Where in the World is Vladimir Putin?
What do we know?
Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin literally marched on Moscow, Russia. Before turning away and disappearing from view. We’ve been told that Mr. Prigozhin is headed to sanctuary in Belarus with Dictator Viktor Orban. To the best of our public knowledge we know that Russian nuclear weapons were sent to Belarus by Mr. Putin for one reason or another.
President Putin’s jet aircraft has reportedly left Moscow. As in a report from Business Insider: “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plane took off from Moscow early Saturday morning, heading towards St. Petersburg before disappearing from flight tracking radar. Putin’s presidential plane left at 14:16 Moscow time, according to FlightRadar data retrieved by NEXTA.” Nexta being a Belarusian media outlet that is primarily distributed through Telegram and YouTube channels. The YouTube channel was founded by then 17-year-old student Stsiapan Putsila. The channel’s headquarters are located in Warsaw, Poland, after its founder went into exile, per Wikipædia.
So we know nothing. But we can guess using the technique of plan for the worst, hope for the best that Mr. Prigozhin, creator and leader of the global Wagner Group mercenary army has headed for Belarus, remembering that the best lies contain as much truth as possible, then veering into supposition by thinking that Mr. Prigoshin is not heading into exile but towards a stash of nuclear weapons.
And just in from The Washington Post:
RIGA, Latvia — Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin resurfaced Monday for the first time since his Saturday mutiny, and declared that his motive was to save the private militia from being subsumed into the Russian military — not to topple President Vladimir Putin.
Prigozhin, who did not disclose his whereabouts, said he ordered the rebellion after Russia’s military killed 30 Wagner fighters in a missile strike on one of the militia’s camps, and he said he accepted a deal to avoid prosecution and move to Belarus because it would allow Wagner to continue its operations there.
Whatever his intentions, however, Prigozhin’s brazen revolt confronted Putin with the fiercest challenge he has faced in more than 23 years as Russia’s supreme leader, and it laid bare bitter divisions over the handling of the war in Ukraine that could have serious repercussions on the battlefield.
As always, the Washington Post lives behind a paywall because news worth reading costs money to collect and organize. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/26/putin-prigozhin-russia-rebellion-wagner/
Curiouser and curiouser, Art.
