Russian Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is threatening to turn his private army’s guns on Russian government troops. This afternoon, Prigozhin accused Russian military forces of attacking his Wagner soldiers with missiles and announced that he is “declaring war on the Russian Ministry of Defense,” according to a story in Newsweek. “The evil brought by the military leadership of the country must be stopped," Prigozhin thundered. “Those who destroyed today our guys, who destroyed tens, tens of thousands of lives of Russian soldiers will be punished. I'm asking: No one resist.
These folks are as scary as it gets. Prigozhin is murdering people in several African countries. He says he's there to help them mine their gold and get their diamonds, he takes over the smaller miners, kills them and their workers and takes over everything. If Russia gets him, they get someone as bad if not worse than Putin. He was stationed behind the prisoners Putin sent out to fight and when they indicated they were afraid, he took construction mallets and had them beaten to death in front of everyone else. When he was a chef/caterer, he worked with putin who made everybody use him. Anytime there was a report the food was spoiled or bad, someone turned up dead who ordered it. He hates Putins Defense Minister Shoigu and has trashed him from the beginning. This whole thing is a scary murdering mess. It will be very interesting to see how this turns out because so far, you do not do this kind of public thing toward Putin. Wow.
And I would hope and pray it's one of those circular firing squad/mallet beating until you're pulp/out the window/drink the tea and at the end they're all lying and dripping all over each other's dead carcasses.
Pretty much captures Ru political, intel services, and mil culture; male dominant, dick-measuring, loud, violent, barbarians. (Those attributes are what attract Trump as well as a wide swath of Republicans.) No person should be surprised at all the resulting friction. It is baked in. And weakness is treated like blood in the water.
Juxtapose with their great art, dance, music, and writers. Results in a bipolar society.
NYO-USA performs Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, under the direction of David Robertson, in the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut on July 22, 2014. Watch additional highlights from this concert at: http://bit.ly/1nCz8oF
Modest Mussorgsky’s highly individual voice was long obscured by well-meaning editors and fellow composers who considered his unconventional harmonies and orchestrations crude. Pictures at an Exhibition—a suite of vividly drawn tonal sketches inspired by an exhibition of artworks by the composer’s friend Viktor Hartmann—was originally written for piano. However, it is best known in the masterful orchestration that Maurice Ravel made in 1922.
EDIT: His Wiki bio -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Mussorgsky Another "Ars longa, vita brevis" for a musical genius, died after just turning forty-two years of age. Many other details and historical/cultural themes of interest as well, like THIS
"Modest's paternal grandmother Irina used to be a serf that could be sold without land in his grandfather's estate.[18][c" and many others,
" His wealthy and land-owning family, the noble family of Mussorgsky, is reputedly descended from the first Ruthenian ruler, Rurik, through the sovereign princes of Smolensk." *****
At age six, Mussorgsky began receiving piano lessons from his mother, herself a trained pianist. His progress was sufficiently rapid that three years later he was able to perform a John Field concerto and works by Franz Liszt for family and friends. At 10, he and his brother were taken to Saint Petersburg to study at the elite German language Petrischule (St. Peter's School). While there, Modest studied the piano with Anton Gerke [ru]. In 1852, the 12-year-old Mussorgsky published a piano piece titled "Porte-enseigne Polka" at his father's expense. *****
The more tragic aspects of his life seemingly have their roots cultivated soon after with a military school education, also based in a chronic disease that unfortunately spans almost every human culture, era, profession, manner of living, social status, the works - but no more spoilers from me, in case you want to read it for yourself!
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский[a], tr. Modest Petrovich Musorgsky[b], IPA: [mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj] (listen); 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.
Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem A Night on the Bare Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.
"In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a faith healer for Nicholas' and Alexandra's only son, Alexei Nikolaevich, who suffered from haemophilia. He was a divisive figure at court, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. The extent of Rasputin's power reached an all-time high in 1915, when Nicholas left Saint Petersburg to oversee the Imperial Russian Army as it was engaged in the First World War. In his absence, Rasputin and Alexandra consolidated their influence across the Russian Empire. However, as Russian military defeats mounted on the Eastern Front, both figures became increasingly unpopular, and in the early morning of 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916, Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative Russian noblemen who opposed his influence over the imperial family.
Historians often suggest that Rasputin's scandalous and sinister reputation helped discredit the Tsarist government, thus precipitating the overthrow of the House of Romanov shortly after his assassination. Accounts of his life and influence were often based on hearsay and rumor; he remains a mysterious and captivating figure in popular culture.[1]"
NYO-USA performs Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, under the direction of David Robertson, in the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut on July 22, 2014. Watch additional highlights from this concert at: http://bit.ly/1nCz8oF
Modest Mussorgsky’s highly individual voice was long obscured by well-meaning editors and fellow composers who considered his unconventional harmonies and orchestrations crude. Pictures at an Exhibition—a suite of vividly drawn tonal sketches inspired by an exhibition of artworks by the composer’s friend Viktor Hartmann—was originally written for piano. However, it is best known in the masterful orchestration that Maurice Ravel made in 1922.
Maybe it’s not such a hot idea to have armed mercenary groups in your own country fighting your wars of aggression, eh, Putin? Of course, you’re not much of a military history buff, but maybe you should try reading up on condotierri in Italy or the various armies of the Thirty Years’ War and find out what happens when mercenaries change sides in the middle of battles or campaigns. It’s too late to put the genie back in the lamp and considering the track record of the Russian military so far in the war in Ukraine, your chances aren’t very rosy pitting them against the Wagner Group armed thugs…have fun, Putie…reality bites…hard.
Thanks as always, Lucian, for your incisive military reporting and analysis. If technology allowed, you'd be seeing, right here in lurid color, a blade fan and the appropriate brown stuff hitting it. A ruthless mercenary army leader is now openly and loudly facing off against generals commanding the regulars alongside of whom his troops are fighting and dying? "From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent." -- H.P. Lovecraft, Weird Tales Magazine, October, 1937
Wow. Almost like a movie. It seemed very strange from the beginning that Pruggy could get away with any kind of criticism let alone insults. Yes, I'm sure he would be more dangerous than Putin if he got that kind of power but interesting that he said Putin started the whole thing on a pretext which is true, so maybe he wouldn't continue to attack Ukraine.
Remember in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Count Vronsky -- the dashing and dissolute cavalry officer -- puts the barrel of his pistol to his temple, pulls the trigger and... MISSES! That tells you everything you need to know about the Russian military -- then and now. The sequence is so preposterous that most TV and movie versions of the novel leave it out. But seeing these drunken rapists, murderers and thieves in uniform unable to find their butt cheeks with both hands in Ukraine lends credence to Tolstoy's portrayal. Tolstoy was, after all, a cavalry officer himself in his youth.
"Hoisted by his own petard", a phrase coined by Shakespeare, seems to apply here.
Even as the Wagner Group, Prigozhin's private army, considered to the be most aggressive in Russian's arsenal, is now claiming to have been unceremoniously attacked by the Russian regulars, after earlier claims of being short-supplied by the very government he was spearheading at the behest of Putin!
How fitting in the playbook of betrayals, and such a fitting turn in the twisted saga of the ill-conceived invasion of Ukraine. Don't you just love it when the plot thickens, another phrased coined by the Bard of Avon? Shakespeare got his basic training in The Globe Theater, and is now a sub-plot in the Theater of War, under the heading Tragicomedy of Errors!
"Mutiny on the Bounty" would be the logical double-feature. But it's been so long; I've got to dig this out of the files! But shiver me timbers, if this doesn't ring true. Meanwhile, back at the drawing board, someone is scribbling late into the night, trying to figure out the next move. Who's thinking: In life as in literature?
These folks are as scary as it gets. Prigozhin is murdering people in several African countries. He says he's there to help them mine their gold and get their diamonds, he takes over the smaller miners, kills them and their workers and takes over everything. If Russia gets him, they get someone as bad if not worse than Putin. He was stationed behind the prisoners Putin sent out to fight and when they indicated they were afraid, he took construction mallets and had them beaten to death in front of everyone else. When he was a chef/caterer, he worked with putin who made everybody use him. Anytime there was a report the food was spoiled or bad, someone turned up dead who ordered it. He hates Putins Defense Minister Shoigu and has trashed him from the beginning. This whole thing is a scary murdering mess. It will be very interesting to see how this turns out because so far, you do not do this kind of public thing toward Putin. Wow.
We haven’t a voice in this. They’ll take care of one another.
And I would hope and pray it's one of those circular firing squad/mallet beating until you're pulp/out the window/drink the tea and at the end they're all lying and dripping all over each other's dead carcasses.
Pretty much captures Ru political, intel services, and mil culture; male dominant, dick-measuring, loud, violent, barbarians. (Those attributes are what attract Trump as well as a wide swath of Republicans.) No person should be surprised at all the resulting friction. It is baked in. And weakness is treated like blood in the water.
Juxtapose with their great art, dance, music, and writers. Results in a bipolar society.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUfSstK3MOc
321,657 views Oct 29, 2014
NYO-USA performs Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, under the direction of David Robertson, in the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut on July 22, 2014. Watch additional highlights from this concert at: http://bit.ly/1nCz8oF
Modest Mussorgsky’s highly individual voice was long obscured by well-meaning editors and fellow composers who considered his unconventional harmonies and orchestrations crude. Pictures at an Exhibition—a suite of vividly drawn tonal sketches inspired by an exhibition of artworks by the composer’s friend Viktor Hartmann—was originally written for piano. However, it is best known in the masterful orchestration that Maurice Ravel made in 1922.
EDIT: His Wiki bio -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Mussorgsky Another "Ars longa, vita brevis" for a musical genius, died after just turning forty-two years of age. Many other details and historical/cultural themes of interest as well, like THIS
"Modest's paternal grandmother Irina used to be a serf that could be sold without land in his grandfather's estate.[18][c" and many others,
" His wealthy and land-owning family, the noble family of Mussorgsky, is reputedly descended from the first Ruthenian ruler, Rurik, through the sovereign princes of Smolensk." *****
At age six, Mussorgsky began receiving piano lessons from his mother, herself a trained pianist. His progress was sufficiently rapid that three years later he was able to perform a John Field concerto and works by Franz Liszt for family and friends. At 10, he and his brother were taken to Saint Petersburg to study at the elite German language Petrischule (St. Peter's School). While there, Modest studied the piano with Anton Gerke [ru]. In 1852, the 12-year-old Mussorgsky published a piano piece titled "Porte-enseigne Polka" at his father's expense. *****
The more tragic aspects of his life seemingly have their roots cultivated soon after with a military school education, also based in a chronic disease that unfortunately spans almost every human culture, era, profession, manner of living, social status, the works - but no more spoilers from me, in case you want to read it for yourself!
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky (Russian: Модест Петрович Мусоргский[a], tr. Modest Petrovich Musorgsky[b], IPA: [mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj] (listen); 21 March [O.S. 9 March] 1839 – 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1881) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music.
Many of his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera Boris Godunov, the orchestral tone poem A Night on the Bare Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition.
Vivid
I just reread it. You're right.
In a sense, but Rasputin attained a mesmerizing control over the Tsarina, this is much less devious or subtle.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin
"In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a faith healer for Nicholas' and Alexandra's only son, Alexei Nikolaevich, who suffered from haemophilia. He was a divisive figure at court, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. The extent of Rasputin's power reached an all-time high in 1915, when Nicholas left Saint Petersburg to oversee the Imperial Russian Army as it was engaged in the First World War. In his absence, Rasputin and Alexandra consolidated their influence across the Russian Empire. However, as Russian military defeats mounted on the Eastern Front, both figures became increasingly unpopular, and in the early morning of 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916, Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative Russian noblemen who opposed his influence over the imperial family.
Historians often suggest that Rasputin's scandalous and sinister reputation helped discredit the Tsarist government, thus precipitating the overthrow of the House of Romanov shortly after his assassination. Accounts of his life and influence were often based on hearsay and rumor; he remains a mysterious and captivating figure in popular culture.[1]"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUfSstK3MOc
321,657 views Oct 29, 2014
NYO-USA performs Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, under the direction of David Robertson, in the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut on July 22, 2014. Watch additional highlights from this concert at: http://bit.ly/1nCz8oF
Modest Mussorgsky’s highly individual voice was long obscured by well-meaning editors and fellow composers who considered his unconventional harmonies and orchestrations crude. Pictures at an Exhibition—a suite of vividly drawn tonal sketches inspired by an exhibition of artworks by the composer’s friend Viktor Hartmann—was originally written for piano. However, it is best known in the masterful orchestration that Maurice Ravel made in 1922.
The Russians and the House Republicans must be getting advice from the same astrologers.
Can we sand them Boebert and Maggie Three Names?
Every cat fight needs a junkyard dog, so gotta throw in Gym Jordan too.
Maybe it’s not such a hot idea to have armed mercenary groups in your own country fighting your wars of aggression, eh, Putin? Of course, you’re not much of a military history buff, but maybe you should try reading up on condotierri in Italy or the various armies of the Thirty Years’ War and find out what happens when mercenaries change sides in the middle of battles or campaigns. It’s too late to put the genie back in the lamp and considering the track record of the Russian military so far in the war in Ukraine, your chances aren’t very rosy pitting them against the Wagner Group armed thugs…have fun, Putie…reality bites…hard.
EXACTLY! Which is why the 2nd Amendment specifies a STATE-organized militia and not independent nitwits armed with AK-15s . . .
“The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.” Jackson Pollock speaks for the inevitable - and here for what we’re watching.
I wish both camps only the worst.
Thanks as always, Lucian, for your incisive military reporting and analysis. If technology allowed, you'd be seeing, right here in lurid color, a blade fan and the appropriate brown stuff hitting it. A ruthless mercenary army leader is now openly and loudly facing off against generals commanding the regulars alongside of whom his troops are fighting and dying? "From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent." -- H.P. Lovecraft, Weird Tales Magazine, October, 1937
Wow. Almost like a movie. It seemed very strange from the beginning that Pruggy could get away with any kind of criticism let alone insults. Yes, I'm sure he would be more dangerous than Putin if he got that kind of power but interesting that he said Putin started the whole thing on a pretext which is true, so maybe he wouldn't continue to attack Ukraine.
Is Yevgeny Prigozhin officially Col. Kurtz yet?
Remember in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Count Vronsky -- the dashing and dissolute cavalry officer -- puts the barrel of his pistol to his temple, pulls the trigger and... MISSES! That tells you everything you need to know about the Russian military -- then and now. The sequence is so preposterous that most TV and movie versions of the novel leave it out. But seeing these drunken rapists, murderers and thieves in uniform unable to find their butt cheeks with both hands in Ukraine lends credence to Tolstoy's portrayal. Tolstoy was, after all, a cavalry officer himself in his youth.
Interesting. A war war and a civil war, at the same time.
Putin and Prigozhin deserve each other.
Could not happen to a more deserving guy.....
Well, just go at it assholes. I think we will see the end of the Russian Federation before the holidays.
Putin: I need a ride, not ammunition.
"Hoisted by his own petard", a phrase coined by Shakespeare, seems to apply here.
Even as the Wagner Group, Prigozhin's private army, considered to the be most aggressive in Russian's arsenal, is now claiming to have been unceremoniously attacked by the Russian regulars, after earlier claims of being short-supplied by the very government he was spearheading at the behest of Putin!
How fitting in the playbook of betrayals, and such a fitting turn in the twisted saga of the ill-conceived invasion of Ukraine. Don't you just love it when the plot thickens, another phrased coined by the Bard of Avon? Shakespeare got his basic training in The Globe Theater, and is now a sub-plot in the Theater of War, under the heading Tragicomedy of Errors!
"Mutiny on the Bounty" would be the logical double-feature. But it's been so long; I've got to dig this out of the files! But shiver me timbers, if this doesn't ring true. Meanwhile, back at the drawing board, someone is scribbling late into the night, trying to figure out the next move. Who's thinking: In life as in literature?
🤣🤣🤣 Were you in my Creative Writing program? I mean this kindly, but it IS funny.
Not sure at this point what Ukrainian troops should do if they come into contact with Wagner forces?
Point them towards the Russians.