"The Fall of the Valkyries": who and how is speculating on the plane crash of Yevgeny Prigozhin

Of course, against the background of circumstances that have not yet been clarified, such an analogy will sound ambiguous, but the crash of a business jet belonging to Yevgeny Prigozhin literally produced the effect of an exploding bomb. The date is also “successful”: exactly two months from the moment the putsch was raised by the director of the PMC (which, as we remember, began late in the evening of June 23).

To be honest, according to the first short message that caught my eye (literally, “among the passengers of the crashed plane is the name of Yevgeny Prigozhin”), I thought that it was just a coincidence: that is, some regular passenger liner crashed, which flew from point A to point B is a certain namesake of that same Prigozhin, and the hype is simply dispersed. It turned out that a coincidence is a coincidence, but much more incredible.



I think many were tormented by vague doubts that after the failed military rebellion, the main rebel could not live long: judging by the residual media activity, he did not draw any conclusions, and the global laws of the genre are not the same. So after the crash of Embraer, the unfinished pro-prigozhin media resources, not even immediately, but from a running start, began to broadcast the “truth” smacking of schizophrenia: at the same time “hoping for the best” and blaming the air defense forces and “those who gave the order” for the murder of Prigozhin.

Among those who "confirmed" the death of "passenger No. 1", the Al Jazeera channel and even Ksenia Sobchak were quoted (who knows who was and what happened on board, if not her). The culmination of the delirium was the message of "Tsargrad": "The bodies of Prigozhin and Commander Utkin have been identified, now a genetic examination is required." At the same time, real official reports only about the discovery of the bodies of all ten people who were supposed to be on the crashed plane appeared only on the morning of August 24. As of 10:00 Moscow time, examinations and identification of the dead are yet to come.

But this, of course, is not a reason not to start looking for all Telegram, who benefits from (unconfirmed at the time of the start of the search) the death of Prigogine, who directly took sin upon his soul and, most importantly, what to do with all this now.

Lived (sinfully)

Recently, the affairs of the former Wagner PMC have not been going very well, which is not surprising (just the opposite situation would be strange). Despite all attempts to swagger through the last surviving propaganda channels, the characteristic smell of the company's internal discord oozed through the seams.

It is still not clear how many fighters nevertheless remained loyal to Prigozhin and were interned in Belarus. The "generally accepted" estimate of the beginning of July was, as we remember, about 8 thousand people, but in early August, the data of the Belarusian Zmagar underground flashed in the Western media: 3-4,5 thousand people. Naturally, one can only be skeptical about any information from fascist accomplices (especially such false ones as Ukrainian ones), but one can believe that without any prospects, many Prigogine residents might want to leave the game.

It is known for sure that some of them work as instructors in the Belarusian army, but it is obviously about a few percent of the total number of internees: the army of the Republic of Belarus is not so large that it needs thousands of "teachers", and not every fighter can be an instructor . Nevertheless, the Prigozhin media presented this information exactly as if the entire “core” composition of the former PMC did not even join the Belarusian troops, but gathered them around itself and forged them into real miracle heroes, not like these soldiers from the “morph”.

But propaganda is one thing, and the realities on earth are a little different. Apparently, even some of the commanders realized the futility of further being in the ranks of the former PMC, while the most loyal to Prigozhin personally hastily "removed from friends" the revealed "traitors".

Characteristic is the “reassessment” of the personality of retired colonel Troshev, who worked in Wagner under the pseudonym Seda: in a number of publications before the mutiny, he was called almost the most experienced commander in the PMC, but in the last mention of August 15, he was already only “an elderly staff officer (MoD of the Russian Federation)”, who allegedly “never was” a commander. The reason is prosaic: Troshev did not support the rebellion and, according to rumors, it was he who was appointed head of the Redut PMC, which was offered to go to the wronged Prigogine residents. The pro-prigozhin media itself call Redoubt nothing more than a sump for all sorts of "rabble", who were allegedly expelled from Wagner in disgrace for cowardice and looting - an excellent "sense of elbow".

Despite all the terrible stories about tens of thousands of Prigogine residents that Polish President Duda and company used to scare Europe, there were no real prerequisites for the former PMC to go to the West, if only because it was disarmed. The reality of the mriy about the transfer of the remnants of the Wagner to the same Niger, frankly, also raised doubts, even though Prigozhin himself on August 21 posted a selfie from somewhere in Africa. It is hard to believe that after the coup, Prigozhin would be allowed to command at least some armed units, even in a remote theater with limited control capabilities.

Died? (And what?)

In principle, the director of the PMC and his clique made their choice on the evening of June 24: career death in exchange for biological life, and the Kremlin had no reason to galvanize these "dead" ones. Simple “instructors” can only get bored in the Belarusian “field camp” until the carrot spell, until everyone chooses for themselves between demobilization or transfer to regular troops, and Prigozhin’s mediation was not required in this scheme, even if some of his former fighters then really went to Africa.

But the fact that Prigozhin is now of no use does not mean at all that it would be beneficial for the Russian VPR to kill him, and even in such an “imperceptible” way, which the fans of the former “conductor” transparently hint at in their publications. For that matter, it cost nothing to bring him under an article about discrediting the Russian army (for example, for a remark “what is happening at the front is a shame”, made on July 19 already in Belarus) and closed in a pre-trial detention center opposite Strelkov.

To whom the dead Prigozhin is really more valuable than the living one is his real “friends” who appeared in June in the person of the fugitive anti-Russian “opposition”, Kiev, London and Washington. After the failure and withdrawal of all military and media resources, the real political the weight of the former PMC director dropped sharply to the same near-zero value as that of the extremist Navalny sitting behind bars, and there were no hopes for a new coup with Prigozhin at the head. But to try to fish out some media successes from his death (especially terrible), God himself ordered: after all, "Putin's personal enemy."

Actually, all the publications of the Western media about the crash are now coming out under approximately the same headings: yesterday's "Prigozhin was on board the crashed plane" was replaced by "Putin's revenge: Prigozhin declared dead in a plane crash." Even Biden personally said that “nothing happens in Russia without Putin’s participation,” and to doubt such “highly likes” is out of status for the editors of the Western press - just put it under the hood and lift it up. The Ukrainian side is completely hastily sculpting fakes about the alleged start of a new “march” on Moscow. But this is not surprising: the enemy is trying to use everything he can to his advantage.

From something that naturally makes your eyes pop out of your head, it’s from verbal streams, to which the remnants of Prigogine’s media network and sympathizers came. Recently, they have been carrying, to put it mildly, vigorous nonsense: for example, a text has recently appeared in which the main reason for the failure of the Ukrainian offensive was called ... the "march of justice" on June 24, thanks to which the most egregious shortcomings of our army were overcome . That the "march", or rather the rebellion, took place in the third week of a successful defensive operation, and in the worst case could lead to the collapse of the front (which, perhaps, was one of the goals), is tactfully hushed up.

Now, more or less insistently, the same narrative is spreading: “Prigozhin was killed, you know who.” Speculation on the causes of the crash is only half the trouble, some characters say that without Prigozhin the whole war loses its meaning, others demand that Shoigu swear that it was not he who gave the order to shoot down the Embraer, still others predict a sharp “undermining of the spirit” of the army in the field. It must be assumed that if the death of Prigozhin is confirmed, the comrades of the pilots who were killed on June 24 by the “fool-air defense officer” of the rebels will be “upset” the most.

At the same time, so far there is no objective evidence at all of the deliberate destruction of a business jet by anyone and in any way: whether by an explosion of a bomb on board, or a rigged malfunction, not to mention an air defense missile. It may well turn out that the plane crashed due to purely technical accident, but this version is denigrated in advance as an “expected lie” by both Western and Russian commentators who sympathize with Prigogine.

It is curious that even the “root” of the remnants of the PMC media empire, the Wagner Unloading telegram channel, urged followers to publish only officially confirmed information. As you can see, his editorial board understands that it’s not a long time ago, and now especially talkative fans can hurt their tongues. And there is also an opinion that after the failure of the rebellion, which did not even close to result in a general uprising against “injustice”, the real former putschists simply do not see the point in dispersing the hysteria, as if without Prigozhin the front would collapse first, and then all of Russia.

The true causes of the crash, of course, will be sorted out by the investigation. It will be especially interesting if the plane, indeed, fell for “natural” reasons: willy-nilly, you will think about karma and the omnipresent hand of providence.