#Evgeni Prigozhin

[jgmail]

Después de la agitación viene el punto de bifurcación

Por Alexander Dugin

Traducción de Juan Gabriel Caro Rivera

 La consciencia de los rusos ha sido incapaz de asimilar los acontecimientos ocurridos el 24 de junio de este año y me he dado cuenta que muchos se dedican a decir estribillos como “que esto simplemente no pasó”, “nada de esto fue real” o “fue una farsa”. Tal actitud es una manera de más anestesiar el dolor producido por lo que ha ocurrido en una sociedad que ha perdido todo contacto con el sentido de lo real – especialmente con respecto a los análisis producidos por las ciencias políticas –. Tal actitud puede ser comprensible e incluso aceptable en aquellos que quieren continuar viviendo vidas rutinarias o se encuentran preocupados por acontecimientos sin importancia. Pero resulta bastante inaceptable cuando tales ideas se trasladan al espacio público y son sostenidas por personas que deberían hacer análisis serios, resultando en una actitud bastante patética. Por supuesto, ya se ha superado lo peor de los acontecimientos del 24 de julio, aunque no podemos decir que esto ha acabado: es necesario que las autoridades rusas aclaren lo sucedido y arrojen luz sobre todos los acontecimientos. Antes de que eso suceda, resulta bastante prematuro decir que es lo que ha sucedido, pues los procesos que desencadenaron tales sucesos no han concluido. Un acontecimiento solo tiene sentido cuando se lo ubica en una trama más amplia, antes de eso resulta incomprensible y cualquier análisis resulta falible por ser incapaz de comprender la totalidad. No obstante, todo lo ocurrido el 24 de junio del 2023 no ha sido otra cosa que el primer escenario de una crisis monstruosa que el Estado ruso logró evitar a último momento y a un precio muy alto.

 Lo que aconteció fue la manifestación de la pasionaridad en su máxima expresión: este fenómeno se produce cuando el núcleo de un sistema comienza a fallar y la periferia empieza a asumir su lugar. Precisamente ha comenzado a producirse un claro excedente de pasionaridad en ciertos lugares mientras que en otros simplemente ya no existe. Este excedente de energías políticas tendrá que ser resuelto de forma urgente. Para ello, basta echar mano de la teoría sobre las élites de Pareto, especialmente de sus ideas sobre el conflicto entre las élites y las contra-élites: en el momento en que la élite flaquea y ya no posee suficiente fuerza aparecerá una contra-élite que tarde o temprano la derrocará, pues esta última, aunque no tiene el poder, posee todas las cualidades para asumirlo. Por supuesto, el problema de la legalidad y la legitimidad se agudizó a raíz de todo esto. La rebelión radicalizó esta disyuntiva, pero no es la causa de su aparición. Este problema no se ha resuelto aún y sigue presente actualmente, no podemos ignorarlo. Hemos llegado a un punto de inflexión o bifurcación fundamental que plantea dos escenarios: uno bueno y otro catastrófico. El segundo escenario podría convertirse rápidamente en algo terrible.

 1.      El escenario bueno: se toma una serie de decisiones personales y cruciales dentro de las diferentes instituciones del Estado. Hay quienes han demostrado ser héroes, mientras otros son traidores y cobardes. Putin y Lukashenko han demostrado ser héroes y salvaron a nuestro país del abismo. Sin embargo, todos aquellos que precipitaron estos acontecimientos, que no supieron evitarlos o que fueron incapaces de hacerles frente, deberán ser expulsados de las instituciones rusas inmediatamente. Tal curso de acción restaurará la fe y la confianza en el poder y en el actual gobernante. Todo ello implica asumir las críticas que ha hecho Prigozhin: la sociedad rusa carece en estos momentos de una élite inteligente, valiente, honorable y justa. Es precisamente la ausencia de tal élite la que causó este estallido. La pregunta sigue siendo, ¿por qué las autoridades rusas permiten esto? Putin tiene la capacidad (siempre lo ha tenido) de realizar tales cambios. Necesitamos lo siguiente: rotación de las élites, castigo de los cobardes y los traidores, promoción de quienes han sido leales y valientes, promoción de una ideología patriótica que asuma la justicia social como uno de sus valores e incorpore a la guerra a toda la población, dejar de lado las relaciones públicas y la propaganda, etc… Sustituir la realidad por el juego de las relaciones públicas solo llevará a la perdición. Tarde o temprano esta burbuja estallará y el sistema político actual, construido sobre una ficción mediática, colapsará. Otro problema: quienes mienten terminan muchas veces creyéndose sus propias mentiras y cuando eso acontece el final se encuentra muy cerca.

2.      El escenario catastrófico: dejar todo como estaba, no cambiar nada, eliminar de los medios de comunicación y la blogosfera todas las entradas que hablaban del 24 de junio y lo que aconteció, criminalizar a los patriotas preocupados por el motín, culpar a Occidente y sus maquinadores de todo lo ocurrido y, finalmente, darle a los liberales el poder e inundar la consciencia con toda clase de tecnicismos sacados de las relaciones públicas o discursos grandilocuentes.

 Mi intención no es asustar a nadie, sino que la gente comprenda de forma sobria las consecuencias de sus decisiones o, mejor dicho, la ausencia de las mismas. Precisamente fue esta última actitud la que llevó a todo lo que ocurrió y, en caso de no cambiar nada, sucederá lo mismo, aunque de forma peor y, esta vez, nadie podrá detenerlo. La única solución verdadera es asumir la pasionaridad y el espíritu, convertir a los soldados en verdaderos guerreros: esa es nuestra tarea. ¡Ay de nosotros si extraemos las lecciones equivocadas de esta “clase magistral”! Es necesario que nos recompongamos lo más rápido posible ahora que el enemigo lanza una poderosa segunda oleada en contra de nosotros. La única forma de derrotar la insurgencia de Wagner es convertirnos en lo mismo: necesitamos un ejército de campeones.

[ohsalome]

The least self-contradictory flag collection in the world

(source)

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Nahia Sanzo

The armed mutiny carried out by a part of the private army of Evgeny Prigozhin, which for practically a full day allowed Ukrainian and Western experts and propagandists to present an image of Russia facing a coup, civil war, and the state in the process of implosion, continues to focus political debate in Moscow, Kiev and even in Western capitals.

[ravenkings]

Vladimir Putin’s generals vulnerable despite surviving revolt – FT

There was no sound on the brief video of Sergei Shoigu published on Monday morning or any indication of where Russia’s defence minister was as he pored over a battlefield map. 

 But the seemingly mundane footage was the first evidence that Shoigu was still in his job. Neither he nor Valery Gerasimov, commander of Russia’s invasion force, have been seen in public since Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an extraordinary coup attempt to oust them on Friday. 

Though Prigozhin and his Wagner paramilitaries ultimately halted their march on Moscow, with the warlord agreeing to leave Russia, he has left both men increasingly vulnerable in his wake. 

The failed revolt has given Russian president Vladimir Putin a stark choice — whether to fire the generals or let them remain in command of his faltering invasion of Ukraine, with both options carrying a significant risk of further blowback both for the war and his regime, analysts say. 

“Shoigu and Gerasimov are so bad in their jobs that it’s dangerous to Putin to leave them in place,” said Dara Massicot, a senior political scientist at the US-based Rand Corporation. “But loyalty and stability are number one for Putin. I just don’t see how he’s going to have these terms dictated to him like this.”

For months, Prigozhin has taken aim at Gerasimov and Shoigu, blaming them for Russia’s military shortcomings in Ukraine and portraying them as inept leaders who were sitting comfortably in Moscow as Russian soldiers died on the battlefield. 

By Sunday, some Russian military analysts were speculating that Shoigu and Gerasimov could be two additional casualties of the failed coup, after Prigozhin and his fighters travelled half the distance from the Ukrainian border to Moscow, captured a military base and took down several army helicopters — all within a matter of hours. 

“Shoigu and Gerasimov are now obvious lame ducks and they will be removed, I think,” said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow-based defence think-tank. He did not exclude the possibility that the two men’s departure could have been part of the brokered deal that led to Prigozhin standing his men down. The Kremlin has denied this. 

The damage to Russia’s prestige has been such that even pro-war commentators on state television and social media admit that the coup called the entire war into question. 

“This is a serious blow to the authority of the country and the authority of the president,” Karen Shakhnazarov, a Kremlin-linked film director, said on a popular online livestream show. “There was a feeling here that everything was unshakeable, and that turned out not to be the case.” 

Should Shoigu and Gerasimov ultimately be forced out, it would mark a dramatic fall for both men — one a player in the slippery Russian political hierarchy, the other a longstanding military official who became the commander of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

The first — Shoigu — is the longest-serving minister in Russia who took over the defence brief in 2012 after previously serving for decades as the emergency services minister. That job afforded him a public profile to rival Putin’s, with televised appearances arriving by land or by helicopter at every man-made or natural disaster in the country. 

Over the years, he accompanied Putin on holiday trips to Siberia, the two men posing together foraging for mushrooms; sporting sheepskin coats while dining outside in the snowy setting; and spearfishing shirtless in the summer. 

In more recent years, scrutiny had grown over the fame and business dealings of Shoigu’s family members, who had become targets of hardline ire for their privileged lifestyle and seeming insulation from the war’s consequences.

Gerasimov, meanwhile, feuded with commanders who disagreed with his brutal tactics in Ukraine, which generals and militia members alike thought sacrificed too many men for too few gains. 

Prigozhin’s criticism of Shoigu and Gerasimov — and the Russian military more broadly — has festered for months. In one video this spring Prigozhin railed against the backdrop of a Russian graveyard. “You sit in your expensive nightclubs and your kids enjoy life making YouTube videos . . . These guys are dying so you can get fat in your wood-panelled offices.” 

The reception Wagner’s men got in Rostov shows the popularity of Prigozhin’s tirades against the army leadership. On Saturday morning, when Prigozhin demanded a face-off with Shoigu and Gerasimov, Vladimir Alekseyev, deputy head of Russian military intelligence, laughed: “Take them!”

When Wagner left the southern city that was the launch pad for the coup, crowds waved, cheered and took selfies with Prigozhin — but booed the security forces who came to replace them. 

The main trigger for Prigozhin’s putsch appears to have been Putin’s backing of Shoigu’s move to make Wagner sign contracts with the defence ministry earlier this month. 

“The problem with Wagner was growing, it would reach a crisis point after the [declaration]. Putin was likely warned and did nothing,” Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a US defence think-tank, wrote on Twitter. 

Though Putin publicly backed Shoigu’s efforts, Prigozhin vehemently refused — conscious of the damage such an arrangement would do to his standing as a powerful warlord who answered only to Putin, according to a person who has known him since the 1990s. 

“He understands fully well that if he turns into a zero, then Shoigu would have dealt with him at some point. So he went all out and decided to show Putin that he’s the only real one out there and he needs to be left alone with his money,” the person said. “He got it a bit wrong, and everything went to shit, as it usually does [in Russia].” 

Putin’s biggest mistake, Rand’s Massicot said, was to give Shoigu his backing without finding an acceptable way for Prigozhin to save face. “When he threw his support behind the defence ministry, it basically put a target on Prigozhin’s back,” she said. “A competent statesman would have reached out to offer Prigozhin an incentive, or something to buy him off. Clearly, that wasn’t done.” 

With Prigozhin now in exile, Shoigu’s position could even be strengthened, according to the person who knows the warlord — as Putin will see no reason to fire a loyalist. 

“Shoigu’s the only winner,” the person said. “He’ll be the defence minister forever.”

[faceless-dude]

Joseph Igorevich, i'm sorry i couldn't resist 🥲

/help/

[faultfalha]

The lights in the sky had been the harbinger of death. The faint twinkle of the stars, extinguished as the plane plummeted towards the ground. Some said it was an act of aggression, an intricate plan that had been set in motion before the plane had even taken off, but the cause of the crash was still a mystery. No one could offer any proof. But then the story started to unravel. Reports of a large sum of money being wired to a foreign account, rumors of a secret technology that had been crafted by a man named Prigozhin. Without a single piece of concrete evidence, it seemed that this tragedy was somehow connected to an entity beyond the borders of the nation. And yet, when the country was asked to offer an explanation, the officials remained tight-lipped, feigning ignorance of the situation. Words of sympathy and condolence had come and gone, but nothing more. No acknowledgement of the truth, no admission of guilt. If Russia was not responsible, then who was? The truth was out there, shrouded in the darkness of the night's sky, but the answer remained as elusive as ever.

[cinesludge]

Movie #70 of 2023: Rommel

Hitler had Rommel secretly suicided by poison because he did not want to put his most popular general on public trial for Rommel's involvement in the plot to assassinate the fuhrer.

I couldn't believe the news when I woke up this morning: Evgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash today, 2 months after his attempted coup against Putin. Putin, just like Hitler, was afraid to put Prigozhin on public trial because he was Russia's most popular general. So Putin chose assassination as his form of retaliation.

History may not repeat itself but it certainly does rhyme.

[tomorrowusa]

While the focal point of this July PBS Frontline documentary is the recent Wagner Group mutiny, much of this vid describes Putin's overall accumulation of power since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Putin, a former senior officer in the KGB, has never been shy about the use of force. Because so few people have seriously stood up to him, Putin has felt he could get away with anything. That was his attitude going into Ukraine and he still thinks he can't fail despite his disastrous military fiasco there.

As long as Putin is in power, the prospects for peace remain low. However the Wagner mutiny's most interesting effect is that it has demonstrated to Russia that Putin is not without vulnerabilities. His aura of invincibility has been indelibly tarnished.

As Neil Gaiman might put it, we just have to "wait and see" whether the mutiny was a one-off event or a prelude to additional internal armed moves against the Kremlin.

[siliconpalms]

Putins Chef, Evgeny Prigozhin Cooks Up Big Furry Bear Burgers and Rostov Cocktails

Brilliant Strategy to Pull out of Ukraine, now that the work is done… exit stage right! Greatest military tactic in Fifth Generation Warfare. Create drama, take control of the narrative and party like Napolean just left Moscow. Let’s be serious, if world leaders can fly into Kiev for lunch, then it’s only fair that Evgeny Prigozhin serve up some furry Bear burgers for the Fake News when they…

[badjokesbyjeff]

Three men are in a Russian prison cell

The first man says, "I'm here because I criticized Evgeny Prigozhin"

The second man says, "I'm here because I spoke in favor of Evgeny Prigozhin"

The third man says, "I am Evgeny Prigozhin"

[mariacallous]

Nine others died in the August 23 plane crash that reportedly killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary leader who staged a brief mutiny against Russia’s Defense Ministry in late June. Prigozhin’s death isn’t verified yet, but Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency has confirmed that he was on the passenger list. The other high-profile passenger aboard the doomed flight was Dmitry Utkin, the Wagner Group commander whose callsign is the basis for the company’s very name. Journalists at BBC Russian and the Dossier Center collected information about the other passengers and crew members who perished in the crash. Meduza summarizes these reports.

Passengers

Valery Chekalov

Chekalov managed multiple companies in St. Petersburg that were linked to Prigozhin. BBC Russia learned that his acquaintances logged his number in their phones as “Valery Evgenievich Syria,” “Valery Chekalov Concord Army,” and “Valery Evgenievich Chekalov from Prigozhin.” From 2011 to 2018, he headed the company “Kollektiv-Servis,” which won a contract with the Defense Ministry’s Commissary in 2012 to supply food to the army. Around the same time, the company registered an entity with a mess hall in Sevastopol, the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Chekalov also managed a company created in 2014 called “Neva,” which operated the subsidiary “Evro Polis” — the same Evro Polis that signed a memorandum with the Syrian government in 2016 to recapture and guard oil facilities in exchange for the value of 25 percent of the oil and gas produced there, according to reporting by the news outlet Fontanka. 

Evgeny Makaryan

Born in Magnitogorsk, Makaryan was a former police officer. According to the Dossier Center, he joined Wagner Group in March 2016, serving in its fourth assault detachment in Syria, where he was wounded. BBC Russian calls him one of Prigozhin’s bodyguards.

Sergey Propustin

Propustin is listed at Myrotvorets, the Ukrainian website that names and sometimes doxxes people its authors consider to be “enemies of Ukraine.” Myrotvorets identifies him as a grenadier reconnaissance officer and Wagner Group fighter. According to the Dossier Center, Propustin fought in the Second Chechen War. He reportedly joined Wagner in March 2015 and fought in its second reconnaissance assault detachment, from which Prigozhin would later recruit several of his personal bodyguards. Accordingly, BBC Russian reports that Propustin was another Prigozhin bodyguard.

Alexander Totmin

Myrotvorets lists Totmin too. It’s unknown when he started working for Prigozhin, but journalists learned that he was living in St. Petersburg as recently as 2022. His phone number shows up in shared databases identified as “Sanya Work PMC,” “Totmin Sanya Kontora Piter,” and “Alexander W.” In August 2012, a court in the Altai Krai sentenced him to 300 hours of community service for stealing a chainsaw from a bathhouse located on someone else’s property. In September 2014, he was sentenced to two years of probation for car theft.

Nikolai Matuseev

Researchers at the Dossier Center believe that the Nikolai Matuseev listed among the plane-crash passengers is the same one who joined Wagner Group in January 2017. He was a gunner in the organization’s fourth assault detachment in Syria.

Crew

Rustam Karimov

The aircraft’s 29-year-old second pilot, Karimov lived with his wife in Perm. He graduated from the Sasovo Flight School in Russia’s Ryazan region in 2014. Karimov’s father told reporters that his son was unemployed at the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He says Rustam found work three months ago with MNT-Aero, the company that owns the crashed plane, and then moved to St. Petersburg.

Alexey Levshin

Levshin was the plane’s captain. His daughter Anastasia told the news outlet RBC that her father had worked with Prigozhin for many years, though she provided no further details. BBC Russian discovered that Levshin was featured in a 2018 broadcast by the television network Vesti Novosibirsk about an airshow that included military pilots. In the story, he was identified as the navigator of a Sukhoi Su-34 crew.

Kristina Raspopova

Raspopova was the plane’s flight attendant. Thirty-nine years old, she was born in what is now Kazakhstan. According to the news outlet 74.ru, her younger brother is the deputy prosecutor in Yemanzhelinsk, a city in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. She attended the Moscow Finance and Law University and lived for some time in Yekaterinburg before moving to Moscow. The Telegram channel Baza reports that she relocated to St. Petersburg after finding a job at MNT-Aero.

Posts on social media indicate that Raspopova often traveled abroad, sharing photos from Jamaica, Singapore, Austria, and other countries. Multiple times, she flew aboard a business jet similar to the plane that crashed: an Embraer Legacy with the tail number RA-02857 based at Vnukovo International Airport, which she frequented. According to Baza, Raspopova spoke to her family a few hours before her final flight departed and said that the plane had been delayed for some reason.

[ohsalome]

In the aftermath of Prigozhin’s media empire collapse, former employees spoke out about the dark tactics employed, including hiring individuals to portray “victims of Ukrainian Armed Forces” in staged reports that underpinned Russia’s fake pretext for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine — its Big Lie about alleged “genocide in Donbas.”

Following the unsuccessful mutiny of the Wagner Private Military Company, its financier Evgeny Prigozhin had closed down his media empire, including the infamous troll factory. This included Prigozhin’s media holding “Patriot” and such media outlets as RIA FAN, Politics Today, Economics Today, Nevskiye Novosti, and Narodniye Novosti.

Employees of the Prigozhin media were long unable to disclose the state of affairs in the editorial offices, as they were all forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. However, now, they speak. Russian media website Bumaga interviewed several former employees of “Patriot,” who revealed unknown details about its operation and propaganda tactics.

Notably, one RIA FAN journalist who worked with military coverage from Donbas told that the source files of the interview often contained off-screen instructions for the heroes of the reports, who were hired people coached by an off-camera operator who offered advice on how to say their pre-memorized lines more realistically (and with more propaganda effect):

“Most of the people who were portrayed in such stories as ‘victims’ of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were stand-ins, hired individuals. These characters repeated pre-memorized lines to themselves, trying to ‘squeeze out a tear.’ They were also instructed off-camera by the operator to speak ‘slower’ or to ‘repeat this moment again’,” told the former employee of RIA FAN.

This admission is crucial, as it offers more proof of how Russia fabricated its 9-year-long propaganda narrative about the Ukrainian “Nazis” deliberately attacking the “people of Donbas.”

Other famous debunked examples of this narrative included a story that state TV channel Pervyi Kanal ran on 12 July 2014, showing an “interview” with a woman who claimed to have witnessed the crucifixion of a three-year child by Ukrainian nationalists. However, bloggers and journalists from Ukraine and Russia could quickly prove that the woman was an actor and the story was a hoax.

Another well-known debunked “Donbas genocide” propaganda case happened in April 2015. The Russian TV channel NTV claimed that a ten-year-old girl had been killed by Ukrainian government forces in eastern Ukraine, echoing the disinformation story about the crucified boy from the year before. A BBC reporter working on the ground in the conflict managed to prove that also this story was a hoax. (For more examples of Russian propaganda that demonizes Ukrainians, check out our article A guide to Russian propaganda. Part 1: Propaganda prepares Russia for war).

Since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and occupied part of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas, Russian propaganda has meticulously demonized Ukraine and the Ukrainian Army. One of the grand narratives of its propaganda claimed that the Ukrainian forces attempting to liberate their lands from the Russian invaders were actually “punishing” the Ukrainians in occupied Donbas for their alleged “choice” to be with Russia, which is how Russia called its fake “referenda” that led to the creation of two puppet republics, the Luhansk and Donetsk “People’s Republics.” The revelation from Prigozhin’s media empire’s employees reveals how this narrative was forged, one fake report played by actors after the other.

The final result was the creation of Russia’s Big Lie, the alleged “Donbas genocide,” which Putin used to launch an invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

Bumaga’s material revealed other fascinating details about the operations of Prigozhin’s media empire.

Former “Patriot” employees revealed the security checks and the workplace atmosphere to Bumaga anonymously. According to a former employee, each media was allocated a floor, and smaller editorials sat together.

“They did not check me on a polygraph, but I heard stories from newcomers. They were taken to a room where security service specialists worked with them and asked questions,” said the source.

These questions, asked during a “lie detector” test, intended to weed out any drug addicts or Russian opposition sympathizers, especially fans of Alexei Navalny, another source told Bumaga.

Moreover, the media empire had extensive surveillance measures in place. An anonymous source disclosed that they “followed electronic passes, cameras, and all records from computer screens were broadcast to the security service.” When Patriot was just opened, a special department existed in the holding that was engaged in custom materials about the opposition.

Two former employees of the Patriot holding, in a conversation with Bumaga, claimed that everyone at the “troll factory” knew that the goal of Evgeny Prigozhin’s media was to create informational noise to “clog the agenda.”

“Information noise was generated along with the implementation of Prigozhin’s interests. While some [journalists] distracted people with the problems of other countries, with these reports from Africa and so on, with our local celebrities and reviews of dumb movies, others, on the front lines, were brainwashing people with materials from the ‘Special Operation Zone‘,” a former journalist of RIA FAN told, referring to Russia’s codename for its invasion of Ukraine, where Prigozhin’s Wagner PMC played a key role.

Now, the former employees of Prigozhin’s once-famed “troll factory,” who sowed disinformation in Russia and abroad, are left without a job. Luckily for them, prominent Russian media managers are stepping in to give them decent work in top Russian outlets:

“Dmitry Sherikh, the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Union of Journalists, has volunteered to help the employees of the ‘Troll Factory’ find jobs: ‘The Russian Union of Journalists will, whenever possible, appeal to the heads of other media outlets to help find employment for our dismissed colleagues, as well as provide other information support.’ The chief editor of ‘Moskovsky Komsomolets in Petersburg,’ Timofey Shabarshin, who is also the former head of ‘Nevsky News’ (up until 2021), also agreed to welcome the colleagues. Vladimir Yagudaev [an SMM manager from Prigozhin’s media empire who talked with Bumaga – Ed.] does not know if the Union of Journalists helped his former colleagues, but he notes: ‘Certain chief editors have begun to hire the most interesting employees into St. Petersburg publications. However, this is a limited contingent.'”

Located near St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s troll factory, also known as Internet Research Agency (IRA), was one of the more-studied elements of the Russian propaganda machine. To achieve its goals, the troll factory employed fake accounts registered on major social networks, online media sites, and video hosting services. It expanded threefold in 2018. The troll factory’s employees were given messages they should push in social media and online debates in what a US indictment called “activities as a strategic communications campaign with an emphasis on target group awareness.”

[xylophonetangerine]

Oh, so Evgeny Prigozhin gets to fly around in a private jet while the rest of us are supposed to stay home, use shitty paper straws and never go anywhere? I see how it is.

[alphabetsoup-blogposts]

Mangushev

The apparent hit on [Igor Mangushev,] a Russian rightist, propagandist, and self-styled "swindler and  mercenary" raises a range of questions about coordination in the Russian forces, the role of Evgeny Prigozhin [who leads the Wagner Group] and Russia's slide back towards the 'wild 90s.' Still, that's a better prospect than Putin's repeated invocation of the 1940s, most recently at the 80th anniversary of the battle of Stalingrad…

This excellent podcast from Mark Galeotti (author of The Vory—highly recommended if you haven't already read it) concludes that the shooting of Igor Mangushev on Saturday was a targeted hit...but was it an effort to take a pawn off the board before it reached promotion, or a proxy attack on Evgeny Prigozhin?

More here:

Mr Mangushev first fought against Ukrainian government troops in 2014 as part of the military contractor ENOT, whose members made no secret of their neo-Nazi views. The 36-year-old man frequently posed for photos doing a Nazi salute.

He gained notoriety as a spin doctor working for companies affiliated with Mr Prigozhin.

He became one of Russia’s most notorious faces of the invasion, even claiming that he and his allies came up with the letter Z as a symbol of the Russian invasion.

[faultfalha]

Russian authorities have denied any involvement in the plane crash that killed Wagner Group chief Evgeny Prigozhin. The plane, which was carrying a cargo of diamonds, went down shortly after takeoff from a remote airstrip in Africa. The crash has been attributed to poor weather conditions, but some have questioned whether Russia was involved in the accident.