Russia states they have confirmed Prigozhin’s death, what do you believe happened?
This is a guy who was known to hire body doubles and he had numerous passports.
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This is a guy who was known to hire body doubles and he had numerous passports.
Probably exactly what has been reported. Putin waited for things to settle, weakened Wagner troops by taking their weapons and splitting their numbers, then they killed leadership. Occam's razor certainly points to this.
But, of course, the way it was done certainly leaves the door open for conspiracies.
Even if he's not dead, his mercenaries believe that he is. If they're getting paid, they'll do what leadership tells them. If not, they won't. Simple as, he's not an elected leader, his death just means his company has shit to figure out, but his non-death means shit will keep going as it was.
Wagner is not a PMC and wagnerites not real mercenaries. Most of them are ultra-nationalists and that's their primary motivation to fight. There are some weird Nazi/cult elements. Prigozhin has built up that cult, he's not easily replaceable.
Not necessarily. The mercenaries are spreading a lot of these conspiracies through Telegram. I don’t have polling available, so idk how many of them think he’s alive.
Given the current state of Russia, almost all of the (conspiracy) theories are currently not completely impossible and nothing can be said with certainty.
Russian politics is a bit like watching a couple of pitbulls fighting under a carpet. You can certainly see movement, and hear that something is happening, but you don't really know what happened till you see the bones of the loser tossed back out.
That was said in the 30s or 40s by Churchill, and I probably butchered the quote, but it leads me to believe that this has been the state of Russia for a long time
While certainly would be Putin's style, I would've expected them to wait until BRICS summit was over given that I doubt they wanted to remind everybody of the whole mutiny business.