Yeah, but he was stripped of all of his power. Wagner group is being rolled into the state military. The opportunity for Wagner to push back and or give Putin the boot has passed.
And, this dude was also an evil corrupt piece of shit. If he overthrew Putin, Russia would’ve still been an authoritarian disinformation state.
He was a straight-up Neo-Nazi and named the group after Hitler’s favorite composer. So yeah, he would have been infinitely worse than Putin… and that’s saying something.
Anything you hear from Russia, you can just as well forget, it’s nothing but propaganda, lies, spin, and disinformation. They use Nazi guys like Wagner to fight what they call “Nazis” in Ukraine. It’s the “we fake it so hard that people couldn’t believe it someone would lie that bad” tactic. Never engage with Russia / Russians who aren’t publicly opposed to Putin and the status quo. You can only waste time.
When the short insurrection by Wagner was going on, I had hoped so much that Prigo and Putin somehow annihilate each other, or at least the hardliners in military and mercenaries perish in infighting. Sadly, all we got was confusion on that day.
At least if Prigo’s death now ends up being confirmed, there won’t be that much confusion on why it happened, only some details will remain unclear.
Wagners are straight up fleeing into neighboring countries and Africa. They must have read the history books about what happens when one warlord assimilates another’s forces (they kill them quietly and easily now that they’re disarmed).
Seems like most reasonable folks didn’t think he’d reform Russia. The only “good” he’d cause would be unrest that would force Russia to pull out of invading their democratic neighbors.
But it would have been a comparatively bloodless coup by a powerful military figure that would likely have ended the current war in Ukraine. As opposed to the likely outcomes of
putin finally loses it and hits the red button (which is actually a lot harder in russia, to my understanding, but is still a threat)
Some less powerful individual(s) attempt a coup and we end up with warlords vying for control of russia’s nuclear arsenal
Like, there is no good outcome of this. But prigozhin probably would have been the lesser of the evils as it would start another cycle of russia preparing for war (and ravaging The Global South but… nobody cares about them) and allowing The West to try and prop up a more palatable person to take control in a future coup.
There would be no clean replacement. It would get very bloody and chaotic. Not a bad hypothetical scenario. But that ship has sailed when Prihozhin surrendered (he didn’t stand much of a chance anyway).
It’s not like Putin and his closest cronies are in any way competent. They are removing anyone who dared to criticize. Before the coup Prigozhin, Girkin were allowed to say whatever they wanted as long as they did not undermine the general effort. Now Putin’s inner circle will ultimately disconnect themselves from reality: govern the country and the war from a bunker filled with scared yes-sayers with no alternative voices.
The most surprising thing here is that nine people were willing to get on a plane with Prigozhin. That's arguably much closer to actual suicide than any of the convenient window deaths that keep happening.
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Technically, they just say that a Wagner linked Telegram channel said it got shot down. They’re probably waiting for better proof/additional sources before they take the full step of saying it was shot down themselves (at which point I think it’d get added to the headline).
Because the only source for that (at present) is the Wagner Group, who have a (dead) dog in the fight and are not bastions of truth. NYT will be trying to confirm it before saying so.
Although I’m a bit late, it is worth mentioning, that the Tu-22M3 is not just a variant of the Tu-22. The Tu-22 was a completely different aircraft, and the Tu-22M retained the name only for political reasons. The Tu-22M3, though, is actually a development of the Tu-22M, most notably with different air intakes.
“I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
“I…understand that when you are president you have to be more careful.”
Come on now, surely you just have to not kiss people when you shouldn’t. It makes it sound like he’s saying it would have been totally fine if he’d done it off camera.
Okay, some explanation, this is not exclusively wind powered but wind assisted. Sail is meant to aid in reducing fuel consumption. Design of the sail, which is what most people are finding odd, is as such to require very little management, since it’s using Mesner effect it only requires adjusting speed and direction of rotation. At the same time design is such as to not hinder loading and unloading process. Also claimed 30% is grossly exaggerated.
Why hasn’t this caught on yet you might ask? Well ship owners don’t give a shit. Simple. The cost of fuel is calculated in transport cost and since no one else is doing it, why would anyone do it. Cargo ships have multiple fuel tanks and they will burn pretty clean fuel while they are in controlled areas (EU/USA). The moment they leave those areas they burn the dirtiest and also the cheapest fuel possible. Why wouldn’t they when their engine’s piston is so big human can lie in it. I mean just look at the crankshaft
So all in all, this could have been done ages ago. The sail is called Flettner rotor and has been invented in 1920s. Image on site shows a bit different design, but probably based on same physics just slightly more optimized. The reason why it wasn’t done ages ago… well, simply fuel was too cheap and paid for by another.
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