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Written by Julian Macfarlane, Tokyo-based military and geopolitical analyst.
Bakhmut has fallen. Bakhmut is dead. Long live Artemovsk. What did thousands and thousands of Ukrainians die for?
My friend Aleks over at Black Mountain Analysis has written what he calls an “opinion” piece on Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Aleks is too humble: his article is not just an “opinion”; it is an analysis. And a very good one, — one that leads us to facts aka “truth”.
Plato versus Sherlock Holmes
By and large, Western philosophers have dichotomized reality into “subjective’— our perceptions of things – and the things themselves — “objective reality”— which you somehow have to prove,
Plato’s “Cave” is the paradigm for this concept. The shadows are “subjective” — opinions.
The truth is not available directly. Reality is outside and only understood through dialectic—and analysis— which can only be proven by escaping the cave.
I always found Plato a bore. Forensically speaking, I look to Sherlock Holmes, who is a lot more interesting.
Sherlock did better than Plato or Aristotle maybe because of coke, which dissolves the boundaries between subject and object very nicely — or maybe because he understood that the power of deduction derives from imagination, connecting the dots, rendering the invisible visible and the unknown, known. He used logic— but mostly intuition. And he did not live in a cave.
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Conan Doyle was, after all, a doctor and he knew that before you cut, you must diagnose—important in the days before ultrasounds and X-rays. To diagnose, you must identify clues.
That is what “forensic analysis” is all about, Clues, proofs—and wandering around outside the cave. It is also what Aleks does so eloquently, in company with other commentators such as Larry Johnson, Alex Mercouris and Brian Berletic.
But I digress. Blame it on my ASD. No—sadly— NOT on coke!
Aleks on Prigozhin
Prigozhin sold hot dogs in St. Petersburg and suddenly he got rich. At the same time where Vladmir Putin worked in St. Petersburg. I will now make some assumptions here without evidence:
- Evgeny Prigozhin was recruited somehow by the KGB/FSB either during his prison time or during his “hot dog” time. Recruited for work within St. Peterburg’s underground structures.
- Due to his connections and maybe training by with/by the KGB/FSB, he was able to rise quickly from a hot dog seller to a restaurant chain owner and caterer.
- Vladmir Putin personally either had been in contact with Prigozhin during this time in St. Petersburg (until 1996) or had been briefed by certain agencies about his activities.
- Later, when Vladimir Putin became the President of Russia, Prigozhin was allowed to do the catering for state guests. This was only possible if Putin had some trust in him.
Now, if Aleks is correct and Prigozhin was recruited by the KGB in the 90s due to the organized crime connections he maybe made in prison that would explain his rise from selling hot dogs to catering for Putin’s guests. The only difference between Prigozhin’s friends in prison and a lot of people in government and business at the time was probably tattoos. Those connections might have made him useful in this time when literally everyone was on the make.
In any case, Prigozhin could not have gotten ahead first in Leningrad (St. Petersberg) without the help of Putin—who began to play prominent political roles, starting in May of 1990, although still in the KGB until 1991. Later. both Prigozhin and Putin set up business, as it were, in Moscow,
Putin became Director of the FSB when the KGB devolved in four agencies — the SVR, FSB and FSO, and GUSP—which today all report to him directly. And Prigozhin catered to him—literally.
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That was long before Wagner.
With a little help from your friends
Rumor abounds about Prigozhin as it does Putin. Who really knows?
No one.
Was Yevgeny once a professional criminal? He was imprisoned at age 20 for robbing upscale apartments with his buddies. For the Russian public, this conviction makes him more of a Robin Hood figure than a “hard man”. And at 20, you are not a professional at anything.
However, in prison, Prigozhin would have had to fit into a tight community run by real professionals with a strict code, policed by the really hard cases. That said, the bosses who ran the prison undoubtedly liked the young man’s values. Nothing wrong with robbing rich people who got where they were by robbing everyone else. So “connections” for young Yevgeny are a possibility.
Every Bad Guy really wants to be a Good Guy. (Just like every Good Guy is also a Bad Guy).
Putin was a KGB colonel. Robbing a few affluent carpetbaggers wouldn’t have mattered to him much except as a mark of enterprise. The KGB is famously pragmatic and wouldn’t have seen Yev’s activities as a reflection on character. Except maybe getting caught.
The KGB always liked assets with some kind of real values, apart from greed. Their main requirements for recruits were loyalty, intelligence, patriotic values—and the ability to connect. Oddly enough, rather similar to the priorities of organized crime in Russia.
Prigozhin was half Jewish just like Putin. Both men grew up in the mean streets of Leningrad. Both think outside the box —at least they are not in that box that contains most Russians born to privilege. What’s your box?
Politics, like war, is 50% theater. Naturally, Putin is hugely popular — as is Prigozhin. They have style.
But how did Prigozhin start Wagner?
The Origins of Wagner
The answer: he didn’t.
Dmytro Utkin, a GRU Spetsnaz officer is considered to have founded the Group. His call sign was — guess! — Wagner.
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You won’t hear about him much. He is reportedly a Rodnover— a rightwing nationalist Slavic neo-pagan —far to the right of Russian public opinion. In other words, not too far from the NeoNazi neopaganism of the Galicians. As far as ”style”…well…not too photogenic. You wouldn’t want to introduce him to Mom and Dad.
Utkin was previously employed by a previous PMC—Slavonic— which was reportedly poorly treated by the regular Russian military in Syria and dissolved.
True or not, Uktin went on to head the Wagner Group for “unofficial” Russian combat in Donbass. He was definitely bad-ass. Too bad-ass to keep around for long.
Behind Utkin’s Wagner was the GRU, which reports to the General Command of the Russian Military— and to one of the four intelligence services that devolved from the KGB and whcih report directly to Putin — probably the FSB.
Wagner, as Larry Johnson says, was set up to be somewhere between the French Foreign Legion and the CIA’s (The “Third Option”), which you probably haven’t heard much about. They aren’t called “black” ops for nothing.
Black Ops or Terrorists?
Wagner is neither white nor black — it exists in a gray area. While it serves the Russian government, it works for other governments, as in Syria and Central Africa and Mali where it serves or has served Russian interests. It needs “hard men” obviously but not really as hard or ideologically off the map as our friend Dmitry.
Although the Western media is full of stories about Wagner Group atrocities, especially in Africa, very few are verified by independent witnesses—or objective and comprehensive reporting. Most of the massacres” attributed to them are killings of Islamist extremists carried out by Government forces—at a remove from Wagner. As military organizations go, Wagner has followed a pretty strict code.
That means that while Wagnerites are hardly angels —they appear to be better disciplined than Western special and regular forces. As far as I can see, they have no Mai Lais. No Hadithas. No Banderite Buchas. They don’t run amok. They are professionals.
And they are certainly more welcome in Africa than colonialists — the British — or particularly the French, whose peacekeepers in the Central African Republic have been accused in a (verified) UN report of multiple crimes including forcing children to have sex with dogs.
The West will declare Wagner “terrorists” anyway.
CIA / MI6 smear sites like Bellingcat win Emmy awards. The White Helmets— chiefly known for its whitewashing of Syrian jihadi atrocities— gets an Oscar.
The 20~30 million dead at the hands of Western terrorism since 1945 turn in their graves. This is after all, “the Empire of Lies”. It has modernized Plato’s Cave. No shadows from outside. In fact, no outside. Just an endless PowerPoint show.
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No, there is no conversation.
But information warfare is conversation—of a kind, done right anyway.
Prigozhin as Head of Wagner
Prigozhin is said to be a good conversationalist — a charming, cheerful storyteller, – not at all the morose, somewhat brutal looking, often angry character his (Western) media images suggest. He may be venal —he is, after all, a businessman — and what businessman isn’t! —but under him the Wagner Group is a very different beast than it was when Utkin started. Prigozhin projects a certain humanity.
Putin had to be onboard in choosing Prigozhin. The guy on the right in the T-shirt sure looks like him.
He is on the record as having recommended the full legalization of Wagner, but to do that and for the group to still maintain a degree of independence from the regular military, it needed a corporate identity — y’know, “free” enterprise — the same path that organized crime in Russia and elsewhere chooses. So Putin I think chose a businessman—a salesman— not a soldier to be the “face” of the group— someone who he had known for years,
As of this year, Wagner has become a legal entity. A company.
Prigozhin, like his men— is well paid. He is rich.
But Hello:
“Wagner you are expendable.” So says the GRU, so say we all.
The Wagnerites fulfill the role of Canadians and Aussies in WWI and WWII— assault troops. They take casualties.
Wagner cemetery
That apparently bothers Prigozhin.
Prigozhin: show & tell
Want to sell hot dogs? Besides conversation, you need to put on a bit of a show. And add lots of mustard. With Wagner, is Prigozhin just doing a show and doling out the mustard? It’s not quite that simple. Remember, we talked about “loyalty”?
Prigozhin is loyal to his men. And they are clearly loyal to him. They all know that the GRU regards them as ‘expendable”.
But he is not in the military chain of command and cannot make decisions for his men to protect them. It’s like a family — complicated. Mom and Dad are the FSB and GRU. Wagnerites are the kids. Every family has its own dysfunctionality.
Add to this: Putin
There is no such thing as a former KGB man. (Vladimir Putin)
If Prigozhin was once taken in by the KGB—he is still KGB—even if it no longer exists. In which case, there are some clues to a lot of things.
Among those clues are the man’s outbursts. Prigozhin can be loud, very loud. Aleks writes:
A few days ago, Prigozhin released a mad video where he was cursing and screaming with dozens of dead Wagner soldiers in the background. He cursed against everyone in the Russian military high command.
Dissent in the West gets you jail time. Prigozhin complains in a way that that would never be permitted in the West. Ask Ritter. Ask Kirikaou. Ask Chelsea Manning. Ask Snowden. Ask Julian Assange.
But there is method in the madness.
Aleks writes:
Nothing will happen within the Russian armed forces (and I count Wagner in here) that is not ordered by the general staff in Moscow. Nothing. Yet Prigozhin is not subordinated to the General Staff. The Wagner military commanders are, but not Prigozhin. He is the head of the civilian administration. Most likely he is directed by the Russian intelligence services.
The MoD would not ask Prigozhin to badmouth their generals or the Minister of Defense. That license has to come from somewhere else— probably the FSB, which means Putin, who has spent two decades trying to shake up and modernize the Russian military.
Clearly, the emotional content of Prigozhin’s outbursts authenticate them in both Russia and the West. But the West interpret them differently.
For the Legacy Media it fits the templates supplied them— Russia, disorganized, running out of ammo, rebellion in the ranks, falling apart. Especially the “no ammo” part.
The reality is that Prigozhin needed more ammo to kill the larger numbers of Ukrainians he was inducing Zelensky to send into the Grinder.
Aleks writes:
Russian paratroopers took care of the flanks, and Wagner took care of the grinding within the town. Now you need to motivate your enemy to continue sending troops in, even though they get annihilated almost as soon as they enter. Hence, you should constantly provoke your opponent and dare him to send more troops to keep up a good fight. Appeal to his “man power”, etc. This is what Prigozhin has been doing all the time. Later, when there was a danger that Ukraine might abandon Artemovsk, Prigozhin changed his tactic and started to cry about ammunition and manpower losses.
So Prigozhin is Russia’s own Mad Max. The GRU may not really like him. But then the police hated Max but kept him on— because his craziness got results. He was useful. The ordinary Russian of course loves to see the Powers That Be called assholes.
Russians do great theater.
One of the primary functions of the KGB was always what is called maskirovka in Russian, which means “deception”, or more correctly “misdirection”, illusion, in the service of trickery — — a term used not only in Aleks’ article but in sites of interest such as Larry Johnson’s Sonar 21 and the Duran
KGB forever ! Prigozhin is Putin’s man.
Goals and results
Prigozhin jas several goals. Obviously, suckering NATO is one — persuading the Ukrainians to keep on sending in more men to kill. How many now? 200,000? 300,000? 400,000?
One of many UAF cemeteries
Prigozhin complains about ammo and about Russian troops not protecting his flanks and the next day, his forces advance further. The day after, on May 12….
1,725 Ukrainian men were killed on the Donbass front. This is the worst day’s military casualty rate since the US coup in Kiev launched the war in February 2014
On reason that the UAF has not launched an major offensive is that it is wasting its resources in places like Artemovsk (Bakhmut) and therefore reduced to “little” offensives, what John Helmer calls “imitation offensives”, which usually have minor tactical success — but at great cost.
The MSM trumpet occasional tactical successes.
The recent downing of two Russian aircraft (2 confirmed) and 2 probables in an “ambush” attack in Russian territory for the cost of 2 of the UAF’s rapidly diminishing fleet which loses something like one or two aircraft a day.
Minor UAF successes will make no difference to the outcome of the war.
The Russians will just update their attack tactics and equipment to prevent such incidents happening. In fact, this particular “setback” comes at just the right moment with the Poles reportedly supplying Mig29s updated with AIM120s.
Production of updated Mig35s for battlefield use is accelerating. The Russians have once again stepped-up missile attacks and airstrikes, with huge success, while advancing steadily. And they are updating their ISR capabilities.
The Russians learn from their mistakes. NATO does not.
But Prigozhin has another goal: to get his men attention— which can be parlayed into extra support and other benefits. He makes them heroes. To the Russians, anyway. That can be seen partially in the legal legitimization of the Wagner Group.
Maskirovka: WWIII
Of course, Prigozhin has other agenda. Prigozhin is also talking to the sizeable chunk of the Russian population who naturally want the war over fast. That pushes the military —which,like all militaries has its own bureaucracy — to adapt, to modernize, streamline its command structure, and adopt new weaponry. Such changes require dialog—conversation, if you will.
Putin mediates. While the goal appears to be immediate— eal victory is not.
Imagine if the war ended this year before the Autumn.
Prigozhin is begging for a counteroffensive spearhead aimed at his forces. If the plan works, Zelensky will be exiled to Miami within a month, and Russia’s forces can roll up to Kyiv and occupy the entire east bank of the Dnieper. The Americans will beg for a partitioning of Ukraine, and Cold War 2 will be in full effect.
But Cold War 2 is already in full effect. The Ukraine has already been effectively partitioned. But the West shows no signs of letting up in its attempt to destroy Russia and China. Therefore, Cold War 2 = World War III.
In the meantime, they Russians keep on attriting the Ukrainians so that much talked about Big Bang Offensive becomes a series of pops,
Aleks himself, in a earlier article pointed out that the Russians could, at any time, end the SMO — as Americans like Ritter and MacGregor have repeatedly advocated — with aggressive — but very, very costly offensives—which might also weaken Russia in the face of a NATO offensive. There is no need for that.
This so-called hybrid war is not just military— not even just economic— it is a war of ideas and values and cultures — a war of independence that cannot end without the defeat of the world’s overlords — the US and Europe, and the acceptance of the right of different peoples to set their own destinies.
It needs time to play out.
Lest we forget— or— let’s forget?
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The SMO is just a skirmish in a much bigger war…
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