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| Prigozhin and his (probable) killer |
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| Russian president Vladimir Putin |
‘Well, that is a surprise!’ noted one sarcastic contributor to Facebook as news came through of the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash just two months after his abortive coup in Russia against Vladimir Putin. It had seemed to be that Putin might just forgive his rival who led the Wagner mercenary group and had sent his men – often to their deaths – into Ukraine.
How naïve that now seems in retrospect. Putin is not the sort of man to tolerate any form of independence or dissent, which he categorises as being a 'traitor’, ie someone is not totally loyal to him. It was evidently only a matter of time before Prigpzhin had to be eliminated and, if nine others died with him, who cares? In Russia, the crew member and pilots are considered collateral damage and their deaths are ignored - or tolerated.
It may seem like you are safe in the sky but you are actually very vulnerable in an aeroplane. A plane can be shot down relatively easily and your chance of survival is virtually nil. Give a man just enough time to think he is safe enough to fly and then bring down his plane and there will be no survivors and little in the way of proof that it was not an accidental event. It now seems that it was a bomb inside the plane that brought it down rather than a missile, although we will never be completely sure, such is the fog of disinformation that comes out of Russia.
Putin and his cronies have form in this respect. The Russian security services – surely with Putin’s at least tacit approval – sent assassins to kill Sergei Skirpal, a man they regarded as a traitor who was living in Salisbury in England. This had the element of a Keystone Cops operation and a British woman Dawn Sturgess ended up being the only (accidental) victim. Again she was collateral damage in the process, although she had nothing to do with Skirpal but, being poor, accepted as a present some perfume which was actually a deadly poison.
The Russians had the gall to pretend that the assassins were only going to Salisbury to look at the cathedral spire, ignoring Big Ben and the other better known sites in Britain. They were captured on camera at Heathrow but have got away with their crime and are now free (presumably) in Russia. They failed to kill their target but did send out a warning that Russia does not tolerate any form of free thinking or dissent.
What angers me so much about this attitude is that Putin just laughs at the idea that they should respect Britain’s domestic laws and procedures for dealing with these matters in our quaint law-abiding country. He (or the Russian state, which is really the same thing) send their assassins anywhere in the world where there are independent thinkers - or 'traitors'.
Putin has no interest in respecting the territory of other countries or human rights, even lives. He wants to go down in history as the man who brought Ukraine back into the Russian fold and, if this means sacrificing lives, he is quite prepared for that. Thousands of Russian soldiers and Ukrainian civilians have had to be sacrificed for his vanity and ambition.
Sometimes we are asked who we despise most. I try not to do this – it is too easy to blame individuals when it is a collective failure that should be targeted, such as at Grenfell Tower, where the desire to lock up individuals is actually deflecting blame from what was surely a collective unwillingness to apply basic safety precautions in the name of greater economy.
Yet I am prepared to make an exception for Putin, whose monstrous vanity has led to so many deaths, both of Russian soldiers and Ukrainians who would prefer to head west rather than east, And who can blame them when all they have when under Russian ‘protection’ is a loss of their national identity and absorption into a country that wants to conquer them?
There are signs that the Russians are growing tired of Putin and tha this grip on power maybe slipping. Those who think independently are either silenced by being locked up or have given up on Russia altogether and are moving abroad (which only accentuates the problems). However, there is one thing that makes a tyrant vulnerable and that is failure.
If the Russians do grow tired of Putin and decide to dispose of him, I will not shed a tear. He has dealt out so much death that this is the only option for him now. He would never stay quiet as a deposed leader so any dethronement would have to end in his death. How does that old saying go? If you live by the sword, you have to die by the sword. As for us, we can only say that might does not have to triumph over right and that we should continue to support right over might.
Edwin Lerner
My other bog is diaryofatouristguide.blospot.com
