There’s a demographic that absolutely needs to learn practical lessons from Pirgozhin’s assassination.
This includes Putin’s circle, the so-called political elites: top bureaucrats and the nation’s wealthiest business people.
Aug. 23 saw the rulebook change.
They’re no longer living in a regime that they helped set up and that helped them get richer.
It pays to reflect on what sets this political assassination apart from the previous politically motivated
murders in Putin’s career.
Not just that the deceased was once one of their own. Importantly,
no vehement denial typical of the previous ones ensued this time.
In all previous murder and attempted murder cases, including hits on journalist Anna Politkovskaya,
former intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, the Skripals, and Alexei Navalny,
we witnessed a massive denial and fingerpointing campaign.
We saw a myriad insane leads being theorized that were intended as red herrings for public discussion.
Like, one, Navalny wasn’t poisoned.
Two, his blood sugar levels dropped. Three, he drank toxic moonshine.
Four, it was orchestrated by Western spy agencies. Five, it was Navalny’s associate Maria Pevchikh.
We used to see a slew of experts explaining away two things.
One was that Putin didn’t benefit from this or that assassination attempt.
Then, they would argue that if Putin had indeed been interested in the hit,
they would’ve done things differently and more efficiently.
We saw an avalanche of long-winded BS intended to wash over anyone with no critical faculties.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 wasn’t downed in 2014. But yeah, it was certainly shot down by Ukrainians.
They used a fighter jet or rather a surface-to-air missile system. But no, of course, it wasn’t ours.
At this point, most people switch to a defensive mode defaulting to the
“we’ll never know the truth anyway” resolution.
However glaringly obvious the involvement of Russian authorities,
they always engaged in denial tactics and went all the way through.
They went so far to reconstruct a replica of that downed Boeing 777 jet to prove an otherwise ridiculous point.
It’s not Putin’s first rodeo when it comes to assassinations and even mass ones.
But up until now, the Russian government realized the importance of cover-ups.
They invested a lot of resources in a chicanery of fat lies.
The Russian government realized that political assassinations weren't a nice thing to be linked to.
But not this time. This time, even Vladimir Solovyov and his co-host Yevgeny Satanovsky laughed off the theory
they initially dallied with, one potentially implicating Maria Pevchikh.
No one is frothing at the mouth trying to convince everyone else that “it wasn’t Putin, that’s for sure.”
No government-mandate guidelines are being enacted. And it’s not just that everyone gets everything this time.
More importantly, this realization seems to sit right with Vladimir Putin.
It’s the first time ever that no one is hard at work setting up denial constructs.
It’s the first time ever that the theories suggested by Western mainstream media jibe with those put forth by
Russian pro-war bloggers.
And this state of affairs must serve as a chilling heads-up to Putin’s cronies, his inferiors, his army, and his
intelligence agencies.
What happened to Prigozhin isn’t just one of many politically motivated assassinations —
it’s the normalization of murder.
It’s the first ever conspicuous politically motivated murder and terrorist attack.
There’s no cover-up, and that’s for a reason. The idea isn’t that Prigozhin was supposed to give up the ghost.
The bigger idea is that everyone should see that’s the way we do business.
That’s the way things stand now. Whoever dares to go rogue (or whoever we consider insufficiently loyal)
must envision their public and conspicuous execution-style death.
The cover stories and sophisticated schemes are now a thing of the past.
Now they’ll be killing at the drop of a hat.
And there’ll be no cover-ups. Far from it, each new victim should be a warning to the rest of them.
No one should be deluded into thinking that the victim just drank themselves into a coma.
From now on, we’ll be blowing things up loud and proud.
Even Putin’s subsequent addresses won’t refer to Nazi collaborators bombing the Hero of Russia title recipient.
Instead, he’ll just sum it up as a turbulent success story that led to an unfortunate failure.
Okay, he’s now dead, the investigation will probe into it.
There’s a simple rule: the normalization of a certain practice to makes it increasingly reproducible.
Putin’s government no longer sees a political assassination as a big deal. Far from it.
They believe that political murder doesn’t just result in the elimination of the target,
it also helps discipline the living and show them who is in charge.
UNCERTAINTY
Autocracies are rooted in an important element: fear of uncertainty.
The elites realize that right now they own palaces and yachts as well as enjoy power and social status.
No matter how bad things are getting nationwide, they are at the top of the food chain and remain in the black.
Their current gains may not be what they used to be. Life may get more dangerous for them.
But any leadership change is a gamble that’s likely to lead to losses.
Elites have always been conservative everywhere.
No one is interested in tweaking the rules they’ve been observing as they are winning.
But now the rules have changed. And the change was publicly announced.
Disloyalty, whether real or perceived, carries the death penalty.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Suppose on Aug. 22, Putin suddenly disappears into thin air.
Moreover, in an unthinkable move, the power is taken over by the liberal opposition
(skipping the likes of Sergei Sobyanin and Mikhail Mishustin).
A subsequent interim government is instantly headed by Alexei Navalny.
What’s the worst thing that could’ve happened to Yevgeny Prigozhin?
The worst-case scenario for him would’ve been getting booked in custody.
That would’ve been followed by a trial and the harshest verdict: life without parole.
So, the worst he would’ve faced would’ve been jail time. But he would’ve been alive.
Even Prigozhin with a diverse rap sheet of war crimes and civilian felonies that would’ve taken forever
to list would’ve benefitted from radical change.
Crucially, he would’ve been alive.
Fifteen years later, that ailing man could’ve been transferred to a comfortable infirmary.
And that’s, again, mind you, the most unhinged and notorious personality
and the most radical leadership change.
That gives food for thought to anyone who doesn’t have such grave transgressions to their credit.
As Vladimir Putin’s paranoia is getting worse, blatant political murders will be more rampant.
A dictator who loses his footing and who has already survived a coup attempt is even tougher to deal with.
That’s the way our current stability works. Everyone is potentially facing death, not just criminal charges.
These people’s thinking may go along the line of, “I could put up with the sanctions
and frozen assets in developed countries.
On the flip side, I own a palace near Moscow and luxury property in the U.A.E.
I have a sham bank account in the Seychelles worth seven hundred millions bucks to toy with in retirement
I’ll try and survive the war and everything else.
But if Putin is taken over by someone else, my future is anyone’s guess.
A bird in hand is better than a twin bunk bed in a supermax.
But that’s not the real choice of today. The new brand of stability isn’t about tending to your millions.
It’s about the non-negligent odds of getting slaughtered.
There’s no way for you to know when Vladimir Putin orders a hit on you.
There’s no way for you to predict how you are going to be framed.
AD
CHOICE
We’ve already told you that change in Russia will most likely come as a gradual bureaucratic coup
where old elites will retain most of their assets but will have to surrender a chunk of their power.
Those who will be claiming that chunk will, at the time of redistribution,
have nothing like the power resource it takes to embark on repression.
It’s clear that the likes of propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu,
intelligence agencies, the army top brass, and the rest of them who either had a say in invading Ukraine
or oversaw the invasion or incited hatred will have to be tried in court.
Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to negotiate with the U.S. and Europe and have the sanctions lifted.
There’s just no “otherwise.” But those will be dozens, not even hundreds, of individuals.
Those who were dumb enough to flaunt their bloodthirstiness on national TV.
But even for them, this scenario wouldn’t be the worst one.
Any scenario is better than footage of burning plane debris and your body falling out of the sky.
It’ll be even easier for bureaucracy that can always go, “The dictator made us do all that.
Whoever disobeyed and rebelled was killed. We have nothing to do with all that.”
No one will doubt the fact that the dictator was indeed on a killing spree.
Vladimir Putin is the only current national leader to be the leading suspect in every politically
motivated assassination committed in his country.
He’s the only head of state about whom leading Western politicians, including the U.S. president,
can easily say that he’s likely to have shot down a commercial jet.
Putin’s elites are, of course, far from being the regime’s victims. They are accomplices.
But as Putin is getting increasingly nuts and his deadly escapades become more apparent and conspicuous,
they’ll find it easier to pose as victims, shifting the blame on just this guy.
In a sense, all of the top officials and major businesses find themselves in Prigozhin’s pre-June 24 shoes.
They can attempt a march on Moscow and seize power but possibly die in the process.
Alternatively, they can stop midway and negotiate a deal.
They may be tempted to think that if Putin hasn’t killed them right away,
he won’t kill them at all and that they can live the way they did before that. The latter scenario is 100% lethal.
They can try and depose the unhinged leader.
Now, this is a risky one, and we are talking about those who
a) are cowards and b) don’t want land in an unpredictable future that’ll follow their success.
But even if things go south on all fronts and the Russian elites land in the worse future imaginable,
this future will still be better than their present.
Any scenario is better than making public executions part of the country’s political landscape.
The way it works is predictable.
Today, Prigozhin is bombed on board his aircraft for an attempted coup.
Tomorrow, Rosneft’s Igor Sechin will feud with a federal minister and decide to send him straight
to the graveyard. Or Sechin himself can wind up in a graveyard-bound coffin.
We’ve seen multiple times how any political practice Putin has devised for himself starts spreading.
If he decides to load the shotgun to get rid of his personal arch-nemesis, next time,
this gun will be fired by somebody else to sort out their issues.
Everyone around Putin, those who’ve pledged their loyalty to him for a quarter of a century should come
to terms with the fact that they’ve lost.
I don’t mean the war with Ukraine: not that they give too much of a crap about that.
They’ve lost the regime they were instrumental in erecting in the first place.
Today’s regime is a completely different ballgame.
This is no longer the regime predicated on police violence, lap judiciary, and spy agency provocations.
No, this regime conduct political dialog through conspicuous terrorist attacks.
Getting under the rug and sitting it out until better times arrive is no longer a viable option.
There’ll be no better times.
We are no longer talking about saving your freedom and property under this regime.
When it’s everyone against everyone else, the stakes are raised to amount to people’s lives.
True, possible change may do you some damage, but even the worst of its repercussions are dwarfed
by the nightmare you may well be partaking in over the next year.
All of you who used to be Vladimir Putin’s stronghold, regardless of whether you are an army general
or a billionaire, are no longer facing a choice between a longer life and a shorter one.
Deposing Putin, getting literally anyone in his stead, and ending the war will boost your life expectancy
in any scenario. Keeping Putin at the helm, on the other hand, and tolerating a deadly clan war
fueled by Putin’s paranoia is definitely deducting from your life expectancy big time.
Every man armed with a sledgehammer can be killed by a man armed with a bomb who can, in turn,
be killed by a man armed with a surface-to-air missile system.
See you tomorrow!