FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The wreckage of Yevgeny Prigozhin's private Embraer jet has been cleared from the crash site and the flight recorders have been recovered, but the metaphorical smoke still hasn't cleared in Moscow.
We still don't know what crashed Prigozhin's Embraer Legacy 600. Expert analysis points to the possibility of an explosion and we may never know. To use an imprecise term, the biggest black box in this aviation disaster is Russian President Vladimir Putin's state apparatus, which is not known for its transparency.
This in turn points to a much bigger question: How will the Russian landscape change after the departure of the man who posed the most serious challenge to Putin's rule in more than two decades?
Putin has maintained his stance, referring obliquely to Prigozhin's contributions to the war against Ukraine.
"I knew Prigozhin for a very long time, since the beginning of the 90s. He was a man of hard luck and made serious mistakes in life and achieved the necessary results both for himself and when I asked him for this for a common cause, as in recent months. He was a talented man, a talented businessman," Putin said on Thursday.
But the real message Putin was sending, after waiting a full day after the fall, appeared to be aimed at Russia's elite: mistakes can be fatal.
The Kremlin has strongly denied speculation that the Russian state may have been involved in the accident.
"All this is an absolute lie. Now, of course, there is a lot of speculation about this disaster and the tragic death of the plane's passengers, including Yevgeny Prigozhin," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
But not everyone is likely to be convinced. In July, after Prigozhin's failed rebellion, US President Joe Biden joked at a press conference that if he were Prigozhin, "I'd be careful what I eat, I'd keep an eye on my menu."
The march on Moscow by Prigozhin's men was a direct threat to the state and a personal affront to Putin, who has long cultivated an image of mastery and near-infallibility as tsar.
So who would dare put their head in danger? Any aspiring Prigozhin, and there seems to be none on the immediate horizon, is likely to be conscious of crossing real or perceived red lines.
It's worth remembering that Prigozhin never had particularly high name recognition in Russia, at least certainly not before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But the Wagner group's successes on the battlefield raised its public profile, and Russian state television praised its Wagner fighters for capturing the devastated eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
That changed in late June after Wagner's march on Moscow raised the worrying possibility of civil war in Russia. Prigozhin may have dismissed the mercenary rebellion as a "protest," but the uprising seriously damaged his prestige. Independent pollster Levada-Center conducted a poll in July that found Prigozhin's public approval had fallen sharply after the failed uprising.
But this does not mean that Prigozhin did not have loyal zones. The Wagner group's actions were closely followed by a group of nationalist bloggers, and Prigozhin, who recruited fighters from Russian prisons and used the same salty language as the convicts, appeared to have earned the respect of many of his fighters.
Pra, a kërcënon vdekja e Prigozhin të mobilizojë ndjekësit e tij, duke paraqitur një sfidë të mundshme për shtetin? Në këtë fazë, jo. Luftëtarëve të Wagner-it iu ofrua të nënshkruanin kontrata me ushtrinë e rregullt pas kryengritjes së tyre dhe Igor Girkin, një ultranacionalist i linjës së ashpër që kishte kritikuar hapur Putinin, u gjend në burg. Precedentët janë krijuar.
Tifozët dhe mbështetësit e Prigozhin nuk u penguan të vendosnin lule jashtë selisë së Wagner në Shën Petersburg, qyteti i dytë i Rusisë dhe vendlindja e Putinit dhe Prigozhinit , pas rrëzimit të së mërkurës. Mattheë Chance i CNN madje ishte dëshmitar i një prej kujtimeve të tmerrshme në vendngjarje: një vare, simboli i brutalitetit të Ëagner-it, i vendosur mes buqetave me lule.
But the bouquets can be cleaned. It is worth recalling a political assassination that shook Russia to the core in 2015, the assassination of the charismatic opposition Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead by the Kremlin. Admirers of Nemtsov continued for years to leave flowers at the site of the bridge where he was killed. Local authorities always swept away the flowers and no permanent memorial stands for the slain politician
In conclusion, there is no evidence pointing to the involvement of the Kremlin or the Russian security services in the clash. But Prigozhin's life and fortunes have exposed fissures within the paranoid, vindictive gerontocracy that rules Russia./ Taken from CNN, adapted Pamphlet
Lini një Përgjigje