ACTING 

IN MOSCOW

How the Wagner Group's supposed rebellion was a three-act opera

 

By Sir Charlattam

As the great Russian novelist Leonid Leonov once said “All genres of art...must possess epic elements”. What happened a few days ago with the Wagner group marching towards Moscow resembled an epic play by Bertolt Brecht that aroused the attention and close following of this surprising event. Leading the play was the provocative verbiage of its leader Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin who added drama to what was portrayed to Westerners as the “coup” that would dislodge Vladimir bloody Putin from the Kremlin.

The Anglo-Saxon media were quick to give their views and as always, with their tendentious speculations, they did nothing more than once again demonstrate the ignorance that makes them stand out.

Precisely as in Leonov's novels, while the Americans and their associates were intrigued by the deployment of Prigozhin and his men moving with an overture in the background, at the front the Ukrainian troops were irretrievably degraded, predicting that the much-proclaimed “counter-offensive” would not be able to continue this summer.

Meanwhile, in Rostov, Wagner's wagons and men were waiting in the streets...for orders. And it is here that we ask: From their leader Prigozhin or from Russia's commander-in-chief Putin? For the bureaucrats in Washington with Joe Biden at the helm, the epic spectacle warranted some popcorn. Only Jack Sullivan was not moved by the spectacle, his sense of smell suggested caution and that was what he suggested to those around him.

Downing Street and the Foreign Office were also following the show closely and while Sunak and Shadow were blathering like parrots about what they were seeing, Ministry of Defence (MoD) veteran Ben Wallace could not believe his eyes but it was something he said they could exploit and that is the business of MI6's Dirty Tricks Department.

When my source who has access to Vauxhall Cross and other government bureaucracy buildings in London told me what they expected from this move, I realised that Britain is certainly in the hands of imbeciles. According to this one, MI6 was tapping its sleepers in Russia to “support a coup”. Did they buy the masterpiece of suspense staged in Rostov? I couldn't believe it, although it does inform one of the utter ignorance and brainlessness with which they move in the upper echelons of British intelligence.

Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin was for months the centre of attention in the Western media not only for his group's sweeping victories and the capture of “Artemovsk”, but also for the vociferous and even aggressive words he dedicated publicly and daily to the Russian military establishment. If this guy was a seditionist, why didn't Putin's government cut off his channels if he was so abrasive and inconvenient in his views?

Prigozhin never thought of a coup d'état. Such a move would have been idiotic (and Prigozhin is no idiot) and he was well aware that just like an ant he would have been trampled by an elephant. There was a mess brewing over certain time-bound Kremlin decisions that -beyond personalities and passions- strike at the heart of the socio-political and ethno-cultural fabric of the Russian people. What got Wagner's boss off the hook was the summons to regularise the situation of his group with the Ministry of Defence, which is summarised in a legal document that expires on 1 July for the “official integration of his men into the Russian Armed Forces”, nothing more. All the speculation and additions by the intrigue commentators of decaying news outlets such as CNN, FOXNEWS and of course the BBC are filler and confetti.

In addition to the speculations of these predictable audio-visual media, we must not leave aside the novel stories of intrigue of the classic columnists amplifying the neo-conservative ideology of the US political-financial elite, such as the Washington Post and The New York Times, who further embellished the speculations with a whiff of wishful thinking.

Just as the blades were being sharpened to put together a big story that would help sustain an embarrassing situation for Zelensky and very counterproductive for Washington and its allies east of the Dniepr River, the situation took an unexpected turn and all the media noise about an “advance towards Moscow to overthrow Putin” and the hinted atmosphere of treason by some generals against the government suddenly fizzled out. After Putin's energetic speech condemning the traitors hours later, the glorious grouping and its leader were on their way to Belarus where they would occupy a gigantic abandoned Soviet-era base What has happened here?

By the time the head of MI6 operations still had no accurate reports from his sleepers in Moscow on how the situation on the Russian ground was developing, it was all (apparently) over without the prime minister and his advisers having any clear picture of what had happened.

For some it was a rebellion by an enraged Prigozhin seeking to settle scores with the defence ministry but especially with Generals Shoigu and Gerasimov, for others a pre-arranged psychological manoeuvre with Vladimir Putin that would confuse Westerners and in turn help detect traitors within sensitive sectors of the state; but another very plausible one is that Putin himself allowed this to go down these paths to get rid of Prigozhin and get his men absorbed into the defence ministry.

Whatever the real behind-the-scenes plot of this scene, the curtain has fallen and the show has ended leaving viewers in the West with more questions than certainties