“If you look at Putin’s behaviors on that day”, Richard Moore said of June 24, “Prigozhin started off I think, as a traitor at breakfast. He had been pardoned by supper and then a few days later, he was invited for tea. So, there are some things and even the chief of MI6 finds that a little bit difficult to try and interpret, in terms of who’s in and who’s out.” …
“He really didn’t fight back against Prigozhin”, Moore said. “He cut a deal to save his skin, using the good offices of the leader of Belarus”, he said, referring to the intervention of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko who struck the deal. “So even I can’t see inside Putin’s head”, he added. “He has to have realized, I am sure that something that is deeply rotten in the state of Denmark – to quote Hamlet – and he had to cut this deal.”
Moore added it was difficult to make “firm judgments” about the fate of Wagner itself, as a mercenary group, but they “do not appear to be engaged in Ukraine”, and that there “appears to be elements of them in Belarus.”
[MI-6 isn’t alone in assessing Russia’s leadership as a mess. I’ll have a link to The Economist on that topic later too. It’s worth noting that Prigozhin has been seen in public today too, although he’s clearly keeping a very low profile. The situation in Moscow looks dangerously unstable, especially for Putin. A show of weakness is usually fatal in these authoritarian regimes. — Ed]
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