Capt. Ironpants
Active Member
I gather it's quite a dangerous thing to be leader of Russia. (Not looking down on Russians at all -- we've had our share of presidential assassinations: four in our relatively short history, plus two injured in assassination attempts.)I dont understand how you can cross Putin and expect to live, despite whatever "agreement" is reached. Very weird.
While Prigozhin voiced some very damaging allegations, he was careful to blame everything on Shoigu and Gerasimov. Sort of like the old "the Czar has been given bad advice" narrative. Still, it was so damaging (starting the SMO in Ukraine based on lies, etc.), I can't imagine Putin being anything other than livid. And he indeed appeared to be quite angry in his television address. Of course, if reports about negotiations are true, he was playing "bad cop" to Lukashenko's "good cop". Still, those who think Prigozhin and Putin were in cahoots in this crazy thing, well, I can't quite see that (although stranger things may have happened in the past, I can't think of one quite like this).
There has been much speculation about Putin being between a rock (Shoigu and military and military-involved elites supporting him) and a hard place (Prigozhin, who has popular support as well as a large contingent of dangerous mercenaries). Reportedly, Putin values loyalty above all else, and considered Shoigu and Prigozhin to be loyal, and was loyal to them in return. While surely he could see that Shoigu was quite incompetent and not up to the job, he feared firing him because of the reaction of his supporters as well as loss of a man he trusted to be loyal in that position. And while Prigozhin could certainly be a dangerous loose cannon, he feared the reaction of his men (and the populace) if he got rid of him one way or another. Perhaps Prighozin thought he could strong arm Putin into firing Shoigu despite the danger to Putin in that. Perhaps he thought with his little show he could intimidate Shoigu's backers and thus mitigate the dangers Putin might face when firing him. We'll see, I suppose.
I'm sure @Feanor can give a much better analysis. I'm no expert on Russia and just thinking out loud here. It will certainly be interesting to see how all this plays out.