Russia
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War between Ukraine and RussiaAkteWith his coup on Russian soil, Wagner’s boss has crossed the red line: the lord of the Kremlin is now making him a “traitor” who needs to be eliminated. The pro-power elites will certainly maintain their loyalty to Putin even if his image is now tarnished.
It is often forgotten in the story of Frankenstein that Frankenstein is referring to the scientist, the ruthless inventor of the monster, rather than the creature itself, which has no name in the original Mary Shelley novel. In today’s Russia at War, Vladimir Putin is Victor Frankenstein. But his creature has a name: Evgueni Prigoyine, the leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, who has just escaped from his creator by capturing the Rostov-on-Don headquarters of military operations carried out in Ukraine, and then firing his troops towards Moscow.
The brutal warlord, known for his provocative videos shot on the battlefield, had stopped pushing the boundaries of “acceptable” in Putin’s Russia in recent months, to the astonishment of observers. His denunciation of the army’s lack of support for Wagner’s front-line units, his frontal criticism of Russian military strategy in Ukraine, of the high command and then of the defense minister himself, Sergei Shoigu, had never been punished before