Russian officers who hadn’t been paid by Moscow sold key intel on the Black Sea Fleet to Ukrainian resistance fighters. Then the headquarters blew up.

Business Insider

Russian officers who hadn’t been paid by Moscow sold key intel on the Black Sea Fleet to Ukrainian resistance fighters. Then the headquarters blew up.

Jake Epstein – September 25, 2023

VIDEO: Why Russia's military is failing so far in Ukraine

A satellite image shows smoke billowing from a Russian Black Sea Navy HQ after a missile strike, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Sevastopol, Crimea, September 22, 2023.
A satellite image shows smoke billowing from a Russian Black Sea Navy HQ after a missile strike, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in Sevastopol, Crimea, September 22, 2023.PLANET LABS PBC/Handout via REUTERS
  • Russian officers reportedly leaked sensitive intel on the Black Sea Fleet to Ukrainian partisans.
  • A resistance group told the Kyiv Post that the officers hadn’t received salary payments from Moscow.
  • Ukrainian later targeted the Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters in a huge missile strike last week.

After missing their anticipated salary payments, Russian officers decided to leak sensitive information about Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet to a Ukrainian partisan movement. The intelligence later paved the way for a devastating missile strike on the fleet’s headquarters in the occupied Crimean peninsula, Ukrainian media reported.

Ukrainian resistance fighters told the Kyiv Post in a recent interview that they managed to gather information about high-ranking Russian commanders from officers who were frustrated by Moscow’s failure to pay their salaries on time. The officers were financially compensated in exchange for the information, which was then passed along to state agencies and reportedly used to plan last week’s attack on the Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters.

“Delays in payments alone do not force the military armed forces of the Russian Federation to go against the Russian authorities,” a spokesperson for the partisan movement of Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea (ATESH) told the Kyiv Post, which revealed details of the arrangement in a Monday report. “But the financial reward only helps them to decide on cooperation with the ATESH movement, it serves as an additional incentive.”

Kyiv’s forces on Friday bombarded the Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol, located on the southwestern edge of Crimea, with several Western-made Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles. Videos and photographs of the attack showed the moment one of the missiles slammed into the building, as well as the major structural damage that the facility suffered as a result.

The Ukrainian military later said that it timed the strike to coincide with a meeting of Russia’s naval leadership. On Monday, Kyiv’s Special Operations Forces said 34 people were killed — including Adm. Viktor Sokolov, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet — and another 105 were injured. Insider was unable to immediately and independently confirm the claims.

It is not clear how much money was offered to the Russian officers, nor are the identities of these officers known. ATESH said they had access to activities of the Black Sea Fleet’s leadership though. The group said information was passed to state agencies like the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), the latter of which confirmed to the Kyiv Post that it has worked with partisans to help target Russian positions around Crimea.

“The Russian military is well aware of the existence of the partisan movement and throw all their forces and means to suppress it and identify our agents,” the ATESH spokesperson said. “The growing resistance among the Crimeans confuses them very much.”

A satellite image shows smoke billowing from a Russian Black Sea Navy HQ after a missile strike, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Sevastopol, Crimea, September 22, 2023.
A satellite image shows smoke billowing from a Russian Black Sea Navy HQ after a missile strike, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in Sevastopol, Crimea, September 22, 2023.PLANET LABS PBC/Handout via REUTERS

The strike on the Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters marked the latest in a string of Ukrainian attacks over the past few weeks targeting high-value Russian positions and assets around Crimea, which Kyiv has vowed to liberate from nearly a decade under Russian occupation.

These incursions include the destruction of multiple S-400 air-defense systems, attacks on an air base and on a command post belonging to the Black Sea Fleet, and a massive missile strike on a shipyard in Sevastopol. Western intelligence assessed that the assault damaged two ships while also delivering a long-term blow to Moscow’s maritime logistics and operations, and Ukraine’s military claimed dozens of Russian sailors were killed.

“Crimea will definitely be demilitarized and liberated,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on social media after the Friday strikes on the headquarters. “Merchant ships will return to the Black Sea. And the Russian warships will eventually take their rightful place, turning into an iconic underwater museum for divers that will attract tourists from all over the world. To a free Ukrainian Crimea.”

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet commander among 34 killed in a missile strike in Crimea, Ukraine claims

Associated Press

Russia’s Black Sea Fleet commander among 34 killed in a missile strike in Crimea, Ukraine claims

Illia Novikov – September 25, 2023

In this photo provided by the Odesa Region Administration, firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a hotel at the seaport after a Russian rocket attack in Odesa, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 25, 2023. (Odesa Region Administration via AP)
In this photo provided by the Odesa Region Administration, firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a hotel at the seaport after a Russian rocket attack in Odesa, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 25, 2023. (Odesa Region Administration via AP)
In this photo provided by the Odesa Region Administration, firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a hotel at the seaport after a Russian rocket attack in Odesa, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 25, 2023. (Odesa Region Administration via AP)
In this photo provided by the Odesa Region Administration, firefighters work to extinguish a fire in a hotel at the seaport after a Russian rocket attack in Odesa, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 25, 2023. (Odesa Region Administration via AP)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The missile strike that blasted the Crimean headquarters of Russia’s navy last week killed 34 officers, including the fleet commander, Ukraine said Monday, though it provided no evidence to support its claim.

Ukraine’s Special Operation Forces said on the Telegram messaging app that its strike on the main building of the Black Sea Fleet headquarters in the port city of Sevastopol had wounded 105 people. The claims could not independently be verified and are vastly different from what Russia has reported.

Russia’s military announced the attack on the building and initially said one serviceman was killed but later said the person was not killed but missing. Moscow has provided no further updates.

The Crimean Peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, has been a frequent target since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine 20 months ago. Crimea has served as the key hub supporting the invasion.

On Monday evening, Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said Russian air defenses shot down a missile in the vicinity of the military airfield in Belbek, a village near the port city. He didn’t offer any details about possible damage or casualties.

Ukraine has increasingly targeted naval facilities in Crimea in recent weeks while the brunt of its summer counteroffensive makes slow gains in the east and south of Ukraine, the Institute for the Study of War said. It followed Friday’s attack with another barrage on Saturday.

The new death and casualty figures are a steep increase from what Ukraine’s intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, told Voice of America on Saturday when he said at least nine people were killed and 16 others wounded in the attack that left the building smoldering. He also said Alexander Romanchuk, a Russian general commanding forces along the key southeastern front line, was “in a very serious condition.”

The new report indicates that the fleet’s chief, Adm. Viktor Sokolov, was also killed, though no supporting evidence was offered. He was not named in the statement by the Special Operation Forces, but Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the minister of internal affairs of Ukraine posted his name and a photo on social media.

Ukraine’s military also offered more details about Friday’s attack. It said the air force conducted 12 strikes on the Black Sea Fleet headquarters, targeting areas where personnel, military equipment and weapons were concentrated. It said that two anti-aircraft missile systems and four Russian artillery units were hit.

The casualty figures were announced as Russian drone and missile strikes near Odesa damaged an abandoned hotel, a grain silo and killed two people who were buried in the rubble of a grain warehouse in the Black Sea port city, Ukrainian officials said. Russian attacks elsewhere were blamed for killing six other civilians in the past day in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s air force reported downing all Russian drones launched overnight, but one of 12 Kalibr missiles and two P-800 Oniks cruise missiles apparently made it past air defenses.

Russia has continuously targeted port and grain storage facilities in Odesa since pulling out of a wartime deal that allowed Ukrainian grain exports to countries facing the threat of hunger. The attacks have destroyed silos, warehouses, oil terminals and other infrastructure critical for storage and shipping.

The Russian Defense Ministry said long-range missiles and drones were used to strike facilities that it alleged had housed foreign mercenaries and trained saboteurs. The ministry didn’t name locations or provide other specifics to support its claim. It also said it downed several Ukrainian drones.

The attacks came as independent U.N.-backed human rights experts said they found new evidence of war crimes committed by Russian forces and as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the arrival of the first Abrams tanks sent by the U.S. that could figure in their slow-moving summer counteroffensive

The U.N. Independent Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said it found evidence of crimes committed by both sides in the war, but far more by Russians, including instances of torture, some of it fatal, and rape of women as old as 83. It said it was also looking into allegations that Russian forces committed genocide.

Zelenskyy thanked allies on Telegram for their support in announcing the anticipated arrival of the tanks. He didn’t say how many tanks had arrived, but the U.S. has said it was sending 31 tanks.

In other fighting, Russian forces also dropped bombs and launched six heavy artillery strikes on southern Ukraine’s Kherson region, destroying a school and factory and damaging residential buildings. Three of the deaths reported by the Ukrainian president’s office were in the region: three people were killed and two others were injured by bombs that hit the city of Beryslav. A man was killed in the neighboring village of Lvove.

In eastern Ukraine, Russians attacked residential areas of 10 cities and villages in the Donetsk region, killing two people in the village of Zarichne, according to the presidential office.

During fighting in southeast Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, the Russian army carried out five airstrikes on Orikhiv, a small city, and its surrounding area.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed three Ukrainian drones over the Kursk region of Russia and three others over the Bryansk region early Monday. It also reported that three drones were shot down over the Belgorod region.

Kursk Gov. Roman Starovoit said a downed drone over the center of the city of Kursk damaged the roof of an administrative building and several private houses and shattered windows in an apartment building. Starovoit said there were no injuries.

A day earlier, a Ukrainian drone damaged the roof of an administrative building in Kursk that some Ukrainian and Russian media reported housed the offices of the Federal Security Service, Russia’s main domestic security agency.

Bryansk Gov. Alexander Bogomaz said the drones caused no casualties, but Ukrainian rockets damaged a farm building and killed cattle.

During the drone attack, Russian authorities delayed or diverted several flights at Moscow’s airports.

The Defense Ministry said five other Ukrainian drones were also shot down over Crimea and the Black Sea.

Associated Press journalists Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia and Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.

Russian Naval Commander and 33 Officers Obliterated in Biggest Blow Yet, Says Ukraine

Daily Beast

Russian Naval Commander and 33 Officers Obliterated in Biggest Blow Yet, Says Ukraine

Nico Hines – September 25, 2023

Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters
Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters

In one of the most devastating blows of the war so far, Ukraine says it took out a whole chunk of Russia’s naval leadership in a single missile attack, which killed the commander of the notorious Black Sea Fleet.

Vice Admiral Viktor Sokolov was allegedly killed in Friday’s missile strike on the Black Sea Fleet’s HQ in Crimea, which was illegally occupied by Russia in 2014.

Sokolov, who was drafted in to beef up the faltering navy last year, was attending a meeting of top naval and military figures when the missile crashed into the building in Sevastopol, according to the Special Operations Forces of Ukraine. The Spetsnaz unit claims that 34 officers in total were killed in the explosion.

A huge plume of black smoke was seen billowing from the building last Friday in one of Ukraine’s most stunning missile assaults of the war. The direct hit on the naval command center was a symbolic blow for Russia as the Black Sea Fleet has been a source of national pride since it was established by Catherine the Great in 1783.

President Vladimir Putin fired the commander of the fleet last year after it suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks including the sinking of its lead warship, the Moskva, and an attack on its air base in Crimea that saw eight warplanes destroyed.

American Long-Range Missiles Threaten to Blast Through Putin’s ‘Red Line’

Sokolov, who previously held a prestigious role as the head of a military academy, was brought back into active service to reinstate pride in the Black Sea Fleet.

His death—compounded by those of so many of his colleagues—in the heart of the fleet’s operation would represent a severe blow to that pride.

Over the weekend, rumors on social media began to suggest that Sokolov had been caught up in the explosion. The Special Operations Forces posted its confirmation on Telegram on Monday.

“After the attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters, 34 officers, including the Commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, lost their lives, with an additional 105 occupants sustaining injuries. The headquarters building is beyond repair,” the Telegram statement read.

The special forces unit did not name any of the other victims of the attack by one of the Storm Shadow air-launched missiles donated by Britain and France earlier this year.

Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, previously said Col. Gen. Alexander Romanchuk, the commander of Russian forces on the southern front, and Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsekov were seriously wounded in the attack.

Ukraine has been desperate to prove that it can make serious gains in the remainder of the fighting season before winter sets in and, in particular, Kyiv wants to show the skeptical West that it is capable of retaking Crimea.

Republican Case Against Biden Beautifully Goes Up in Flames on Fox News

The New Republic

Republican Case Against Biden Beautifully Goes Up in Flames on Fox News

Tori Otten – September 25, 2023

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Monday completely—and hilariously—destroyed one of Republicans’ main arguments to prove that Joe Biden is corrupt.

Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden, after months of insisting that the president is guilty of criminal wrongdoing. The GOP has yet to produce any actual evidence of their claims. But one of their main talking points is that Poroshenko fired former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin after Biden pressured him to do so.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade played Poroshenko a clip of Shokin saying Biden wanted him fired because he had been investigating the oil company Burisma Holdings while Hunter Biden served on the board.

“First of all, this is [a] completely crazy person,” Poroshenko replied without hesitation, referring to Shokin. “This is something wrong with him. Second, there is not one single word of truth.”

“Please do not use such a person like Shokin to undermine the trust we feel” from both U.S. parties, he continued.

Poroshenko added that Shokin was fired because “he played very dirty games.”

Shokin was fired in 2016 for corruption. Three years later, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani started a conspiracy theory that the Biden family accepted a $10 million bribe to remove Shokin to stop a probe into Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma. This claim has been repeatedly debunked by the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, as well as Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas. And now, the former Ukrainian president himself.

Russian soldiers who ran out of ammunition say they are being sent to ‘certain death’ in a video shared by a Ukrainian official

Business Insider

Russian soldiers who ran out of ammunition say they are being sent to ‘certain death’ in a video shared by a Ukrainian official

Rebecca Cohen – September 21, 2023

Russians attend military training.Arkady Budnitsky/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Russian soldiers who ran out of ammunition say they are being sent to ‘certain death’ in a video shared by a Ukrainian official
  • Russian soldiers say they are being sent to “certain death” in a video shared by Ukraine.
  • They say Russia asked a group of Russian artillerymen, who ran out of ammo, to fight on the front line.
  • They said they fled and left all of their weapons behind because they were not trained as infantry.

A group of Russian artillerymen said they were being forced to move to the front lines after running out of ammunition — despite lacking any training on how to fight at the front, according to a video shared by a Ukrainian official on Wednesday.

Artillerymen typically position themselves away from the front line, where they fire ranged weapons to support troops in front of them. Infantrymen are typically ground forces who engage in close-range combat using different types of weapons.

Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor in Ukraine’s internal affairs ministry, posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, in which the group of men claiming to be Russian soldiers say they are “servicemen in regiment number 1442” and are fighting in “the area of Klishchiivka.”

In the video, which includes subtitles written by Gerashchenko, the men say their infantry had been killed in battle, prompting Russia to try and reinforce the front line.

“We ran out of ammunition, so we got reassigned to infantry. We weren’t trained to be infantry. We were trained to be artillerymen. That’s it,” one of the men says in the video.

They said some soldiers were refusing the assignment and fleeing instead.

The men said that Russia was sending them to “certain death” by asking them to leave their positions as artillerymen to fight on the front lines. They added that others are fleeing, and some are “hanging themselves already” to get out of the new assignment.

“We’re not abandoning our duties, and we never have,” one man says in the video. “We’re just being sent to certain death. All of us. The unprepared.”

Russia is exhausting its resources and ‘a reckoning is coming,’ says Ukraine’s spy chief

Business Insider

Russia is exhausting its resources and ‘a reckoning is coming,’ says Ukraine’s spy chief

Thibault Spirlet – September 18, 2023

Russian forces ride on an armored vehicle in Armyansk on February 22, 2022.
Russian forces ride on an armored vehicle in Armyansk on February 22, 2022.STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images
  • Russia is running out of military resources, Ukraine’s spy chief told The Economist.
  • Kyrylo Budanov cited Russia’s struggling mobilization and Putin’s meeting with Kim Jong Un.
  • Budanov predicts Russia’s supply of weapons will dry up by 2026, if not sooner.

Russia is running out of reserve troops and weapons it desperately needs to sustain its fighting in Ukraine, Ukraine’s intelligence chief said.

“Contrary to what the Russian Federation declares, it has absolutely no strategic reserve,” Kyrylo Budanov told The Economist in an interview published on Sunday.

Budanov cited Russia’s underperforming troops, its poor-quality equipment, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Un, as evidence for his claim.

“If everything is fine and Russia has enough resources, why are they looking for them all over the world? The answer is obvious. There is nothing to extract any more,” he said.

Budanov pointed to the “premature” deployment of Russia’s 25th Combined Arms Army in early August, which he said had only 80% of the manpower and 55% of the equipment it needed to operate effectively.

The UK Ministry of Defence also reported earlier this month that Russia had likely deployed the 25th early, in August instead of December.

It’s likely that it was “rushed into action early” as Russia “continues to grapple with an over-stretched force along the front and Ukraine continues its counter-offensive on three different axes,” the MOD said.

While Russia is reportedly poised to step up its mobilization drive, Budanov told The Economist that head count is the only obvious advantage that Russia retains over Ukraine.

When it comes to Russian human resources “the quality is low, but the quantity is sufficient,” he said.

That’s not the case for military hardware. Given what he called Russia’s dwindling military resources, Budanov predicted that Russia’s economy will survive only until 2025, and its flow of weapons will dry up in 2026, or “perhaps earlier,” he told the outlet.

“A reckoning is coming,” Burdanov said, per The Economist.

Later in the interview, Burdanov acknowledged that Ukraine also risks running out of resources, but he insisted his country has Western allies ready to supply them with aid, whereas Russia is dependent on itself.

While some Ukrainian officials have said they are noticing a “shift” in their partners’ readiness to continue supplying support at the same level, Budanov said he had “good intelligence” about realities in the West.

“Warehouses in Western countries are not completely empty. No matter what anyone says,” he added. “We can see this very clearly as an intelligence agency.”

Kim Jong Un reportedly hops on his bulletproof, drab green train for meeting with Putin

USA Today

Kim Jong Un reportedly hops on his bulletproof, drab green train for meeting with Putin

Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY – September 11, 2023

A luxury armored train believed to be carrying Kim Jong Un appeared to depart Pyongyang Monday for Vladivostok, Russia, where the reclusive North Korean leader may rendezvous with President Vladimir Putin.

South Korean state media reported that the train Kim uses, bulletproof but notoriously slow possibly because of its heavy weight, left North Korea. The Kremlin confirmed in a statement he will visit Russia “in the coming days.”

The White House previously said they were expecting a meeting between the two leaders this month as Moscow looks to its former ally from Soviet Union times to help it rearm for its war in Ukraine. The meeting could take place as early as Tuesday. It would be Kim’s first overseas trip in more than four years.

Is Putin getting desperate in Ukraine? Outreach to Kim Jong Un puts spotlight on weapons shortages

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un leaves a train carriage after arriving at the border station of Khasan, Primorsky Krai region, Russia, on April 24, 2019.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un leaves a train carriage after arriving at the border station of Khasan, Primorsky Krai region, Russia, on April 24, 2019.

The White House said last week arms negotiations between North Korea and Russia were “advancing.” It also warned that Kim’s regime would “pay a price” if it strikes an arms deal with Putin’s government.

The encounter between Kim and Putin could take place on the sidelines of the annual Eastern Economic Forum. It runs in the far eastern Russian port city through Wednesday, according to its website.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency has reported that Kim’s train has up to 20 bulletproof carriages and has a top speed of approximately 37 miles per hour. It is painted a drab green color and is rarely photographed. The train was used by Kim’s father and grandfather, both former North Korea leaders.

The isolated Asian country could help resupply Moscow with artillery shells and rockets. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank, describes North Korea’s munitions industry as “highly developed.” In return, North Korea could seek access to some of Russia’s high-tech weapons systems.

North Korea continues to test and develop long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. The U.S. and North Korea have held on and off nuclear nonproliferation talks stretching back to the 1980s.

With Prigozhin’s Death, Putin Projects a Message of Power

The New York Times

With Prigozhin’s Death, Putin Projects a Message of Power

Anton Troianovski and Valerie Hopkins  – August 25, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with acting governor of the Kherson region Vladimir Saldo at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Just as the news broke Wednesday of the presumed death of mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, President Vladimir Putin of Russia was presiding over a televised World War II anniversary ceremony on a dark stage lit dramatically in red.

He held a moment of silence, flanked by service members in dress uniforms, while a metronome’s beats sounded, like the slow ticking of a clock: Tock. Tock. Tock.

The eerie split screen — the reported fiery demise of the man who launched an armed rebellion in June and the Russian president telegraphing the state’s military might — may have been coincidental. But it underscored the imagery of dominance and power that Putin, 18 months into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, appears more determined than ever to project.

Prigozhin may have been brutally effective, throwing tens of thousands of his fighters into the maw of the battle for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, tying up Ukrainian forces in the process and hobbling Kyiv’s ability to stage a counteroffensive. His internet “troll farm” helped the Kremlin interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, while his mercenary empire helped Russia exert influence across Africa and the Middle East.

But with his June rebellion, Prigozhin threatened something even more sensitive: Putin’s own hold on power. After the crash of Prigozhin’s plane Wednesday, the Kremlin appears to be sending the message that no degree of effectiveness and achievement can protect someone from punishment for violating Putin’s loyalty.

“Everyone’s afraid,” Konstantin Remchukov, a Moscow newspaper editor with ties to the Kremlin, said of the reaction among the Russian elite to the plane crash Wednesday that Western officials theorize was caused by an explosion on board. “It’s just that everyone sees that anything is possible.”

Never before has someone so central to Russia’s ruling establishment been killed in a suspected state-sponsored assassination, said Mikhail Vinogradov, a Moscow political analyst.

“This is a rather harsh precedent,” Vinogradov said, adding that the Kremlin appeared to be doing little to dissuade Russians of the view that it had sanctioned Prigozhin’s killing. After all, if members of the ruling elite concluded that one of the Putin system’s most powerful players had been killed against the Kremlin’s wishes, it would send a devastating signal of Putin’s loss of control.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said Friday that the suggestion by foreign officials that the Kremlin was behind Prigozhin’s death was an “absolute lie.”

To some, the fact that Prigozhin was able to survive for two months after staging his rebellion was more surprising than the crash of his private jet. In an address to the nation on June 24, as Prigozhin’s forces were marching on Moscow and already in control of a city of a million people in Russia’s southwest, Putin accused the warlord of “betrayal.”

And betrayal, Putin has said previously, is the one act that cannot be forgiven. So when Putin appeared to strike a deal with Prigozhin allowing him to retreat safely to neighboring Belarus, the act struck some Russians as a sign of the president losing control. The view was magnified when photographs surfaced of Prigozhin meeting with African officials on the sidelines of Putin’s marquee summit with African leaders in St. Petersburg in July.

“After he ‘forgave’ Prigozhin, it was understood by those around him as weakness,” said Alexei Venediktov, who headed the liberal Echo of Moscow radio station before the Kremlin shut it down last year.

Venediktov, in an interview in Moscow on Thursday, argued that Prigozhin’s apparent death had strengthened Putin’s dominance in the Russian political system after the chaos of the rebellion. Now, “Putin has shown his elite,” Venediktov went on, that “any betrayal will be found out.”

U.S. officials are increasingly certain that Prigozhin was killed in Wednesday’s crash, and that Putin ordered the assassination. But when it comes to the power dynamics inside Russia’s ruling elite, whether Putin personally ordered the attack may be beside the point: What matters is that Prigozhin suffered a violent death after Putin publicly condemned him.

“He called him a traitor,” Remchukov said. “And that was enough for everyone to see that this person is no longer invulnerable.”

When Putin broke his silence about the plane crash Thursday, some 24 hours after it happened, he described Prigozhin as a “talented man” with a “complicated fate.” Putin revealed that his personal ties with Prigozhin dated back to the early 1990s, and he acknowledged for the first time that he had personally asked Prigozhin to carry out tasks on his behalf.

“He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved necessary results, for himself and, when I asked him about it, for our common cause,” Putin said.

Prigozhin had long been suspected of acting in the shadows in Putin’s interest while giving the Kremlin plausible deniability. His forces deployed to eastern Ukraine in 2014, back when Putin was stoking a separatist war there while insisting he had nothing to do with it. In 2016, Prigozhin’s internet “troll farm” intervened in U.S. politics as part of the Kremlin’s attempt to swing the presidential election to Donald Trump.

But what Putin left unsaid in his brief eulogy of Prigozhin was that by turning against the Russian president after decades of devoted service, Prigozhin may have signed his own death sentence.

On Friday, another longtime confidant of Putin, Alexei Dyumin, issued a statement that made the message a little clearer. Dyumin, a former bodyguard of Putin who is now the governor of a region south of Moscow, said he had known Prigozhin “as a true patriot, a decisive and fearless man.” He said he mourned the crash’s victims and all Wagner fighters who had died in Ukraine, and added: “You can forgive mistakes and even cowardice, but never betrayal. They were not traitors.”

The apparent subtext was that Prigozhin’s soldiers and commanders were loyal men worthy of respect. But it also hinted at the notion that if Prigozhin himself was a traitor — as Putin had said — then he may have deserved his death.

But Prigozhin’s death also carries risks for the Kremlin. In Ukraine, Wagner was seen as one of Russia’s most effective and brutal fighting forces, exacting and taking enormous casualties in the monthslong battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

In Africa, where Prigozhin built a mercenary empire propping up autocrats loyal to Moscow in countries such as Mali and the Central African Republic, it is far from clear whether Wagner will be able to retain its footprint. Wagner’s top military commander, Dmitri Utkin, was listed as a passenger alongside Prigozhin on the plane that crashed, according to Russian authorities.

Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin who is now a political consultant based in Israel, said the Kremlin was most likely behind the plane crash, and he argued that the risky decision to kill Prigozhin to send a signal of deterrence revealed the president’s fears of losing power.

“To send this signal, Putin decided to risk a bunch of projects,” Gallyamov wrote on social media. “This is important for understanding what his priorities are right now: maintaining power, not external expansion.”

Putin has also long made it clear that he sees his personal interests as inextricable from those of the Russian state. “He believes that if something is important for keeping him in power, then all other concerns are secondary,” said Grigorii Golosov, a professor of political science at the European University at St. Petersburg.

It’s a philosophy that Vyacheslav Volodin, the chair of Russia’s lower house of parliament, summed up simply earlier this year: “As long as there is Putin, there is Russia.”

Private jet crash in Russia kills 10. Wagner chief Prigozhin was on passenger list

Associated Press

Private jet crash in Russia kills 10. Wagner chief Prigozhin was on passenger list

Associated Press – August 23, 2023

FILE – Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin is shown prior to a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on July 4, 2017. A business jet en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed Wednesday Aug. 23, 2023, killing all ten people on board, Russian emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, officials said, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board. (Sergei Ilnitsky/Pool via AP, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More

MOSCOW (AP) — A private jet crashed in Russia on Wednesday, killing all 10 people aboard, emergency officials said. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, but it wasn’t immediately clear if he was on board.

Prigozhin’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership in late June. The Kremlin said the founder of the Wagner private military company, which fought alongside Russia’s regular army in Ukraine, would be exiled to Belarus.

But the mercenary chief has since reportedly popped up in Russia, leading to further questions about his future.

A plane carrying three pilots and seven passengers that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg went down more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass. It was not clear if Prigozhin was among those on board, though Russia’s civilian aviation regulator, Rosaviatsia, said he was on the manifest.

Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing emergency officials, that eight bodies were found at the site of the crash.

Flight tracking data reviewed by The Associated Press showed a private jet registered to Wagner that Prigozhin had used previously took off from Moscow on Wednesday evening and its transponder signal disappeared minutes later.

The signal was lost in a rural region with no nearby airfields where the jet could have landed safely.

In an image posted by a pro-Wagner social media account showing burning wreckage, a partial tail number matching a private jet belonging to the company could be seen. The color and placement of the number on the engine of the crashed plane matches prior photos of the Wagner jet examined by The AP.

This week, Prigozhin posted his first recruitment video since the mutiny, saying that Wagner is conducting reconnaissance and search activities, and “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free.”

Also this week, Russian media reported, citing anonymous sources, that a top Russian general linked to Prigozhin — Gen. Sergei Surovikin — was dismissed from his position of the commander of Russia’s air force. Surovikin, who at one point led Russia’s operation in Ukraine, hasn’t been seen in public since the mutiny, when he recorded a video address urging Prigozhin’s forces to pull back.

As the news about the crash was breaking, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at an event commemorating the Battle of Kursk, hailing the heroes of Russia’s “the special military operation” in Ukraine.

Russian Army Heads Find a New Way to Screw Their Dead Troops

Daily Beast

Russian Army Heads Find a New Way to Screw Their Dead Troops

Allison Quinn – August 17, 2023

REUTERS/Alexey Pavlishak
REUTERS/Alexey Pavlishak

Russian military commissars in Crimea have reportedly come up with a new scam to get rich using the bodies of dead soldiers—by extorting the grieving family members.

That’s according to the human rights group Crimea SOS, which reported Thursday that military commissars have been lying to family members of soldiers killed in Ukraine about the whereabouts of their remains. While the bodies are already stored at a morgue in Simferopol, the group says, military officials tell families they have to pay an extra fee to have the remains retrieved from the battlefield.

“They offer a fee of about 100,000-150,000 rubles for carrier services. The ‘commissars’ explain this scheme [by citing] the inconvenient location of the body and its transportation, otherwise it will be a long wait for the body,” Crimea SOS said.

‘It’s as Tall as a Person’: Russians Reveal Their Secret Dump of Dead Soldiers in Donetsk

There have been at least three such instances of the scam so far, they said. Last month, the group warned of university students on the occupied peninsula being blackmailed into joining the Russian military, with staffers telling them they wouldn’t pass their exams otherwise.

Earlier this week, a Russian soldier who spoke to the New York Times revealed that officers handed down orders to not collect the bodies of soldiers killed in action—because then the government would have to pay their families compensation. Instead, troops were reportedly told to classify the dead as missing in action.

Myriad reports have also emerged during the war of families getting stiffed on promised payments, bodies being left to rot in mass graves, and corpses arriving home already “half-decomposed” because officials transported them only in “small batches” to hide the staggering death toll.