Vladimir putin

We may never understand the series of events and decisions that led Yevgeny Prigozhin to stage an armed rebellion against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s administration with his Wagner Group private military company, or PMC. Prigozhin was opposed to the planned forcible incorporation of Wagner into the Russian armed forces. He also came to be a sharp critic of the fabricated rationale for Russia’s war on Ukraine and the sloppy way it was being waged by its generals, who are more focused on politics than on defeating Kyiv.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, has tonight halted his march on Moscow, in return for assurances from the Kremlin on his men’s safety. Alexander Lukashenko, Belarusian president, brokered the agreement. Prigozhin has just released the following statement on Telegram: We marched out on June 23 on the Justice March. In one day, we got within 200 kilometers of Moscow. During this time we did not spill a single drop of blood of our fighters. Now comes the moment when blood may be spilled. Therefore, understanding the responsibility that Russian blood will be spilled on one side, we are turning our columns around and retreating in the opposite direction to the field camps.

The legacy of John McCain was on full view in the halls of Congress this week, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers repeatedly invoked his legacy to demand that Russia release a journalist detained for criticizing Vladimir Putin. One year ago, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian political dissident and journalist, was arrested by Putin’s regime on trumped-up charges of spreading false information about Russia’s military during a speech he gave in McCain’s home state of Arizona. To commemorate his detention, and to call for his release, the McCain Institute hosted an event in the nation’s capital where lawmakers from both parties — who served jointly with McCain for almost 100 years between them — rallied to Kara-Murza’s defense.

Vladimir Kara-Murza dies hard. He has withstood not one but two poisoning attempts by Vladimir Putin's government. He has withstood the targeting of Russia's officials. And he has borne the ramifications of the West's turn away from confrontation with a regime he understands for its villainy. Now, Kara-Murza is facing what could be a final challenge — a trial against him based on the 2022 laws against "misinformation" about the Russian military in the Ukraine war, by an authoritarian regime bent on silencing all its critics and sending them into the dark quiet of a cell where they will end their days. Kara-Murza is forty-one, the father of three, a former advisor to assassinated Putin critic Boris Nemtsov and a longtime advocate against the regime.

Relationships between dictators are bound to be a bit strange, but Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s stands out for its theatrical quality. Meetings are carefully choreographed for maximum propaganda effect. Lavish gifts and gilded state rooms are the norm. Fluent in the language of autocratic flattery, the two always have gushing praise for each other. In 2019, before traveling to Russia, Xi said that Putin was his “best and bosom friend,” while just a year earlier Putin praised Xi as being a “remarkable thinker” and “a good friend I can count on.” Leading up to this week’s visit, Putin referred to Xi as his “good old friend,” and recalling Confucius, wrote, “Isn’t it a joy when a friend comes from afar!

A US MQ-9 Reaper drone’s propeller was hit by a Russian Su-27 fighter jet over the Black Sea on Tuesday, causing the drone to lose control and crash. Before the fighter made contact with the drone, it and its wingman released fuel in what was likely an attempt to impair the American aircraft. The drone was in international airspace — which Russia seems to acknowledge — leaving no justification under international law for Moscow’s aggressive actions. Whether or not the physical contact was premeditated remains unknown. The Kremlin claims the drone’s “sharp maneuvers” caused it to crash and that its jet did not hit it.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine opened the most dramatic divide between East and West since the Cold War. Most of these divisions were clear beforehand — Hungary and Turkey were longtime thorns in the side of NATO, for example. Yet South Africa’s warming ties with Russia and China seemed to come out of nowhere. South Africa's initial reaction to the invasion was the same as much of the Western world, demanding that Russia leave Ukraine. That did not last, however. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on March 17 that “The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region.

The contrast between the two presidents could hardly be starker. One is dwelling in his own dream palace, indulging fantasies about a return to superpower status while transforming his dismal fiefdom into a larger North Korea. The other is on a roll, creating a new grand alliance to prevent his foe from claiming suzerainty over Ukraine and engaging in further territorial predation. In his state of the nation address on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin served up his usual nauseating soup of anti-Western conspiracy theories, complete with references to Ukraine’s “neo-Nazi regime” and a Western “totalitarian” mission. If anyone knows anything about totalitarian impulses, it’s Putin himself.

The GOP’s foreign policy doves and soft isolationists have grown stronger, with 40 percent of “Republican and Republican-leaning independents” saying the US is giving too much aid to Ukraine. Former president Donald Trump has now taken up the mantle of this movement, firmly anchoring himself to the anti-Ukraine aid faction of the party. Trump recently gave an interview to radio host Hugh Hewitt in which he made one thing clear: he’s no fan of aiding Ukraine. Asked about sending F-16s, Trump said, “I think the United States should negotiate peace between these two countries, and I don’t think they should be sending very much.” When Hewitt asked if the former president would cut aid to Kyiv, Trump responded, “we’ve got to make peace.

Since Moscow launched the invasion of Ukraine in February, the deaths of Russian oligarchs seem to be constantly in the headlines. Despite the official causes of death given, Cockburn has a sneaking suspicion that Vladimir Putin might have something to do with it. Death by unusual, news-making circumstances is a hallmark of his regime. The Russian leader intends for such deaths to make the news and for the world to blame the Kremlin for them. It forms part of his strategy of intimidating potential opponents and dissidents. Enemies of Putin that have gone to the West have faced radiation poisoning and attacks with powerful nerve agents. Those who have countered Putin in Russian politics have been jailed or gunned down in the streets. Now, apparently, oligarchs are in the crosshairs.