The New Russian Revolution--Or Ukraine's?

Prigozhin is in the news again…bigly.

ALL of the mainstream media in the West are running this story.

It is very Prigozhin—in line with what I have previously written in my previous article on him—and you can be sure that he was aware these comments would be ignite a little fire in that trash dump we call the “media” in the West.

Diving the Western Media Dumpster

a.) Russia faces a “revolution”; the people against the “elites” as in 1917.

"The children of elites… allow themselves to lead a public, fat, carefree life," Prigozhin fumed, "while the children of others arrive back shredded to pieces in zinc coffins."

Now, keep in mind that Prigozhin is a very rich man and his family very well off indeed. His origins may be proletarian— like Putin— but he is now a card-carrying member of the elite.

Putin’s success, including that 80% support he gets, has been largely to do with his success in reining in the oligarchs and controlling corporatism — aka “business elites - -although bureaucracy — aka “governmental elites” — has been a harder nut to crack. In any case, the Russian government has never been more stable. Putin is seen as responsive, if not a reformer.

b.) According to CBS— and the other outlets concur—most apparently stenographing a common script— Prigozhin says that the Russian operation has been “one retreat after another. “

"We stormed in an aggressive manner and stomped our boots all over Ukraine while looking for Nazis, We approached Kyiv, s**t our pants, and retreated. Next onto Kherson, where we also s**t our pants and retreated, and nothing seems to be working out for us.”

Of course, Prigozhin knows, as most Russians do, that the Russians did not “retreat” from Kiev. They initially put the city under what you might call a loose siege to tie up Ukrainian forces in the north while they made gains in the south. Then they withdrew nominally as a gesture of good faith but really because there was no point in keeping troops in the area when they were too few to do anything but tie up Ukrainian forces, which was no longer necessary.

As for Kherson (City), they did not “retreat” there either — they carried out a strategic withdrawal to more defensible positions from which they could attrit Ukrainian forces with fewer casualties and without jeopardizing civilian lives. Kherson City, after all, was a Russian city.

The “retreat” from Kharkiv was a similarly strategic maneuver — and very successful— insofar that it, like every other similar action, resulted in thousands of Ukrainian casualties.

Prigozhin obviously understands all this. He reads Telegram too. He has his own channel. This is also a media war. Google versus Telegram. Facebook vs VK.

War with Reality

Google, as often as not is at war with reality.

c.) So the next media point is that key Putin goals — “denazification” and “demilitarization” are unachievable. Big failures! Like everything Russian.

He said the vague goals stated by his long-time associate President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials at the beginning of the war, as aiming to "denazify" and "demilitarize" Ukraine, had failed.

“Demilitarization” is an ongoing success. Only NATO support keeps the UAF alive and to date, the Russians have destroyed not one—but three NATO/ UAF armies— the biggest and best equipped that Europe can organize.

Prigozhin throws a lot of junk in the bin. He says the Ukrainians began the war with 20,000 men and 500 tanks and now have 200,000 and 5000 tanks. “Demilitarization”?

But the Ukrainians have suffered at least 200,000 casualties and lost now over 5000 tanks, even by their own estimates. They have been reduced to conscripting everyone from teenagers to seniors and begging for armor from NATO.

As for “denazification”, the four oblasts in Ukraine that voted to join Russia indicate what Russian Ukrainians think of the Nazis and Western Ukriane’s odious ideology.

With their excesses and constant lies, the Nazis are gradually denazifying even Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians. Propaganda always leaks. Word comes back from the front.

Millions have already spoken with their feet— with Ukrainians becoming Europe’s most unwelcome refugees and that trend creating pushback against pro-Nazi governments. The Ugly American once was. Now it is the Ugly Ukrainian.

Again, Prigozhin must be fully aware of this. He did not get to where he is now by being a moron.

A moron he is not

d.) Prigozhin warns that Ukraine will mount a counteroffensive which could be successful. Of course, he was saying that about Artymovsk, formerly Bakhmut, too.

"They will try to restore their 2014 borders, and this could easily happen; they will attack Crimea, they will try to blow up the Crimean bridge, cut off the supply lines, and for us, this scenario won't be good, so we need to prepare for a hard war,"

"We are in such a condition that we could f***ing lose Russia, which is the main problem... We need to impose martial law,"

Now, there is no way that Ukraine could restore its 2014 borders. They don’t have the means to besiege Crimea or cut off supply lines. They have already tried attacking the Crimean bridge— unsuccessfully. It is already a hard, hard war — for Ukraine.

Russia is not under real threat— except for UkroNazi terrorism on its borders - much less of a problem than previous Chechen terrorism 20 years ago.

So far, the UAF has not been able to mount a single successful offensive that the Russians did not allow for their own purposes, Kharkov being an example.

“Martial law”? LOL. Now that is straight from Western scripts. The media has been repeating the theme that insurrection is brewing in Russia. They like to hype “insurrection” in general, I guess. Viz: January 6th.

So, what is Prigozhin really doing?

Very clearly, these pronouncements are for the Western Media rather than Russians who are mostly entertained by his outbursts and vulgarities. In Russia, Yev’ is a character. The Bad Boy Who Made Good.

In the West, they say he “makes sense” when he massages their delusions, playing fast and loose with facts, as Simplicius has noted. For example, he quotes Wagner losses at 20,000 compared to Ukrainian losses of 50,000 when talking of Bakhmut.

In fact, those 20,000 were in all theaters since the war started. The 50,000 UAF losses are more recent and for Bakhmut only—and limited to those that Ukrainian sources acknowledge and which Western sources therefore take as fact.

The actual number of Ukrainian losses is likely much higher, perhaps 100,000— but conservatively 70,000 for two reasons.

a.) Ukrainians don’t count wounded who die outside of combat, perhaps 1 out of 3 compared to 1 out of 10 for the Russians.

b.) The Ukrainians often withdraw under heavy fire, leaving their dead on the battlefield. They may refuse to accept the corpses the Russians collect, since then they would have to pay families of the dead. These KIA become MIA.

Confirmation of this trick lies in UkroNazi attempts to accuse Russians of doing this, when there is no evidence that they do—and if they did it would be almost impossible for them hide.

When the Ukrainians accuse the Russians of doing something wrong, that tells you it is the Nazis who are up to this. Need I say, “Bucha”? Or Izyum.

Prigozhin is not stupid. So why would he say such things, that any Russian could pick apart. He certainly wouldn’t do that if he was angling for political office, which is a common assumption in the West, “telling truth to power”. Ummm…like Joe Biden.

Looking at Prigozhin’s history he has worked too hard and too long to jeopardize his future in this way by saying dumb stuff contrary to the popular wisdom in Russia. Wagner has just been legitimized as a company—something Putin has reportedly long been in favor of — and the organization of emerging from legal limbo.

Going into politics to attack the System from which he benefits? Unlikely. Rather, Prigozhin is just selling style. It’s the kind of stuff you hear in bars.

Russians drink a lot and they understand.

Supporting Putin

There is no doubt in my mind that Prigozhin’s outbursts strengthen Putin rather than undermine him in his twenty-year struggle with the entrenched remnants of the 20th Century oligarchy, the bureaucracy, and the Westernized Moscow elites — all of whom prospered on the backs of chaos in the 1990s.

Prigozhin’s position in the Russian media as a Mad Max maverick will be rewarded not by political power, I think—but in some other way. He is already a billionaire.

Prigozhin’s strategy in Bakhmut served two purposes.

a.) To sucker the West and keep the Ukrainians fighting — the better to “demilitarize” them— so they are less and less capable of waging war. That applies to NATO. Can it fight a war without ammo and tanks?

b.) To shake up the Moscow and military bureaucracies which - if you read Putin’s speeches — is also one of his main goals. Gerasimov and Shogiu are easy targets. But you will notice that Prigozhin never criticizes Putin; never Surovikin, who really runs the operation in Ukraine and has masterminded at least some of those “retreats”. In the case of Gerasimov and Shogiu, Prigozhin’s attacks force them to be progressive, Gerasimov in further modernization and adaptation of the Russian military, Shogiu in further efficiencies in the Russian military-industrial system, with greater and greater state control, more like China’s and less like the Western model.

Looking at reader response to Western Media articles and videos about Prigozhin’s rant, he has been successful once again. It is a masterful example of how to manipulate confirmation bias. The greater the bias, the harder the fall when the truth becomes apparent. So many people in the West point to Putin as proving that, yes, Russia is losing, the government is tottering, and there is no democracy from Moscow to Vladivostok.

Russian censorship? Or Matryoshka?

And what of Konstantin Dolgov fired from Telegra after this interview.

a.) His “sacking” lends credibility to Western notions of Russian authoritarianism and censorship. Yet Prigozhin is free to call Gerasimov and Shogiu assholes? And Dolgov is free to comment freely on Telegra letting him go at the request of un-named “powerful people”—a contradiction which indicates that this “censorship” did not extend to anything he said. My guess that Dolgov will be back at work — not necessarily at Telegra but maybe somewhere else — making a lot more money. Maybe he — a pro-Kremlin person— will run for the Duma.

Always keep in mind that Vladimir Putin learned about people on the mean streets of St. Petersburg, like Prigozhin - and in the KGB.

Maskirovka. The concept covers a lot of bases but especially what is called “reflexive control” —which was part of Soviet and later Russian game theory, as championed Levebvre, Burkov and Shchedrovitsky.

The KGB took these sophisticated concepts of game theory and put them to use in practical situations. It is something that Putin certainly learned—and if you look closely at his career, he uses it all the time — although that is a discussion for a later time.

Suffice it to say, it is all about manipulating perception by appealing to existing beliefs and leveraging and directing them to conclusions that you want.

Of course, image is everything. And subtle differences communicate different messages.

In this case, Prigozhin is an illustrative example of practical application of Russian game theory.

His off-the-wall criticisms of Russian elitism and corruptions and his suggestions that revolution is possible are actually more relevant to Zelensky’s Ukraine than to Russia which has made huge progress in dealing with all these problems. If Ukrainians accept what he is saying about Russia, which they are likely to do — then they are halfway to recognizing the more egregious expressions of elitism, corruption, censorship, and authoritarianism at home—things that actually affect impinge on k, if not threaten their lives.

This is a sorta Trojan horse thing.

Think: Russian Matryoshka dolls. Dolls inside dolls. Sometimes a quite different one in each

Russian game theory as practiced by the KGB makes use of this concept has been show to work time and time again.

The new Russian Revolution has been happening for years. It began when Putin took office. Perhaps it would be better to call it the Russian Evolution!

“Revolutions” are sudden change, — not always lasting. Evolution, however, is adaptation, which if successful leads to more. That big brain of yours is a good example.

This kind of change is slower and incremental, but much more permanent.

Right now, Russia’s war with the West is part of a bigger war of independence in which most of the world will end up participating to overthrow neo-colonialist, neoliberal rule, not because it is wrong but because it no longer works for them.

Ichi and his sister. Ichi (left) is bigger now and supervises me. His two sisters have a comfortable home in the suburbs. Buy me a coffee so I can buy Ichi treats. He and Jet keep me sane. Well…sometimes sane.

By the way, all cats are “on the spectrum”, just like me. Dogs too.

The Truth is a Community Effort

try to respond to all comments and questions. I research all articles widely but I can’t go into detail on every point. For example, I looked at almost a dozen articles and papers on Russian Game Theory but just cite one. So query me. Criticize me, too.

For example, one of my readers, just noticed one of my photos was wrong— which I immediately fixed. And Aleks of Black Mountain Analysis commented. suggesting I read his newest post. It’s great! Read here! It provides additional information, complementing mine.

Please feel free to ask any questions.