A Quick Word On Prigozhin’s ‘Accidental Coup’
This time last year, geopolitical observers were beginning to question their assumptions about an inevitable Russian socioeconomic calamity.
Against the odds, it looked as though the country might survive the most aggressive sanctions regime ever assembled in the post-War period without suffering a collapse. Vladimir Putin's Russia, some said, could exist in perpetuity as a pariah state with limited access to hard currency and few allies.
Fast forward 12 months and some sort of collapse once a
I’m with Walt. 24 mos is the over under bet on the table boys and girls….
Overheard in a tony restaurant just outside of Minsk… “Monsieur Prigozhin, comment voudriez-vous que votre polonium soit préparé?”
After he moved on Zelensky and Kyiv in Feb. 2022, my best guess inre Putin’s eventual demise was “within four years.” Eighteen months later, I see nothing from the average Russian to suggest that Putin won’t still be sitting atop his gangster state a year from now. There are parallels, I fear, to our own situation here in the States.
Eventually, he has to figure out what to tell the public about that war. Even with the propaganda curtain, he can’t sustain it forever. It’s not the US in Iraq. It’s right next door, and even if Russian casualties are, say, just a fourth of what Western intelligence agencies say they are, that’s still a lot of people. By the two-year anniversary of the invasion, it’ll be a lot more still. He has no obvious path to any sort of decisive victory. I guess he could try to just grind it out, but there won’t be anything left to occupy after three or four years of this. And he can’t nuke them. What would he tell Xi? “Sorry, I know I said I wouldn’t start a nuclear war, but I lied”?
Who will live longer – Putin or Prigohzin? My money’s on Vlad.
Sooner or later Prigohzin will mistakenly sit down by a window in a tallish building and suddenly there will be an oops.