"Putin made a deal with Prigozhin, and he hasn’t gone out a window in Belarus…not yet, anyway."
A footnote to this: Prigozhin is reported to be staying in one of only a few hotels in Minsk without windows. (Pinsk was not mentioned.)
It is true that people (experts and non-) don't know what to make of the Russian goings on. It has suggested to me, however, a new Impossible Dream: That both Putin and Trump have fatal cardiac events within five minutes of each other. That would cause a few of us to reconsider the existence of God ...
This is at least the fifth time I have wanted to start a discussion with you about this book, which I figure you're familiar with....{BTW, the book's subject matter is also directly related to several of the key topics in this blog post from Lucian}
....and mention that I worked for several years at a firm here in Minneapolis, in converted space from the former (huge, gargantuan) Grain Belt Brewery, there were artists and sculptors in the buildings, a thirty second or so walk to the Mississippi River banks, through a "sculpture garden" in fact, anyway I digress as usual, was where one of the co-owners was a Greek-American born in Patras, she ended up with a copy of the film version (on cassette, this was in 2002 and I couldn't locate DVD version of it) that I simply gave her and her husband to enjoy, moment I realized it was "absolutely the right thing to do," wasn't currying favor, the entire staff had every opportunity to get to know them on a deeper level than usually experienced EXCEPT within a smaller, family-owned business, barring extremely rare exceptions....in any event it's the momentous events depicted in Gage's books I wanted to confer with you about, and this is yet another day that has "gotten away from me" filled with endless quotidian errands around here.
The review from Penguin & some other sources:
ABOUT ELENI
In 1948, as civil war ravaged Greece, children were abducted and sent to communist "camps" inside the Iron Curtain. Eleni Gatzoyiannis, forty-one, defied the traditions of her small village and the terror of the communist insurgents to arrange for the escape of her three daughters and her son, Nicola. For that act, she was imprisoned, tortured, and executed in cold blood.
Nicholas Gage joined his father in Massachusetts at the age of nine and grew up to become a top New York Times investigative reporter, honing his skills with one thought in mind: to return to Greece and uncover the one story he cared about most: the story of his mother.
Eleni takes you into the heart a village destroyed in the name of ideals and into the soul of a truly heroic woman.
PRAISE
"A Story Assigned By Fate…Minutely Observed And Eloquently Rendered."
— The New York Times Book Review
"A Remarkable Work Of ‘Faction’…I can think of no higher praise of this book than to say that it is fit to stand as a monument to Eleni Gatzoyiannis."
— The New Republic
"Remarkable…Brilliant… Unique…Eleni lives through this book. Her son has done her justice."
Eleni is the 1985 film adaptation of the memoir Eleni by Greek-American journalist Nicholas Gage. Directed by Peter Yates with a screenplay by Steve Tesich, the film stars John Malkovich, Kate Nelligan, Linda Hunt and Glenne Headly.
Plot
The film is told in a flashback format with Gage, now living in the United States, returning to his native Greece to solve the mystery of his mother's death when he was a child. The film looks back to the effect of the 1940s Greek Civil War in Lia – the remote Greek village of Gage's upbringing in the northwestern Greek region of Epirus; and in particular, the murder of his mother by communist guerrillas of the Democratic Army of Greece (ΔΣΕ).
Cast
Kate Nelligan as Eleni Gatzoyiannis
John Malkovich as Nicholas Gage
Linda Hunt as Katina
Oliver Cotton as Katis
Ronald Pickup as Spiro Skevis
Rosalie Crutchley as Grandmother
Glenne Headly as Joan Gage
Dimitra Arliss as Ana
See also
Red Terror
Democratic Army of Greece
OPLA
References
"Eleni". AFI. 1985-11-01. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
External links
Eleni at IMDb
Eleni at AllMovie
Eleni at Box Office Mojo
Eleni at Rotten Tomatoes
******* I would rate the film something like 9 out of 10 *********, found it
intensely moving and well done in every important facet of film-making.
Patris it will give some better idea why I will now go offline when I add I have
THIS* going, am fully ambulatory but wow what a day!
I never saw the film, Richard, but am familiar with the book. (I believe my brother met Gage, in fact) Very much remember reviews and interviews with Gage and feeling intimately connected because of my family’s links to the civil war. Some notorious.
Greeks have no choice but to have a connection to its violence. If they were fortunate it was as living witnesses, but most were touched by it. So much violence in such a small space, much of it dressed in idealist headlines on both sides justifying each side’s atrocities.
No power struggle between two diametrically opposed factions will end with shaking hands unless they’re exhausted. Diehard communists and the right wing (there were no true royalists, that was just expediency) - both of whom sacrificed themselves battling Hitler and felt they’d earned a piece of the future governing of their homeland. Both sides never intending the other to have it.
The islands were spared battles as far as I know but the mainland - in particular the mountains - blew up.
As is still true, colonial powers chose the winner. Which I’m grateful for, I doubted the intent of the Soviet supporters of the leftists and in retrospect am glad Churchill took definitive steps to support the right. In the end it was the better outcome.
On the other hand one of my aunts told me of witnessing one of my older uncles executing a suspected young communist soldier. My sisters mother in law spoke of one of her older brothers being shot where he was found dozing on a mountainside only condemned by village gossip and his possession of a rifle. Another of my fathers sisters fought in the mountains with her lover - someone who’d earned the title the Butcher of the Balkans. He left her in a field hospital, shot in the leg, her life saved when one of his captured men refused to identify her as one of their decimated group. She lived in exile most of the rest of her life in Bulgaria.
Politics is a participation sport in Greece. When I lived in Athens in the 1960s I hadn’t formed these thoughts. In a privileged school where Greeks who could afford it sent their kids to learn with US Air Force and embassy children, it was still a colonial life. We were taught by intellectual expats both American and English. All smart enough not to talk local politics with embassy children.
However when I was a senior in 1967 there was a military coup d’état with tanks rolling through our streets, where my sister had a rifle pointed at her, where my dad, thankfully in the country with us took my brother and his visiting friend to queue up at markets to gather dry goods like canned food, pasta and rice to get us through the chaos that might follow. It was edifying to say the least. The next year I sat in my colleges library when the gorgeous Irish Dean came in to announce we were being sent home because of a counter coup underway by the young idiot king. We lived close enough to walk home as what we assumed were Hellenic Royal Air Force jets buzzed the City.
I'm a Jewish Atheist and I approve of this message.
But don't tell my Rabbi; It took his six years of craziness for him to realize that the Mar-a-Largo Maniac is Mashuga and I warned him that Putin was no friend. Funding and restoring old synagogues in Russia was a shameless ploy to win supporters the world over!
Keep in mind that Prigozhen is no one you're want at your Passover table. Especially if he was supplying and/or serving the food! Seems he's got his hand in all kinds of deals! A regular Trump-of-all Seasons.
Thanks again Lucien for your keen observations and perspective. I’m always learning and being entertained by your posts. You’ve got a great group of subscribers, too, from whom I’m likewise better informed...thanks to all.
Prigozhin’s aborted “mutiny” opened a second front - a domestic one that Putin suddenly had to deal with besides the military front in Ukraine. Perhaps it just disclosed there is a crack in the domestic facade of seeming unity in support of the war against Ukraine (if not a heretofore absence of vocal opposition). But the ending of Prigozhin’s moves doesn’t seal up that crack.
Now if there is just some way for the West and Ukraine to take advantage of that evident crack to lead to greater domestic opposition to the war in Ukraine and withdrawal of all Russian troops back into Russia.
I'd rather see the Russian people do that with no help from us. NATO arms aid to Ukraine, yes; some way for the West to intervene in Russia, no. U.S. meddling in other countries' Internal affairs never ends well.
You know, I would love to see that also but the Russian people, especially the older ones, are completely brainwashed by Putin. The younger generation, like the ones here, are more likely to be the real heroes, if they can stay alive.
I agree with your view generally about intervention often turning out badly for the locals and also for U.S. interests. But educational efforts are not intervention in this globally connected world. To that extent, Marlene Lerner-Bigley (CA) is correct in her reply - get the message across to the Russian people so that the younger ones can see reality, not Putin's propaganda.
Clandestine subterfuge is of course what I had in mind. I certainly don't object to honest news dissemination à la Voice of America—now part of a network called United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM). I'd like to believe it's as effective as vintage VOA, but the fact I had to go to wikipedia for info isn't encouraging. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Agency_for_Global_Media
(3) "...couldn’t find any reports of medals being awarded in Cathedral Square yesterday, but take it from me, that’s what armies do when they’re losing wars: they hand out medals and celebrate victories only they can see."
E.g. Wounded Knee and 20MOH plus a slew of other shiny objects.
(2) "Matthew Rojansky, CEO of the U.S. Russia Foundation and distinguished fellow of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute – boy, there sure are a lot of people making a living as Russia watchers."
Add the Boy Wonder, Michael Weiss to the money grabbers over at US Russia Fdn. The sole person with consistently thoughtful, objective, insight into Ru is the brilliant Julia Loffe. Alas, she is a she, therefore dismissed and/or discounted by the dick measurers.
(1) "Prigozhin’s strike towards Moscow was so ill-prepared that U.S. intelligence agencies knew it was going to happen by the middle of last week. There are reports today that at least one retired Russian general, Sergey Surovikin, the former overall commander of the Russian army in Ukraine, also had advance knowledge of the attack."
Predictably the entire zone is now flooded with Ru propaganda and stories from US and British news orgs and publications with none of their sources originating in Ru rather from sources within their respective governments. Haven't heard a one begin a story with we can't confirm X-Y-or Z due to Ru being a closed society. Yet not closed to the breadth and depth of SIGINT.
Personally find it amusing Ru mil is finally being exposed for all its flaws and being ground down by the Uk mil with western weaponry with economic sanctions wearing down the entire economy and Ru Federation.
So, whether Putin is stronger or weaker doesn't change the fact Mother Russia is much weaker by all metrics. That remains the unspoken goal of the west. Sixteen months seems longer to Uk due to doing all the fighting. The west and Uk are fortunate Joe Biden was elected and not Trump. Putin miscalculated every aspect of the war including going in too late in the first place and most of all not understanding in the 21st-C it is next to impossible to win any war. Geopolitical genius my red arse.
As a combat vet I greatly revere the men who have earned the MOH, the Army needs to take back the 20 that were awarded to those who took part in the slaughter at Wounded Knee, I know those men are long gone, but that award to those men desecrates the honor of all of the men who earned it.
I have felt all along that putin was signing his own death sentence the day he triggered the invasion. He claims to be religious, but my understanding of religion would put him firmly in satans camp for eternity because of what he has done to the innocent in Ukraine, can you imagine the welcome he's going to get on the other side, our insipid clown will ultimately have company, there's something to the saying, "that you can know a person by the company they keep".
I see since then Putin made a surprise personal appearance surrounded by admiring fans trying to take selfies with him. This is something he never does, so all part of that effort Lucian just described.
He had to have been shaken by not only the lack of aggression towards Prigoshin on his march to Moscow, but the cheers and adulation he received along the way. No mention either of the unfortunate pilots and crew Priggy shot killed that apparently did make a move against him. No public funeral for them? No words of their 'bravery'. and loyalty?
Here's another one for you. Sergei Surovkin ("General Armageddon") is among the missing, and the smart money says he's in custody in Lefortovo prison - apparently for conspiring with Prigozhin.
Astute. And who better than Putin knows that ignorance is tantamount to fatal weakness. That being weak renders him vulnerable to the destruction that will ultimately find him. The sooner the better.
"Covering dictators is fun but tiring. To support my dedicated, arduous work cataloging the crimes of monsters like Putin and Defendant Trump, please consider becoming a paid subscriber."
OK, you got me, you bastard. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Better you than me, Luke. ;-)
-Much Respect for the framing of how those 20MOH reflect on those who truly earned theirs.
Considering how long it took to realize naming Army bases after traitors was a similar act of disrespect and dishonor, there will come a day when moral courage guides DoD and politicians to revisit Wounded Knee. Sort of what Churchill was alluding to with his take on Americans, no?
-Putin-Uk. You know better than most wars are not fought on paper showing the size and strength of each side as if it was a game with odds and spreads handled by Vegas. Was the point of another post on how so many oversimplify any subject of their choosing into a tidy win/loss scenario.
Putin didn't learn nor unlearn from the Soviet invasion of Af nor from W's dual debacles and most importantly how the Rojava Kurds, with the assistance of the US dispatched #daeshbags from their dirt. President/CinC Biden did and President/CinC Obama understood because both sought counsel and listened more than they talked.
-Fully agree with "that you can know a person by the company they keep." Applies to all cited, to Lucian and his readership, to you and to me.
Thank you so much for your analysis, backed up with some good references. This and the Giuliani piece really made my day. Perhaps we will soon see the world returned to some semblance of the order/disorder we are used to living with.
I'm struck by this line from Olga Oliker: "After so many years of crushing dissent from the left, the actual threat came from the right, where the Kremlin had actually allowed criticism.” The circumstances are very different, but doesn't this remind you at least a bit of the most recent (and totally not surprising) revelations about the FBI and various U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies? How they were obsessed with, and doing their best to suppress, Black Lives Matter protests "from the left" and totally missing the "actual threat[s] from the right" that were doing their damndest to overturn the 2020 election results and destroy our democracy?
So a lot of medals on a uniform indicates a failed leader.... interesting. Won't it be good when theop up operations begin and we can cekebrate the folks who help put things back together.
One thing you can say about Russia and Russians is that subtlety and finesse have never been their strong points. That Yevgeny Prigozhin may still be alive may be evidence that not all suicide attempts succeed. Certainly, the Wagner group occupation of Rostov-on-Don, followed by their caravan-like trek towards Moscow, only to turn around at a point 200 km short of their objective, halt, and then apparently retreat back to where they came from, set chanceries buzzing throughout Europe about what was really going on within Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia. The consensus, if there is in fact one, appears to be that Vladimir Putin's reputation has taken a hit. Nobody is venturing a guesstimate as to how bad the damage is, but Putin's response seems to have been to panic. Gone now are the shouts of 'treason'; and Putin is now attempting to portray the Wagner group fighters as some sort of national heroes. At least one Russian general is said to have had advance knowledge of want Prigozhin was up to. Some sort of provisioning along the road between Rostov-on-Don and Moscow had been arranged in advance, as it appears that the Wagner group did not include tanker trucks transporting motor vehicle fuel with them on the march northward, and apparently, the military column's transport vehicles were able to replenish their fuel from local sources along the way. By any measure, that would appear to be a major undertaking, and certainly a great deal of advance planning. The implication is that Putin is still nominally in charge, but he may be hemmed in by the knowledge that his support is relatively thin, as if to compare Putin's situation with that of, say, Kevin McCarthy's relationship with House Republicans in Washington DC. Although their situations are hardly comparable, in either case, their freedom of action is undoubtedly severely impaired.
The role of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko is also ambiguous. Lukashenko is known to be a toady to Vladimir Putin, bowing and scraping in such a way that would embarrass a dog. No one is saying how Lukashenko found himself out on stage, claiming to have mediated the quarrel between Putin and Prigozhin. The whole scenario reeks of nonsense, about which none of the actors' statements can be believed. The persistence of this farcical confusion is perhaps the best clue to what is going on, with actors on each side oscillating between their lust for revenge and the panic they display no matter how hard they tried to play it down.
But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Who, really, has the most to lose in the situation; and the answer is obvious — Vladimir Putin. Apart from Putin's tendency to defenestrate those individuals who displease him, Putin needs to worry about those with whom he is not now directly in conflict with, but who also are stakeholders within the regime that Putin dominates. To quote an old adage, those who tolerated Mussolini did so because he made the Italian trains run on time. Later, when it became clear that Mussolini was in over his head, he lost his job, and 18 months after that, his life. Of course, back then, Italy was occupied by Germany, and it took the combined armies of several nations to eventually drive the Germans out. But the point is that after September 1943, it didn't matter who among the Italians was in charge. The short answer was, none of them.
All of which is to say, at some point Vladimir Putin himself might become irrelevant. The nation in terminal often finds its best leadership percolating upward because the existing regime is so badly fractured that it cannot withstand the pressure of events. We have no way of knowing who the possible contenders might be. A collapse of Vladimir Putin's Russia as we know it might well be underway, but as of now remains hidden from sight. Certainly Putin has been thrown off balance, and his prospects for regaining his footing do not appear to be too sanguine. It is rumored that Putin himself is no longer healthy, despite his well-publicized shirtless bravado while riding horseback. The fact that Putin himself resorted to those tired Napoleonic tropes evidences his deep insecurity. This past week's confrontation with Yevgeny Prigozhin was undoubtedly a shock to Putin's system. Fear will do that. Prigozhin might've been the catalyst for whatever is coming next, but my intuition tells me that Putin's replacement is going to come from some other direction that none of us have seen yet.
"Putin made a deal with Prigozhin, and he hasn’t gone out a window in Belarus…not yet, anyway."
A footnote to this: Prigozhin is reported to be staying in one of only a few hotels in Minsk without windows. (Pinsk was not mentioned.)
It is true that people (experts and non-) don't know what to make of the Russian goings on. It has suggested to me, however, a new Impossible Dream: That both Putin and Trump have fatal cardiac events within five minutes of each other. That would cause a few of us to reconsider the existence of God ...
If only
This is at least the fifth time I have wanted to start a discussion with you about this book, which I figure you're familiar with....{BTW, the book's subject matter is also directly related to several of the key topics in this blog post from Lucian}
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/57385/eleni-by-nicholas-gage/
....and mention that I worked for several years at a firm here in Minneapolis, in converted space from the former (huge, gargantuan) Grain Belt Brewery, there were artists and sculptors in the buildings, a thirty second or so walk to the Mississippi River banks, through a "sculpture garden" in fact, anyway I digress as usual, was where one of the co-owners was a Greek-American born in Patras, she ended up with a copy of the film version (on cassette, this was in 2002 and I couldn't locate DVD version of it) that I simply gave her and her husband to enjoy, moment I realized it was "absolutely the right thing to do," wasn't currying favor, the entire staff had every opportunity to get to know them on a deeper level than usually experienced EXCEPT within a smaller, family-owned business, barring extremely rare exceptions....in any event it's the momentous events depicted in Gage's books I wanted to confer with you about, and this is yet another day that has "gotten away from me" filled with endless quotidian errands around here.
The review from Penguin & some other sources:
ABOUT ELENI
In 1948, as civil war ravaged Greece, children were abducted and sent to communist "camps" inside the Iron Curtain. Eleni Gatzoyiannis, forty-one, defied the traditions of her small village and the terror of the communist insurgents to arrange for the escape of her three daughters and her son, Nicola. For that act, she was imprisoned, tortured, and executed in cold blood.
Nicholas Gage joined his father in Massachusetts at the age of nine and grew up to become a top New York Times investigative reporter, honing his skills with one thought in mind: to return to Greece and uncover the one story he cared about most: the story of his mother.
Eleni takes you into the heart a village destroyed in the name of ideals and into the soul of a truly heroic woman.
PRAISE
"A Story Assigned By Fate…Minutely Observed And Eloquently Rendered."
— The New York Times Book Review
"A Remarkable Work Of ‘Faction’…I can think of no higher praise of this book than to say that it is fit to stand as a monument to Eleni Gatzoyiannis."
— The New Republic
"Remarkable…Brilliant… Unique…Eleni lives through this book. Her son has done her justice."
— USA Today
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleni_(film)
Eleni is the 1985 film adaptation of the memoir Eleni by Greek-American journalist Nicholas Gage. Directed by Peter Yates with a screenplay by Steve Tesich, the film stars John Malkovich, Kate Nelligan, Linda Hunt and Glenne Headly.
Plot
The film is told in a flashback format with Gage, now living in the United States, returning to his native Greece to solve the mystery of his mother's death when he was a child. The film looks back to the effect of the 1940s Greek Civil War in Lia – the remote Greek village of Gage's upbringing in the northwestern Greek region of Epirus; and in particular, the murder of his mother by communist guerrillas of the Democratic Army of Greece (ΔΣΕ).
Cast
Kate Nelligan as Eleni Gatzoyiannis
John Malkovich as Nicholas Gage
Linda Hunt as Katina
Oliver Cotton as Katis
Ronald Pickup as Spiro Skevis
Rosalie Crutchley as Grandmother
Glenne Headly as Joan Gage
Dimitra Arliss as Ana
See also
Red Terror
Democratic Army of Greece
OPLA
References
"Eleni". AFI. 1985-11-01. Retrieved 2021-05-21.
External links
Eleni at IMDb
Eleni at AllMovie
Eleni at Box Office Mojo
Eleni at Rotten Tomatoes
******* I would rate the film something like 9 out of 10 *********, found it
intensely moving and well done in every important facet of film-making.
Patris it will give some better idea why I will now go offline when I add I have
THIS* going, am fully ambulatory but wow what a day!
* let me google this...
www.etekcity.com/products/shiatsu-neck-and-shoulder-massager-em-sn8s
Later!
I never saw the film, Richard, but am familiar with the book. (I believe my brother met Gage, in fact) Very much remember reviews and interviews with Gage and feeling intimately connected because of my family’s links to the civil war. Some notorious.
Greeks have no choice but to have a connection to its violence. If they were fortunate it was as living witnesses, but most were touched by it. So much violence in such a small space, much of it dressed in idealist headlines on both sides justifying each side’s atrocities.
No power struggle between two diametrically opposed factions will end with shaking hands unless they’re exhausted. Diehard communists and the right wing (there were no true royalists, that was just expediency) - both of whom sacrificed themselves battling Hitler and felt they’d earned a piece of the future governing of their homeland. Both sides never intending the other to have it.
The islands were spared battles as far as I know but the mainland - in particular the mountains - blew up.
As is still true, colonial powers chose the winner. Which I’m grateful for, I doubted the intent of the Soviet supporters of the leftists and in retrospect am glad Churchill took definitive steps to support the right. In the end it was the better outcome.
On the other hand one of my aunts told me of witnessing one of my older uncles executing a suspected young communist soldier. My sisters mother in law spoke of one of her older brothers being shot where he was found dozing on a mountainside only condemned by village gossip and his possession of a rifle. Another of my fathers sisters fought in the mountains with her lover - someone who’d earned the title the Butcher of the Balkans. He left her in a field hospital, shot in the leg, her life saved when one of his captured men refused to identify her as one of their decimated group. She lived in exile most of the rest of her life in Bulgaria.
Politics is a participation sport in Greece. When I lived in Athens in the 1960s I hadn’t formed these thoughts. In a privileged school where Greeks who could afford it sent their kids to learn with US Air Force and embassy children, it was still a colonial life. We were taught by intellectual expats both American and English. All smart enough not to talk local politics with embassy children.
However when I was a senior in 1967 there was a military coup d’état with tanks rolling through our streets, where my sister had a rifle pointed at her, where my dad, thankfully in the country with us took my brother and his visiting friend to queue up at markets to gather dry goods like canned food, pasta and rice to get us through the chaos that might follow. It was edifying to say the least. The next year I sat in my colleges library when the gorgeous Irish Dean came in to announce we were being sent home because of a counter coup underway by the young idiot king. We lived close enough to walk home as what we assumed were Hellenic Royal Air Force jets buzzed the City.
This is pretty sobering, being raised in America in the '50s, where we only heard practice bombings from the fort 30 miles away.
I'm a Jewish Atheist and I approve of this message.
But don't tell my Rabbi; It took his six years of craziness for him to realize that the Mar-a-Largo Maniac is Mashuga and I warned him that Putin was no friend. Funding and restoring old synagogues in Russia was a shameless ploy to win supporters the world over!
Keep in mind that Prigozhen is no one you're want at your Passover table. Especially if he was supplying and/or serving the food! Seems he's got his hand in all kinds of deals! A regular Trump-of-all Seasons.
Very funny. (Me, too.)
Thank you. I have wondered why some of myJewish friends were sonambivekent about Putin.
🙏🙏🙏🙏
Thanks again Lucien for your keen observations and perspective. I’m always learning and being entertained by your posts. You’ve got a great group of subscribers, too, from whom I’m likewise better informed...thanks to all.
I'm waiting for the thump of rolling heads hitting Russian floors.
Prigozhin’s aborted “mutiny” opened a second front - a domestic one that Putin suddenly had to deal with besides the military front in Ukraine. Perhaps it just disclosed there is a crack in the domestic facade of seeming unity in support of the war against Ukraine (if not a heretofore absence of vocal opposition). But the ending of Prigozhin’s moves doesn’t seal up that crack.
Now if there is just some way for the West and Ukraine to take advantage of that evident crack to lead to greater domestic opposition to the war in Ukraine and withdrawal of all Russian troops back into Russia.
I'd rather see the Russian people do that with no help from us. NATO arms aid to Ukraine, yes; some way for the West to intervene in Russia, no. U.S. meddling in other countries' Internal affairs never ends well.
You know, I would love to see that also but the Russian people, especially the older ones, are completely brainwashed by Putin. The younger generation, like the ones here, are more likely to be the real heroes, if they can stay alive.
I agree with your view generally about intervention often turning out badly for the locals and also for U.S. interests. But educational efforts are not intervention in this globally connected world. To that extent, Marlene Lerner-Bigley (CA) is correct in her reply - get the message across to the Russian people so that the younger ones can see reality, not Putin's propaganda.
Clandestine subterfuge is of course what I had in mind. I certainly don't object to honest news dissemination à la Voice of America—now part of a network called United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM). I'd like to believe it's as effective as vintage VOA, but the fact I had to go to wikipedia for info isn't encouraging. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Agency_for_Global_Media
Whatever it takes.
(3) "...couldn’t find any reports of medals being awarded in Cathedral Square yesterday, but take it from me, that’s what armies do when they’re losing wars: they hand out medals and celebrate victories only they can see."
E.g. Wounded Knee and 20MOH plus a slew of other shiny objects.
(2) "Matthew Rojansky, CEO of the U.S. Russia Foundation and distinguished fellow of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute – boy, there sure are a lot of people making a living as Russia watchers."
Add the Boy Wonder, Michael Weiss to the money grabbers over at US Russia Fdn. The sole person with consistently thoughtful, objective, insight into Ru is the brilliant Julia Loffe. Alas, she is a she, therefore dismissed and/or discounted by the dick measurers.
(1) "Prigozhin’s strike towards Moscow was so ill-prepared that U.S. intelligence agencies knew it was going to happen by the middle of last week. There are reports today that at least one retired Russian general, Sergey Surovikin, the former overall commander of the Russian army in Ukraine, also had advance knowledge of the attack."
Predictably the entire zone is now flooded with Ru propaganda and stories from US and British news orgs and publications with none of their sources originating in Ru rather from sources within their respective governments. Haven't heard a one begin a story with we can't confirm X-Y-or Z due to Ru being a closed society. Yet not closed to the breadth and depth of SIGINT.
Personally find it amusing Ru mil is finally being exposed for all its flaws and being ground down by the Uk mil with western weaponry with economic sanctions wearing down the entire economy and Ru Federation.
So, whether Putin is stronger or weaker doesn't change the fact Mother Russia is much weaker by all metrics. That remains the unspoken goal of the west. Sixteen months seems longer to Uk due to doing all the fighting. The west and Uk are fortunate Joe Biden was elected and not Trump. Putin miscalculated every aspect of the war including going in too late in the first place and most of all not understanding in the 21st-C it is next to impossible to win any war. Geopolitical genius my red arse.
As a combat vet I greatly revere the men who have earned the MOH, the Army needs to take back the 20 that were awarded to those who took part in the slaughter at Wounded Knee, I know those men are long gone, but that award to those men desecrates the honor of all of the men who earned it.
I have felt all along that putin was signing his own death sentence the day he triggered the invasion. He claims to be religious, but my understanding of religion would put him firmly in satans camp for eternity because of what he has done to the innocent in Ukraine, can you imagine the welcome he's going to get on the other side, our insipid clown will ultimately have company, there's something to the saying, "that you can know a person by the company they keep".
I see since then Putin made a surprise personal appearance surrounded by admiring fans trying to take selfies with him. This is something he never does, so all part of that effort Lucian just described.
He had to have been shaken by not only the lack of aggression towards Prigoshin on his march to Moscow, but the cheers and adulation he received along the way. No mention either of the unfortunate pilots and crew Priggy shot killed that apparently did make a move against him. No public funeral for them? No words of their 'bravery'. and loyalty?
Here's another one for you. Sergei Surovkin ("General Armageddon") is among the missing, and the smart money says he's in custody in Lefortovo prison - apparently for conspiring with Prigozhin.
I am concerned about where this is all going. Russia has lots of nukes, both for weapons and for reactors for generating electricity.
Someone needs to develope s de-nuker.
Another great column.
Astute. And who better than Putin knows that ignorance is tantamount to fatal weakness. That being weak renders him vulnerable to the destruction that will ultimately find him. The sooner the better.
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OK, you got me, you bastard. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Better you than me, Luke. ;-)
-Much Respect for the framing of how those 20MOH reflect on those who truly earned theirs.
Considering how long it took to realize naming Army bases after traitors was a similar act of disrespect and dishonor, there will come a day when moral courage guides DoD and politicians to revisit Wounded Knee. Sort of what Churchill was alluding to with his take on Americans, no?
-Putin-Uk. You know better than most wars are not fought on paper showing the size and strength of each side as if it was a game with odds and spreads handled by Vegas. Was the point of another post on how so many oversimplify any subject of their choosing into a tidy win/loss scenario.
Putin didn't learn nor unlearn from the Soviet invasion of Af nor from W's dual debacles and most importantly how the Rojava Kurds, with the assistance of the US dispatched #daeshbags from their dirt. President/CinC Biden did and President/CinC Obama understood because both sought counsel and listened more than they talked.
-Fully agree with "that you can know a person by the company they keep." Applies to all cited, to Lucian and his readership, to you and to me.
Be Well.
Thank you so much for your analysis, backed up with some good references. This and the Giuliani piece really made my day. Perhaps we will soon see the world returned to some semblance of the order/disorder we are used to living with.
I'm struck by this line from Olga Oliker: "After so many years of crushing dissent from the left, the actual threat came from the right, where the Kremlin had actually allowed criticism.” The circumstances are very different, but doesn't this remind you at least a bit of the most recent (and totally not surprising) revelations about the FBI and various U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence agencies? How they were obsessed with, and doing their best to suppress, Black Lives Matter protests "from the left" and totally missing the "actual threat[s] from the right" that were doing their damndest to overturn the 2020 election results and destroy our democracy?
So a lot of medals on a uniform indicates a failed leader.... interesting. Won't it be good when theop up operations begin and we can cekebrate the folks who help put things back together.
One thing you can say about Russia and Russians is that subtlety and finesse have never been their strong points. That Yevgeny Prigozhin may still be alive may be evidence that not all suicide attempts succeed. Certainly, the Wagner group occupation of Rostov-on-Don, followed by their caravan-like trek towards Moscow, only to turn around at a point 200 km short of their objective, halt, and then apparently retreat back to where they came from, set chanceries buzzing throughout Europe about what was really going on within Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia. The consensus, if there is in fact one, appears to be that Vladimir Putin's reputation has taken a hit. Nobody is venturing a guesstimate as to how bad the damage is, but Putin's response seems to have been to panic. Gone now are the shouts of 'treason'; and Putin is now attempting to portray the Wagner group fighters as some sort of national heroes. At least one Russian general is said to have had advance knowledge of want Prigozhin was up to. Some sort of provisioning along the road between Rostov-on-Don and Moscow had been arranged in advance, as it appears that the Wagner group did not include tanker trucks transporting motor vehicle fuel with them on the march northward, and apparently, the military column's transport vehicles were able to replenish their fuel from local sources along the way. By any measure, that would appear to be a major undertaking, and certainly a great deal of advance planning. The implication is that Putin is still nominally in charge, but he may be hemmed in by the knowledge that his support is relatively thin, as if to compare Putin's situation with that of, say, Kevin McCarthy's relationship with House Republicans in Washington DC. Although their situations are hardly comparable, in either case, their freedom of action is undoubtedly severely impaired.
The role of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko is also ambiguous. Lukashenko is known to be a toady to Vladimir Putin, bowing and scraping in such a way that would embarrass a dog. No one is saying how Lukashenko found himself out on stage, claiming to have mediated the quarrel between Putin and Prigozhin. The whole scenario reeks of nonsense, about which none of the actors' statements can be believed. The persistence of this farcical confusion is perhaps the best clue to what is going on, with actors on each side oscillating between their lust for revenge and the panic they display no matter how hard they tried to play it down.
But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Who, really, has the most to lose in the situation; and the answer is obvious — Vladimir Putin. Apart from Putin's tendency to defenestrate those individuals who displease him, Putin needs to worry about those with whom he is not now directly in conflict with, but who also are stakeholders within the regime that Putin dominates. To quote an old adage, those who tolerated Mussolini did so because he made the Italian trains run on time. Later, when it became clear that Mussolini was in over his head, he lost his job, and 18 months after that, his life. Of course, back then, Italy was occupied by Germany, and it took the combined armies of several nations to eventually drive the Germans out. But the point is that after September 1943, it didn't matter who among the Italians was in charge. The short answer was, none of them.
All of which is to say, at some point Vladimir Putin himself might become irrelevant. The nation in terminal often finds its best leadership percolating upward because the existing regime is so badly fractured that it cannot withstand the pressure of events. We have no way of knowing who the possible contenders might be. A collapse of Vladimir Putin's Russia as we know it might well be underway, but as of now remains hidden from sight. Certainly Putin has been thrown off balance, and his prospects for regaining his footing do not appear to be too sanguine. It is rumored that Putin himself is no longer healthy, despite his well-publicized shirtless bravado while riding horseback. The fact that Putin himself resorted to those tired Napoleonic tropes evidences his deep insecurity. This past week's confrontation with Yevgeny Prigozhin was undoubtedly a shock to Putin's system. Fear will do that. Prigozhin might've been the catalyst for whatever is coming next, but my intuition tells me that Putin's replacement is going to come from some other direction that none of us have seen yet.