The WWII Victory Parade with a single, pathetic tank was just one of the gaffes Wladimir Putin in the last days.
The supreme leader was now indirectly referred to as “idiot grandpa” by his great protégé. Yevgeny Prigozhinthe exconvictturnedcreator and maintainer of the Wagner groupa private army within the official army.
Prigozhin’s outbursts of anger at regular command were common, and many pundits felt that as Putin’s man, he was being used to make the leaders of the armed forces uncomfortable. Stalin did this with much more blood, shooting hundreds of the most loyal generals just to remind him that the party he embodied was supreme.
Prigozhin has a flair for drama and horror film locations, such as the bodies still bleeding he showed in the background of one of the most violent videos in which he accused Defense Minister Serguei Shoigu and the Chief of Staff and CommanderinChief of the Russian Armed Forces in Ukraine , General Valeri Gerasimov to boycott his force, made up of criminals who have traded prison for six months of fighting on the Ukrainian front.
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Repeating one of his outbursts, he accused a brigade of Russian marines of simply fleeing Bakhmut an indication that the capture of the city not only failed, as Prigozhin so often touted, but could result in a retreat that would leave them would seal a humiliation. Essential for Putin.
“Today a unit of the Ministry of Defense left one of our flanks unmanned and abandoned their positions,” Prigozhin shouted (“Thank you for publishing our successes at the front,” the Ukrainians joked).
“We have a ministry of intrigue instead of a ministry of defence, and that’s why our army is on the run,” he grumbled. The almost unbelievable criticism of Putin was leveled with references to the “lucky grandpa”, indifferent to his pleas to the Wagnerists for more ammunition.
“But what should the country do, what should our children and grandchildren do and how would we win the war if we suddenly found out and this is just a guess that Grandpa is a total asshole?”
Cruel detail: Alexei Navalny, the leader of the opposition who is imprisoned in Putin’s gulag, often calls him “grandpa” or “grandpa in the bunker”.
“Either Putin answers and Prigozhin goes up in smoke, or if he doesn’t, a very clear message will be sent,” analyzed Johns Hopkins historian Sergey Radchenko.
Other analysts speculate that Prigozhin was already receiving a brutally indirect message when Vladen Tatarski, a blogger closely associated with Wagner’s boss, was blown to pieces in a bombing of a St. Petersburg cafe. The conspiracy, so often justified in the case of Russia, sees the attack as an internal action that, remarkably, is no longer talked about.
Everything in Russia is full of intrigue and secrets. When asked who the “idiot grandpa” was, Prigozhin only responded with irony. “Option number one is Mizintsev, who was fired for giving us ammunition and now he won’t be able to do that,” he teased.
General Mikhail Mizintsev, who is in charge of logistics in Ukraine and deputy defense minister, was dismissed in April to confirm things were not going well. What did the general do? He immediately joined the Wagner group, a sign that the boundaries between regular and irregular armies are less defined than we imagine.
The “option number two” mentioned by Prigozhin is Gerasimov himself, who “should send us ammunition, but we received only 10%” of what we needed.
“And option number three is Natalia Khim,” Prigozhin demanded. Natalia is a reality TV star fighting in Donbass you can’t invent it. She recently posted a video offering Prigozhin ammunition.
Is it all part of a big staging? Is Prigozhin taking concerted steps with Putin, or has he actually become an unstoppable agentprovocateur?
“A combat order was received yesterday clearly stating that leaving our positions would be considered treason,” he said in another of his outbursts. Another crazy thing: he complained that the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “is not entirely telling the truth” when parrying the feather counterattack. Imagine you are waiting for an enemy to divulge plans that are kept in the strictest secrecy throughout the game.
The fact is that Russia, due to its superiority in weapons and fighters, is not winning the war it provoked. Not even in Bakhmut, where he risked so much, does he achieve military superiority, albeit at a terrible cost in human lives for Ukraine.
Without clear progress by either party, there is no way to even talk about peace negotiations. No matter what Celso Amorim says, that’s the reality. By the way, have you seen the photos of Amorim with Zelenskyy? Oh no? Why should it be?
Ukrainians know very well what the politicalstrategic panorama looks like and they also know that next spring’s counteroffensive will determine future steps, a very high bet for an army that in practice finds itself in a disadvantaged position.
It is not enough that they are willing to make the ultimate sacrifices in an existential struggle for survival as a nation, they must achieve concrete results on the battlefield.
The only alternative would be for the “stupid grandpa” to wallow in his own mistakes, but at the moment that seems wishful thinking, even if it comes from a lackey like Yevgeny Prigozhin, who grew up in life and served Putin luxury food in his restaurant and now thinks he’s big enough to make fun of it.