Evgeny Prigozhin — Truth Teller, Mad Man or Maskirovka?
5 May 2023 by Larry Johnson
The Wagoner Group’s chief benefactor, Evgeny Prigozhin, had quite a public meltdown this week on social media and the West is lapping it up:
Standing in a field of corpses, Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin on Friday published an expletive-ridden video personally blaming top defence chiefs for losses suffered by his Wagner Group fighters in Ukraine.
Prigozhin’s tirade reignited and escalated a long-running feud with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov, whom he has repeatedly accused of starving his forces of ammunition.
Prigozhin appeared next to dozens of bloodied corpses that he said were those of Wagner fighters. His expletives were bleeped out in the video published by his press service.
“We have a 70% shortage of ammunition. Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the ******* ammunition?” he yelled into the camera.
Yep. There is the narrative. Wagoner is retreating in frustration from the Bakhmut meat grinder, Ukraine is reinforcing its beleaguered troops, and the Russian military is in disarray. A nice, neat propaganda coup for NATO on the eve of Ukraine’s sure to succeed offensive. Just proves what Western analysts have been saying all along — the Russians are full of shit.
Personally, I call bullshit. For starters, Prigozhin is not a military commander nor does he have any military experience. He can whip up a great Chicken Kiev and is an incredible marketeer, but he ain’t Clauswitz or Sun Tzu.
I will not bore you with the conventional analysis that insists Prigozhin is either a whistleblower on steriods or someone who is on the verge of a mental breakdown. I fully understand why some will draw those conclusions, but I am not buying it.
Does anybody remember Ramzan Kadyrov and the Chechen musliam Akhmat Battalion? One year ago, if you monitored social media, the Chechen’s were the face of the Russian military operation as they encircled and crushed the Azov battalion in Mariupol. Kadyrov and the Akhmat Battalion were all over Telegram channels. Then, poof, they disappeared from the Russian narrative. They went home to rest and refit. At the same time, the world saw hardly a word or video or social media post on the regular Russian forces. In the social media world, if they ain’t talking about you or playing your videos, you don’t exist.
So what the hell does Kadyrov have to do with Wagoner and Prigozhin? I want to suggest that the Prigozhin operation is the shiny object a skilled magician uses to distract audience attention from the real magic. Thanks to social media, the West, including intelligence agencies, have been convinced that the fighting in Bakhmut is the center of the military universe. But it is not.
Yes, Bakhmut has been the site of some very bitter, debilitating fighting that has ravaged the Ukrainian forces in terms of men and equipment. The Wagner Group also has suffered casualties, but nothing on the scale inflicted on Ukraine. Meanwhile, there are other intense battles raging along the 900 kilometer line of conflict, such as Maryinka and Avdeevka. Not much public attention paid to them and the Akhmat Battalion is no where to be seen. Were they abducted by aliens?
I believe we are witnessing a 21st Century version of Russian Maskirovka. It is Bolshoi Military theater. I suppose some can argue that Prigozhin’s diva meltdown just a day after the failed Ukrainian drone attack on the Kremlin, which the Russians were quick to insist was an attempted assassination of Vladimir Putin. I do not buy it. Too convenient in terms of timing and narrative.
At this point most people in the United States have bought into the myth that the Russian Army is a paper tiger wracked by corruption and cowardly, craven leaders. In addition, there is virtually no attention being devoted to the disposition and activity of Russian forces. The world is focused on Ukraine’s long promised “massive” offensive that will drive Russia into the Black Sea.
In the modern world of ISR (i.e., Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) it is virtually impossible for any country to assemble a secret army with the array of tanks and armored vehicles necessary to launch an offensive. So what is a military planner to do? Get the world focused on a shiny object that is powerful enough to attract and divert the opponents intelligence analysts from what is really going on. I believe that Prigozhin and Bakhmut are that shiny object and the West, like a bored dog, is frantically chasing Russian squirrels that have nothing to do with the force Russia has in reserve waiting for the right moment to strike.
I could be wrong, would not be the first time, but the very existence of Russia is at stake and I believe that Putin, Shoigu and Gerasimov fully grasp that reality and are prepared to act with all necessary force to defeat the looming threat.
One more point to consider — the Western narrative insists that Putin is a brutal dictator who brokers no dissent. Really? If that was true then Prigozhin would be in shackles headed for a secret prison were he would die of some unexpected illness. But that is not what we are seeing. Prigozhin is posting outrageous comments and videos and is still walking around. That fact alone persuades me that he is playing a role in Russia’s current Maskirovka campaign.