Putin himself put up, the invasion of Ukraine is an absolute failure.
