A mutiny in photos: Inside Russian mercenary group’s march toward Moscow
Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group mercenary army, said he turned around to avoid “shedding Russian blood.”
Dylan Stableford, Senior Writer – June 27, 2023
Fighters of the Wagner Group mercenary army stand on a tank in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on Saturday. (Stringer/Reuters)
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears for now to have survived what many saw as a coup attempt, striking a deal with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group mercenary army, which had advanced to the outskirts of Moscow over the weekend.
Prigozhin agreed to call off his drive toward the Russian capital, withdraw forces from the captured city of Rostov-on-Don and leave Russia for Belarus.
But the dramatic show of force left Putin considerably weakened on the world stage, triggering speculation that the episode marked the end of his iron grip on Russia.
Here’s how the weekend unfolded — in photos
Wagner Group fighters in Rostov-on-Don on Saturday. (Stringer/Reuters)
The Wagner Group’s band of mercenaries, which had been fighting for Russia in its war on Ukraine, crossed into southern Russia and seized a military outpost in Rostov-on-Don without a fight.
A Wagner Group fighter in Rostov-on-Don on Saturday. (Stringer/Reuters)
Prigozhin then led his soldiers toward Moscow on a “march for justice“ to remove what he labeled as Russia’s incompetent and corrupt senior military leadership after an alleged strike on a Wagner military camp killed 30 of his fighters.
Military vehicles operated by the Wagner Group in Voronezh, Russia, along the M-4 highway — which links Moscow to the country’s southern cities — as smoke from a burning fuel tank at an oil depot rises in the background. (Stringer/Reuters)Wagner Group fighters during a stop on the highway in Voronezh, Russia, on Saturday. (Stringer/Reuters)The Wagner convoy drives in Voronezh toward Moscow on Saturday. (Stringer/Reuters)
Putin vowed to strike back hard, denouncing Prigozhin’s rebellion as an “armed mutiny” that would be met with a “harsh” response from regular Russian troops.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a televised address in Moscow on Saturday. (Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin via Reuters)
“Any actions that split our nation are essentially a betrayal of our people, of our comrades-in-arms who are now fighting at the frontline,” Putin said in remarks on Saturday morning from the Kremlin, invoking the bloody legacy of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. “This is a knife in the back of our country and our people.”
Hours later, Prigozhin announced that the column of troops would halt its advance on Moscow in a deal apparently brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a key Putin ally.
Wagner Group fighters pull out of Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov-on-Don on Saturday night. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
Prigozhin said his goal was to avoid “shedding Russian blood,” but he did not say if the Kremlin agreed to his demand for replacing Russia’s military leadership.
Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin leaves Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov-on-Don on Saturday night. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)Prigozhin, seated in the back of an SUV, leaves Southern Military District headquarters. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)Russian police cars during the Wagner Group’s pullout from Rostov-on-Don on Saturday. (Stringer/Reuters)
On Monday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made his first public appearance since the short-lived mutiny, inspecting troops in Ukraine in a video aimed at projecting a sense of order. But the questions swirling around Moscow continue to mount.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Col. Gen. Yevgeny Nikiforov talk on board an aircraft at an unknown location on Monday as they visit Russian troops involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. (Russian Defense Ministry/Handout via Reuters)
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the events “yet another demonstration of the big strategic mistake that President Putin made with his illegal annexation of Crimea and the war against Ukraine.”
“I think what we’re seeing in Russia over the last days demonstrates the fragility of the [Putin] regime,” Stoltenberg said Monday. “And, of course, it is a demonstration of weakness.”
A Russian police officer guards the closed Red Square in Moscow on Saturday. (Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)
Wildfire smoke puts Chicago among cities with worst air quality in the world
It’s the latest in a series of smoke invasions from Canada this month.
Ian Livingston – June 27, 2023
Chicago’s skyline is draped in heavy smoke from the Canadian wildfires on Tuesday. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP/Getty Images)
A new round of dense smoke has invaded the United States, specifically the Great Lakes region, as wildfires munch through forests across Quebec and Ontario, with more than 3.7 million acres scorched over the last week in those provinces alone. Throughout Tuesday, Chicago air quality ranked as the worst in the world among major cities.
Minneapolis and Detroit joined Chicago among the 10 worst, all dealing with conditions no better than Code Red. Air quality was even worse in other locations, such as Waukesha, Wis., west of Milwaukee, where the more severe Code Maroon was reached. Grand Rapids, Mich. — which through Tuesday has been between Red and Maroon, at Code Purple — is among places from eastern Iowa through Michigan and into Ontario that have endured air in this bout that is very unhealthy or worse.
Air quality alerts will be in effect into Wednesday or Thursday from Minnesota and Iowa through most of the Midwest, the Great Lakes region, and into parts of the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and the Carolinas.
The Air Quality Index (AQI) moves to Code Orange (unhealthy for sensitive groups) at a reading of 101. Code Red (unhealthy for everyone) starts at 151. Once reaching 201, it’s Code Purple (very unhealthy), and finally a Code Maroon (hazardous) begins at 301.
Wildfire smoke’s primary pollutant is often referred to as PM2.5. These are fine particles from burned organic matter less than or equal to 2.5 microns in diameter — a microscopic soot.
The latest on the Canadian wildfires and smoke
Haze obscures the skyline in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette via AP)
A thick pall of smoke was draped from Quebec and Ontario to the southwest, toward parts of the Midwest and Great Lakes region, and began moving into the Ohio Valley and points east in the early evening. The worst of it late Tuesday was centered over Lake Michigan and surrounding states. A particularly thick patch of smoke was approaching Chicago from the north late afternoon.
In Michigan and surrounding areas, it was a mix of smoke and low clouds.
Smoke is visible in this satellite image Tuesday morning. (Colorado State/CIRA)
Air quality values as severe as Code Purple have been recorded in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and northern Indiana so far, with an hourly AQI near Milwaukee of 312 and climbing, according to an Environmental Protection Agency monitor late afternoon. The Canadian city of Sault Ste. Marie, on the international border of Michigan, reached an AQI reading Monday night as high as 353, which is Code Maroon. The city was under Code Purple for much of Tuesday.
Many more locations, from eastern Minnesota to the western slopes of the Appalachians, were seeing Code Red conditions. The thickest of the smoke plume had advanced as far east as Cincinnati and Akron, Ohio.
In Chicago, the National Weather Service wrote that “low visibility due to wildfire smoke will continue today. Consider limiting prolonged outdoor activities.”
Visibility in the city was down to two miles, with smoke reported from Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The Weather Service expected visibility of one to three miles across the region for much of Tuesday.
“You can literally smell the smoke in the air today in Chicago from the Canadian wildfires,” wrote a Twitter user.
Into Wednesday, smoke should keep slowly moving east and somewhat south. It should remain in the lower Great Lakes and push into the Midwest or Ohio Valley region. Some of the smoke was beginning to spill over into the Appalachians late Tuesday.
Many such days
The number of days at Code Orange or worse as a result of wildfire smoke continues to increase in the northeastern United States, though that number is comparatively low when examined against areas immediately surrounding the fires in Canada.
Many of these days also saw spikes beyond Code Orange.
U.S. cities among the worst air quality in the world Tuesday morning. (IQAir)
This month but before the current wave, much of western Wisconsin — in the thick again — had already recorded four or five 24-hour readings at Code Orange or higher. It’s a similar story in and around Detroit, with five Code Orange days in the city and up to seven or eight in nearby locations.
Wildfire smoke, air quality and your health
(Photo by AFP PHOTO / Nova Scotia Government) (Handout/AFP/Getty Images)
More than a dozen days at Code Orange or worse have been tallied in June across the hardest-hit spots north of the border, in Ontario and Quebec, especially north and northwest of Ottawa.
The number of bad air quality days may soon increase in the Northeast, as well. The Washington, D.C., region has had two bad air days this month, both Code Red. Much of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and parts of Southern New England have piled up three such days, with a few locations at four or five.
While AQI values in this plume are somewhat lower than they were earlier in the month — when hourly AQI values soared toward 400 in the Northeast — any values of Code Red or above are concerning for the general public.
Smoke’s future travel plans
This round of smoke, like the one June 7-8 that smothered the Northeast, is moving into circulation via a crawling low-pressure area that’s now over the eastern Great Lakes.
In general, winds blow from the east to the north of the low pressure center, pushing smoke westward from the source, before winds out of the north and northwest behind the center push smoke south. As the low pressure inches east, so does the area of smoke it is carrying along with it.
Over the next several days, the low should track through the Mid-Atlantic and offshore along the East Coast. This trajectory is expected to bringsmoke eastward.
Code Red is now in the forecast Wednesday for Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, on the eastern side of the thickest plume. Code Orange is forecast for Syracuse, N.Y., Baltimore, Washington and Raleigh, N.C.
Smoke forecast through Wednesday, from the HRRR weather model. (NOAA)
Higher-level smoke will likely cover a larger area from the northern and central Plains, through the Midwest and Great Lakes region, then through the Mid-Atlantic and as far south as Georgia on Wednesday.
The potential for smoky skies could last into the weekend, although it will probably drop in intensity as the pattern shifts slightly.
Top Doc: “Drinking Too Much Plain Water Can Harm Your Health” — Here’s What to Drink Instead to Have More Energy + Lose Weight
Lisa Maxbauer – June 27, 2023
Just about every doctor and nutrition expert on the planet recommends drinking water. It also seems to be the one thing that every non-expert — from the keto meat eater to leafy-green plant eater — agrees on. And it makes sense, considering that our bodies are made up of roughly 60% water. Still, most of us aren’t sipping enough of the right kind of fluids to optimize our bodily functions. And we’re tired, groggy, constipated and dragging around a few too many pounds as a result.
Indeed, when it comes to women in midlife and older, dehydration has reached epidemic proportions. As many as 95% of women over age 40 are dehydrated, asserts Howard Murad, MD, author of The Water Secret. “As we age, stress, poor diet and environmental toxins damage the body’s cell membranes, weakening their ability to hold water,” he explains. “This damage leads to subclinical dehydration and the exhaustion, headaches, brain fog, mysterious cravings and weight gain that follow.”
But as important as drinking water is to our health, proper hydration can be surprisingly elusive—especially as we get older. As our cell membranes become less able to conduct water into our cells, it takes a special kind of water to attain a true state of hydration. That’s where “electrolyte water” comes in.
What is electrolyte water?
Electrolyte water most commonly includes, well, electrolytes — minerals that carry an electrical charge when dissolved in water to help revitalize the cells in the body and optimize their overall function — like sodium, potassium and magnesium. In fact, electrolyte water is becoming so popular that manufacturers are producing versions in hundreds of flavors and variations — and they’re flying off store shelves.
The Image Party/Shutterstock
What is liquid IV?
One brand of electrolyte powder that has made an unusually large splash is Liquid IV. The name elicits an image of getting a quick infusion of health-boosting nutrients, much like people get intravenously at the hospital, without any painful needles or pokes. Touted as a “hydration multiplier,” this powdered mineral mix comes in individual packets — also called “sticks” — that can be added to bottles or glasses of water.
Each packet promises to deliver hydration two times faster and more effectively than plain water alone. Tests have also shown these packets hold three times more electrolytes than the traditional sports drinks of our youth like Gatorade. Another of electrolyte mix sticks brand popular among keto enthusiasts is LMNT.
These types of ready-made mineral mixes get a thumbs up from hydration experts. “An electrolyte drink mix made without added sugars would be the first thing I’d recommend to help people hydrate effectively and quickly,” asserts Dana Cohen, MD, author of Quench. Her advice: “Start salting your water, not your food.”
Why we need electrolyte water
Electrolytes play a number of crucial roles inside the human body. These nutrients help nerves transmit electrical impulses and support muscle function, preventing muscle cramps and fatigue. Electrolytes also help the body maintain a healthy pH balance and support the kidneys in their crucial role of filtering fluid and toxins.
Nutrition expert Ann Louise Gittleman, PhD,NY Times bestselling author of over 35 books, including The New Fat Flush Plan, explains, “Minerals are the spark plugs of life and adding electrolytes to water is a perfect hydration solution.”
“When we talk about dehydration, we’re often not only losing water, but also electrolytes like sodium and potassium, which are critical for bodily and cellular functions,” explains Dr. Cohen. “In order to properly replenish what we lose through sweat, we need not only to replace water but to replace electrolytes” as happens when drinking an electrolyte water like Liquid IV.
And it’s not just people who exercise who benefit from electrolytes. The body uses up minerals for countless other reasons — like to process alcohol or sugar that we’ve consumed, or when we’re sick or undergoing a medical treatment, when pregnant or breastfeeding or even traveling or stressed.
Electrolyte water versus plain water
“Drinking too much plain water can flush out vital nutrients and electrolytes from our cells and tissues, actually harming our health and limiting our body’s ability to perform,” explains Dr. Cohen. Researchers have found that our cells have a hard time absorbing plain water to undo chronic, low-level dehydration like the kind we may experience every day and not realize.
In fact, when we lack sodium, potassium and magnesium — as many of us do — we’re dehydrated on a cellular level. And by the time we experience noticeable symptoms like thirst or weaknesses, we’ve already been dehydrated for a while. James DiNicolantonio, Pharm.D., author of The Obesity Fix, agrees with Dr. Cohen, saying, “True hydration is replenishing water, plus lost minerals.”
How electrolyte water helps with weight loss
Replacing the body’s minerals by drinking electrolyte water, like Liquid IV, has another perk: It can control cravings. Research shows that when our body is lacking water or minerals, we feel an extra urge to overeat. Dr. DiNicolantonio says, “We seek out food, like a bag of salty chips, to obtain the salt our body demands.”
Dr. Cohen asserts, “Most of the time, when we feel hungry, we’re actually dehydrated.” But that hunger leads us to reach for food, rather than ultra-hydrating liquids, so we lose the ability to sense what true thirst feels like in the body. And this malfunction seems to only worsen over time. Dr. Cohen explains, “After a lifetime of learning to ignore our thirst, the mechanism goes numb.”
When we replace minerals, however, and achieve true hydration, it leads to effortless slimming. The proof: When people in a University of California-Irvine study added electrolytes to their diet, they shed 56 pounds in 6 weeks.
Actress Donna Mills, 82, legendary star of the television show “Knots Landing,” is a fan of electrolyte powers. She told us, “More and more, I’ve become aware of the importance of drinking water for overall health. I try to drink at least two large bottles of water a day. Playing tennis helps — after every couple of games, I go to the side and drink. Exercise reminds me to drink. I like to put lemon wedges or electrolyte powder in the water.”
How to make an electrolyte water even better than Liquid IV
To achieve the deep hydration only possible with mineral-infused water, you can try Liquid IV packets for yourself buy on Amazon ($24.66 for 16 servings) or you can create your own electrolyte mix to add to water at home. For a time-tested recipe, we turned to health and weight-loss guru Jorge Cruise, bestselling author of more than 20 books. For more than 20 years Cruise has been helping women control their cravings and achieve proper hydration. His secret weapon is his homemade recipe for Zero Hunger Water. Follow this recipe to make this DIY electrolyte mix in bulk.
Ingredients:
1/4 tsp. salt (like Redmond Real Salt (buy on Amazon, $10.84)
Combine all the ingredients in an empty water bottle and mix well. Add 16 oz. of filtered water and shake. Sip throughout the day to quell cravings, refilling as needed. Each bottle contains roughly 500 mg. of sodium, 500 mg. of glycine, 200 mg. of potassium and 60 mg. of magnesium. For optional flavor, add 1 packet of TRUE orange, grapefruit or lime crystalized flavoring and sweeten with stevia or monk fruit to taste. You can also add this mix to other beverages such as iced tea or mocktails.
Cruise recommends drinking around 32 ounces of electrolyte water every two hours. As always, women with high blood pressure should consult their doctor before changing their sodium intake.
While three electrolytes — sodium, potassium, and magnesium — in this recipe are familiar to most of us, one thing on the list may sound new: the amino acid glycine. “Glycine improves the absorption of sodium, so it strengthens the hydration abilities of electrolyte water to turn off false hunger,” says Dr. DiNicolantonio. That’s why Cruise has added glycine to his slimming Zero Hunger Water recipe. Cruise finds, “Glycine makes electrolyte water three times more powerful in giving people radical hunger control.”
Real-world proof of the slimming power of electrolyte water
Cruise is amazed by the slimming results he’s seen in his clients who use this electrolyte water recipe. “I think of it as the over-50 fat cure,” says Cruise, who routinely witnesses clients lose up to 2 pounds a day following his hydration advice. In fact, Sandy Rosser, 60, of Fayetteville, N.C, lost 95 pounds with Cruise’s electrolyte water. She shares, “Calorie counting never addressed the root of my problem, which was mineral deficiency!”
Cruise sums it up, saying, “If you’re always craving carbs, sweets or salty snacks, it’s actually ‘false hunger’ triggered by an electrolyte imbalance.”
For more information, listen to Jorge Cruise’s “Zero Hunger Guy” podcast and sign up for his free Zero Hunger Water Club and receive support at ZeroHungerWater.com.
Liz Cheney on what’s wrong with politics: ‘We’re electing idiots’
John Wagner – June 27, 2023
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) arrives in Jackson Hole, Wyo., to speak after losing her Republican primary election on Aug. 16. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Ex-congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) offered a blunt assessment of her former profession Monday night: “What we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”
Cheney, who lost her Republican primary last year to a candidate backed by former president Donald Trump, shared her view at an event that was billed as a conversation on the future of the two-party political system in the United States.
Cheney, who co-chaired the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, has emerged as a leading critic of Trump, repeatedly calling him “unfit for office.” In the conversation Monday at the 92nd Street Y in New York, guided by moderator David Rubenstein, Cheney said ensuring Trump doesn’t return to the White House is her top priority.
That prompted Rubenstein to ask whether Cheney would run for president as an independent next year if presented with polling data showing such a bid would damage Trump.
“Look, I think that the country right now faces hugely challenging and fundamentally important issues,” Cheney responded. “And what we’ve done in our politics is create a situation where we’re electing idiots.”
After laughter from the audience subsided, she continued: “And so, I don’t look at it through the lens of, is this what I should do or what I shouldn’t do. I look at it through the lens of, how do we elect serious people? And I think electing serious people can’t be partisan.”
“You know, because of the situation that we’re in,” Cheney continued, “where we have a major-party candidate who’s trying to unravel our democracy — and I don’t say that lightly — we have to think about, all right, what kinds of alliances are necessary to defeat him, and those are the alliances we’ve got to build across party lines.”
The conversation moved on without Cheney directly answering whether she might move forward with a presidential bid if it could damage Trump.
Earlier, she suggested she wouldn’t run for president if she thought doing so could help Trump, who has continued to lead in Republican primary polling despite state and federal indictments.
“I am not going to do anything that would help Donald Trump,” Cheney said.
North Carolina GOP bars promotion of certain beliefs in state government, 1 of 6 veto overrides
Gary D. Robertson – June 27, 2023
FILE – Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper speaks to The Associated Press in a year-end interview at the Executive Mansion in Raleigh, N.C., Dec. 14, 2022. On Friday, June 16, 2023, Cooper vetoed GOP legislation that would ban the promotion of certain beliefs that some lawmakers have likened to critical race theory in state government workplaces. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s GOP-dominated legislature swept six bills into law Tuesday with veto overrides, including one barring promotion of certain beliefs in state government workplaces that some lawmakers liken to critical race theory and another placing new limits on wetlands protection rules.
The measures, which also address green investing in state government, consumer loans and local government finances, became law after a succession of votes with margins large enough to overcome Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s formal vetoed objections earlier this month.
Five of the veto overrides were completed Tuesday with House votes, which followed several similar Senate votes over the past week. A sixth veto override effort cleared both the House and Senate on Tuesday.
The state constitution deems an override successful if at least three-fifths of the members in each chamber present and voting agree to enact the bill anyway despite the governor’s objections.
The overrides exemplify the expanded political muscle of Republicans after electoral seat gains last fall and a House Democrat’s party switch in April gave them exact veto-proof majorities in each chamber for the first time since late 2018. Cooper had been able to block several dozen GOP measures over the previous four years with vetoes because there were enough Democrats supporting his efforts.
Several of Tuesday’s override votes in the House included support from a few Democrats. Still, Republicans needed to ensure that enough of their party colleagues were in attendance to complete overrides.
Among the bills enacted Tuesday is the legislature’s annual farm bill, which contains more than 30 provisions such as penalties for cutting down timber, waiting periods for regulators to inspect veterinarians’ offices and the establishment of an official “Farmers Appreciation Day” in November.
Cooper’s farm bill veto came Friday. He said the measure would weaken the regulation of wetlands that help control flooding and pollution. His administration and environmental groups have said the bill’s language, when combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, would leave about half of the state’s wetlands unprotected.
Republicans and their allies blunted the impact of the bill’s language on wetlands, saying it would affect largely affect isolated terrain that rarely floods and align standards with federal law.
Another now-enacted law that takes effect in December bans trainers of state employees from advancing concepts to workers such as that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,” or to believe they should feel guilty for past actions committed by people of the same race or sex. It also would prohibit hiring managers for state agencies, community colleges and the University of North Carolina system from compelling applicants for policy-making jobs to reveal their personal or political beliefs as a condition of employment.
In his veto message, Cooper said the bill attempts to suppress workplace discussions related to diversity, equity and inclusion that can reveal “unconscious bias we all bring to our work and our communities.” But supporters of the bill said it actually encourages a diverse set of beliefs within public agencies.
Both the House and Senate voted Tuesday to override the veto of a measure that now ban state agencies from using “environmental, social and governance” standards to screen potential investments, award contracts or hire and fire employees.
On state investments like those in pension funds, the bill says the state treasurer could solely consider factors expected to have a material effect on the financial risk or financial return of an investment.
At least two other states have already enacted laws banning such criteria. Republicans nationwide has raised questions about big business focusing upon environmental sustainability and workplace diversity so much that it harms shareholders and pensioners.
Cooper said in his veto message late week that the measure would needlessly limit the treasurer’s ability to make investment decisions that are in the best interests of the state retirement fund.
Other bills enacted over Cooper’s vetoes in part would raise interest rates and late fees on certain amounts of personal consumer finance loans as well as on consumer credit sales, such as when someone buys a car and pays for it in installments or with a finance charge. Cooper said the higher costs, which would take effect in October on new, renewed or modified loans, would harm residents who already are faced with rising costs of living.
Another bill with a veto now overridden would permit the state’s Local Government Commission to order withheld a portion of sales tax revenues the state collects for cities and counties that fail to complete annual audits of their accounts. Bill supporters said the measure will promote government accountability. Cooper said it was well-intentioned but would likely hurt the state’s smallest communities.
A Wagner ex-convict returned from war and a Russian village lived in fear. Then he killed again
Dasha Litvinovau – June 27, 2023
In this image taken from video and released on Saturday, May 20, 2023, by the press service of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner private military contractor, his forces wave Russian and Wagner flags atop a damaged building in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Some convicts recruited by Wagner to fight in in Ukraine are coming home to Russia and committing new crimes. That has raised fears in communities where the now-freed convicts are returning, and reports of killings, robberies and sexual assaults by some of them are emerging in Russian media. (Prigozhin Press Service via AP, File)In this image taken from video and released by the press service of Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner private military contractor, on Saturday, May 20, 2023, he speaks while holding a Russian flag in front of his forces in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Some convicts recruited by Wagner to fight in Ukraine are coming home to Russia and committing new crimes. That has raised fears in communities where the now-freed convicts are returning, and reports of killings, robberies and sexual assaults by some of them are emerging in Russian media. (Prigozhin Press Service via AP, File)
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — When Ivan Rossomakhin returned home from the war in Ukraine three months ago, his neighbors in the village east of Moscow were terrified.
Three years ago, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to a long prison term but was freed after volunteering to fight with the Wagner private military contractor.
Back in Novy Burets, Rossomakhin drunkenly wandered the streets of the hamlet 800 kilometers (about 500 miles) east of Moscow, carrying a pitchfork and threatening to kill everyone, residents said.
Despite police promises to keep an eye on the 28-year-old former inmate, he was arrested in a nearby town on charges of stabbing to death an elderly woman from whom he once rented a room. He reportedly confessed to committing the crime, less than 10 days after his return.
Rossomakhin’s case is not isolated. The Associated Press found at least seven other instances in recent months in which Wagner-recruited convicts were identified as being involved in violent crimes, either by Russian media reports or in interviews with relatives of victims in locations from Kaliningrad in the west to Siberia in the east.
Russia has gone to extraordinary lengths to replenish its troops in Ukraine, including deploying Wagner’s mercenaries there. That has had far-reaching consequences, as was evident this weekend when the group’s leader sent his private army to march on Moscow in a short-lived rebellion. Another has been the use of convicts in battle.
The British Defense Ministry warned of the fallout in March, saying “the sudden influx of often violent offenders with recent and often traumatic combat experience will likely present a significant challenge for Russia’s wartime society” as their service ends.
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said he had recruited 50,000 convicts for Ukraine, an estimate also made by Olga Romanova, director of the prisoner rights group Russia Behind Bars. Western military officials say convicts formed the bulk of Wagner’s force there.
About 32,000 have returned from Ukraine, Prigozhin said last week, before his abortive rebellion against the Defense Ministry. Romanova estimated it to be about 15,000 as of early June.
Those prisoners agreeing to join Wagner were promised freedom after their service, and President Vladimir Putin recently confirmed that he was “signing pardon decrees” for convicts fighting in Ukraine. Those decrees have not been made public.
Putin recently said recidivism rates among those freed from prison through serving in Ukraine are much lower than those on average in Russia. But rights advocates say fears about those rates rising as more convicts return from war are not necessarily unfounded.
“People form a complete absence of a link between crime and punishment, an act and its consequences,” Romanova said. “And not just convicts see it. Free people see it, too -– that you can do something terrible, sign up for the war and come out as a hero.”
Rossomakhin wasn’t seen as valorous when he returned from fighting in Ukraine but rather as an “extremely restless, problematic person,” police said at a meeting with fearful Novy Burets residents that was filmed by a local broadcaster before 85-year-old Yulia Buyskikh was slain. At one point, he even was arrested for breaking into a car and held for five days before police released him March 27.
Two days later, Buyskikh was killed.
“She knew him and opened the door, when he came to kill her,” her granddaughter, Anna Pekareva, wrote on Facebook. “Every family in Russia must be afraid of such visitors.”
Other incidents included the robbery of a shop in which a man held a saleswoman at knifepoint; a car theft by three former convicts in which the owner of the vehicle was beaten and forced to sign it over to them; the sexual assault of two schoolgirls; and two other killings besides the one in Novy Burets.
In Kaliningrad, a man was arrested in the sexual assault of an 8-year-old girl after taking her from her mother, according to a local media report and one of the girl’s relatives.
The man had approached the mother and bragged about his prison time and his Wagner service in Ukraine, according to the relative, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity out of safety concerns. The relative asked: “How many more of them will return soon?”
In its recruiting, Wagner usually offered convicts six-month contracts, according to media reports and rights groups. Then they can return home, unlike regular soldiers, who can’t terminate their contracts and leave service as long as Putin’s mobilization decree remains in effect. It wasn’t immediately clear, however, whether these terms will be honored after Prigozhin’s unsuccessful mutiny.
Prigozhin, himself a former convict, recently acknowledged that some repeat offenders were Wagner fighters -– including Rossomakhin in Novy Burets and a man arrested in Novosibirsk for sexually assaulting two girls.
Putin recently said the recidivism rate “is 10 times lower” among the convicts that went to Ukraine than for those in general. ”The negative consequences are minimal,” he added.
There isn’t enough data yet to assess the consequences, according to a Russian criminology expert who spoke on condition of anonymity out of safety concerns.
Incidents this year “fit the pattern of recidivist behavior,” and there’s a chance that those convicts would have committed crimes again upon release, even if they hadn’t been recruited by Wagner, the expert said. But there’s no reason to expect an explosive spike in crime because a significant number of the ex-convicts probably can refrain from breaking the law for some time, especially if they were well-paid by Wagner, the expert said.
He expects crime rates to rise after the war, but not necessarily due to the use of convicts. It’s something that usually happens following conflicts, he said.
The Soviet Union sent 1.2 million convicts to fight in World War II, according to a 2020 research paper by Russia’s state penitentiary service. It did not say how many returned, but the criminology expert told AP a “significant number” ended up behind bars again after committing new crimes for years afterward.
Romanova from Russia Behind Bars says there have been many troubling episodes involving convicts returning to civilian life after a stint in Ukraine.
Law enforcement and justice officials who spent time and resources to prosecute these criminals can feel humiliated by seeing many of them walk free without serving their sentences, she said.
“They see that their work is not needed,” Romanova added.
Some convicts who are caught committing crimes after returning home sometimes try to turn the tables on police by accusing them of discrediting those who fought in Ukraine — now a serious crime in Russia, she said.
Asked if that deters those in law enforcement, Romanova said: “You bet. A prosecutor doesn’t want to go to prison for 15 years.”
Yana Gelmel, lawyer and rights advocate who also works with convicts, said in an interview that those returning from Ukraine often act with bravado and bluster, demanding special treatment for having “defended the motherland.”
She paints a grim life in Russia’s prisons, with rampant and incessant violence, extreme isolation, constant submission to guards and a strict hierarchy among inmates. For prisoners in those conditions, “what would his mental state be?” Gelmel asked.
Add in the trauma of being thrown into battle — especially in places like Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the longest and bloodiest of the conflict, where Wagner forces died by the thousands,
“Imagine -– he went to war. If he survived … he witnessed so much there. In what state will he return?” she added.
Meanwhile, prison recruiting for duty in Ukraine apparently continues — just not by Wagner, rights groups say. The Defense Ministry is now seeking volunteers there instead and offering them contracts.
Romanova said the ministry had recruited nearly 15,000 convicts as of June, although officials there did not respond to a request for comment.
Unlike Wagner, the Defense Ministry soon will have legal grounds -– laws allowing for enlisting convicts into contractual service have been swiftly approved by the parliament and signed by Putin last week.
And unlike Wagner, the ministry is offering 18-month contracts, but many recruits haven’t been given anything to sign, ending up in a precarious position, Romanova said.
Enthusiasm among inmates to serve hasn’t waned, she said, even after thousands were killed on the battlefield.
The fragile truce that halted Prigozhin’s armed revolt against the Kremlin seems to be falling apart already
Erin Snodgrass – June 26, 2023
Vladimir Putin (left) has long relied on Yevgeny Prigozhin (right) for his Wagner Group of mercenaries to fight in the invasion of Ukraine.Getty Images
Wagner forces halted their revolt on Saturday after striking a deal with the Kremlin.
But that peace agreement appears increasingly uncertain as Prigozhin renews his rants against Russia’s military.
Putin, meanwhile, has offered conflicting comments on the coming consequences for those involved.
The uprising represents the most damning challenge to Putin’s regime in decades. It was only averted when Prigozhin turned his troops back a mere 120 miles outside of Moscow after the Kremlin said it would drop any criminal charges against the former chef, who agreed in turn to be exiled to neighboring Belarus.
But by Monday, that agreement appeared precarious as Prigozhin renewed his rants against the Russian defense ministry and Putin offered conflicting comments about the coming consequences for those involved in the mutiny.
After hours of conspicuous silence following the apparent peace deal, Prigozhin reappeared on Monday, posting an 11-minute audio clip to Telegram in which he offered further context for the reasons behind his weekend attack, while defiantly insisting that his troops would remain independent of Russia’s military.
Prior to the rebellion, Wagner forces, which helped capture the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in a bloody battle earlier this year, had been ordered to join Russia’s forces by July 1 — a command that many of the army’s former convicts and mercenaries were not eager to obey, according to Prigozhin, prompting the group’s weekend march toward Moscow in an effort to avoid being absorbed by Russia’s official military.
“We were marching to demonstrate our protest, not to unseat the government,” Prigozhin said, according to a translation of his message.
Putin, meanwhile, addressed the Russian public for the first time since Wagner retreated in his Monday speech, which offered little clarity about how Russia plans to respond to the uprising.
The president praised Wagner troops for turning back and pledged to uphold his promise that those who did so can join the Russian military or seek amnesty in Belarus. But Putin also railed against the “organizers” of the revolt — never naming Prigozhin directly — as traitors who will be “brought to justice.” It seemed to be a reversal of the government’s vow to spare Prigozhin from criminal charges.
Russian state media reported that Prigozhin is in fact, still under investigation, adding even more uncertainty to the legitimacy of the Saturday deal.
Prigozhin’s whereabouts remain unknown, and neither Telegram post nor televised speech have offered any clarity on the future of Wagner’s 25,000 troops who remain armed.
Prigozhin still has thriving Wagner activities in Africa that are likely more appealing than a life of exile in Belarus. Several reports this week indicated that Wagner is still actively recruiting.
The Biden administration and other Western allies, however, remain concerned that Prigozhin’s uprising has dealt a considerable blow to Russia’s stability, The Washington Post reported.
“We see cracks emerging,” Blinken said on Sunday. “I don’t want to speculate on it, but I don’t think we’ve seen the final act.”
Prigozhin Has Already Started Work on Brand New ‘Threat’
Shannon Vavra – June 26, 2023
REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
Field camps were under construction in Belarus on Monday for Wagner mercenaries fighting under Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was just exiled to the country following his attempted mutiny in Russia, according to independent Russian news outlet Verstka.
“We are working, we are already working today. Tomorrow, before lunch, the task is to [build],” one source told Vertska.
One relative of a Wagner fighter told the outlet they were told they would be sent to Belarus. The camps under design are reportedly preparing for 8,000 beds, will stretch 24,000 square meters (258,334 square feet), and will be about 120 miles from Belarus’ border with Ukraine.
In a recorded address to the nation late on Monday night in Russia, President Vladimir Putin confirmed that any Wagner fighters who did not “shed blood” could sign a contract to join the Russian military or go to Belarus.
Prigozhin ordered his troops to march on Moscow over the weekend, threatening to remove Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu over the way Shoigu has handled the war in Ukraine. And although Prigozhin called off the rebellion after negotiating with Putin and Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko to broker a deal that dropped criminal charges against Prigozhin and left him exiled to Belarus, the fate of Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenary group remains uncertain.
The Daily Beast has not been able to verify the reports of the construction in Belarus. But the report of new field camps comes days after the Kremlin hinted that Wagner could be dissolved moving forward, and could provide some clues as to the future of Prigozhin’s mercenary fighters.
Prigozhin had announced he had called his troops back to the field camps in Ukraine, where they have been working to stage attacks against Ukrainians. It was not immediately clear if all of the troops headed for Ukraine, however.
And with possible field camps in Belarus, Prigozhin may be able to continue operating Wagner after all, just days after they staged the largest challenge to Putin’s decades-long hold on power in Russia.
Belarus has been providing Russia a staging ground for their war in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion last year. Lukashenko, whose leadership of Belarus has devolved into serving as a puppet of Putin in recent years, has vowed to continue to allow Russia to use Belarusian territory.
Just how much of a threat Wagner and Prigozhin, a former close ally of Putin, will be able to pose to Putin’s grip on power remains to be seen. It’s not clear if potential Wagner camps in Belarus would be a threat to Russia.
Given the nature of Lukashenko’s relationship with Putin, it’s unlikely that Lukashenko will sanction Prigozhin-led activities in Belarus without Putin knowing about them, and approving of them, Kenneth Yalowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Belarus, told The Daily Beast.
“Putin might have dictated the terms to Lukashanko. I kind of doubt that Lukashenko could have committed Putin to all these things… without Putin’s assent,” Yalowitz said.
Questions had already begun to bubble up over whether Prigozhin will be able to stage attacks from Belarus; Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland is boosting defensive preparations on its borders with Belarus and “anticipating attacks.” It’s also unclear if Prigozhin will be able to stage attacks against Ukraine as well.
But with 25,000 Wagner troops, much of Prigozhin’s future still hangs in the balance.
Prigozhin at this point is a “wild card,” Yalowitz said, and could potentially pose a problem for Lukashenko too.
“If they’ve evacuated into Belarus, what’s their purpose? I mean, you know, they could be a threat to Lukashenko as well,” he said. “For Lukashenko, you would have, in effect, almost like Russian troops occupying Belarus, and that will not go down very well with his public.”
Some Wagner troops might be headed to work for the Russian Ministry of Defense. As part of the agreement that has exiled Prigozhin, Wagner troops that didn’t back the rebellion are to be offered contracts with the conventional Russian military.
It’s a stipulation that echoes earlier efforts by Russia’s Ministry of Defense to force Wagner fighters into the conventional military—efforts that Prigozhin himself had rebuffed and could have contributed to his motivation to stage the mutiny.
In the meantime, there are indications that Putin is still working to dampen Prigozhin and Wagner’s power. Russia is cracking down on private military companies (PMCs) like Wagner, according to Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the State Duma Defense Committee. Kartapolov said Monday he is working on drafting a bill that will regulate PMCs more.
But he predicted nothing would change before the autumn, according to state-owned media outlet TASS.
For now, Wagner is recruiting in Novosibirsk, according to TASS. And a Wagner staff member confirmed the group is working to operate normally, according to Fontanka SPB Online.
“Everything remains unchanged for us,” the staffer said. “We are working as usual.”
Recruits are being offered 240,000 rubles, or around $2,800, plus a bonus if they make it to Ukraine, according to Fontanka SPB Online.
Meanwhile, although Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia had dropped charges against Prigozhin for starting the mutiny, a criminal probe is ongoing, TASS reported. The FSB continues to investigate Prigozhin, according to Kommersant and other Russian outlets.
Signs emerged Monday that Prigozhin may be working to spin his mutiny as an act of defense, rather than a rebellion. In an audio recording, he claimed he staged the rebellion following an attack on his troops, to prevent Wagner from getting shut down.
“We started our march because of an injustice,” he said, according to an AP translation.
The goal was “not toppling the Russian authorities,” he said, according to the War Translated project.
And although the Kremlin said Prigozhin’s personal security is a “guarantee” of Putin’s, Prigozhin is not necessarily safe from Putin’s hitmen moving forward.
“There are just questions everywhere. Is Prigozhin a man who is going to be hunted down in Belarus?” Yalowitz said. “With 10,000 troops at his disposal, he’s not going to be a very easy target to take down.”
It’s unlikely Prigozhin will go belly-up for Lukashenko at this stage, Yalowitz predicted.
“Would he be loyal to Lukashanko? No. He’s not going to be loyal. He’ll be loyal to himself,” he said.
Prigozhin’s whereabouts were uncertain as of Monday. He was seen leaving Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia on Saturday after announcing he was calling off the rebellion. Unconfirmed reports circulated Monday suggesting he had been spotted in Minsk, the Belarussian capital.
Lukashenko’s press service said Monday it did not know if Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus.
Cherries are a beloved stone fruit of many plants in the Prunus genus. They are considered drupes, fruit with juicy outer flesh and a single pit inside, like peaches or olives. Cherries are delicious and contain vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants.
This article examines the many types of cherries, their nutritional profile, and the benefits of regularly incorporating cherries into your diet.
How Many Types of Cherries Are There?
There are over 20 types of cherries, but you have likely only seen a few varieties at your grocery store or local farmers market.
The two major categories of cherries are sweet and sour, each with many different varieties. In the United States, sour cherries predominantly grow in the Midwest and East Coast, whereas sweet cherries are plentiful on the West Coast. Varieties include:
Sweet cherries include dark red or black varieties, such as Bing, Lambert, Chelan, Sweetheart, and Tulare. These are slightly heart-shaped and juicy. They work well in salads and tarts. Rainier and Royal Ann are other popular sweet cherry varieties, which are pink and yellow and often served as part of a charcuterie board or cheese plate.
Sour cherries include varieties such as Montmorency and morello. These are bright red with a tart flavor, making them great for pies, cobblers, and other sweet desserts.
Cherries are a nutritious snack all on their own. There’s not one variety that’s significantly healthier than another, so try them all and decide which you like the best. All you have to do is wash them and be sure to remove them or eat around the pit inside.
Benefits: What Makes Cherries Healthy
Cherries are often regarded as superfoods, which suggests their powerful health benefits. What makes cherries so healthy is that they’re packed with nutrients.
Superfoods
“Superfoods” is a marketing term highlighting foods that prevent disease and support overall health. There is no standard, science-backed criterion to deem foods “super,” although most foods marketed as such contain antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids.
Exercise Recovery
The anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds in cherries may help you recover from intense exercise and resume exercising quicker. Tart cherries and tart cherry juice have been extensively studied for this.
Some research indicates that cherries can benefit your muscles by:
Reducing soreness
Promoting recovery
Reducing exercise-associated pain associated with exercise
One study among endurance runners found that those who consumed 480 milligrams (mg) of powdered tart cherries daily for 10 days before running a half marathon ran the race 13% faster than the placebo group who did not consume tart cherries. Additionally, the cherry group reportedly experienced less muscle soreness after the race, allowing them to recover more quickly than the placebo group.
Heart Health
Cherries contain many heart-healthy compounds. For example, they are a good source of fiber, an essential nutrient for maintaining normal cholesterol levels and other blood markers. They also contain potassium, a mineral that helps balance sodium and promotes healthy blood pressure.
Research shows that cherry juice can help reduce blood pressure in adults within two hours of consumption and can help lower high low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (considered bad cholesterol), a risk factor for heart disease.
Joint Health
Many people experience joint pain from the buildup of uric acid crystals, which can lead to inflammation. Cherries have been studied for their unique ability to normalize uric acid levels. This is why many people with joint pain and related conditions like gout (inflammatory arthritis) may benefit from adding cherries to their diet.
One review of 29 studies on cherry intake and gout found that cherries were beneficial for reducing related joint pain within a matter of days. Another study found that cherry extract and fresh cherry consumption were associated with a 35% reduction in gout attacks as soon as two days after consumption.
Sleep
Cherries contain melatonin, a natural compound that regulates your circadian rhythm (sleep-wake cycle). As the day ends, your brain releases melatonin to help prepare you for sleep. Melatonin levels decrease as morning nears to help you wake up for the day.
As we get older, melatonin levels naturally begin to decline. One study using tart cherry juice found that it increased participants’ melatonin levels, improving their sleep quality and duration of sleep.
Most studies on cherries and sleep use tart cherry juice or cherry extract. Fresh cherries may not have the same effect.
Nutrition Profile of a Single Serving of Cherries
Eating cherries one by one from a bag is easy, but you may wonder about their nutritional benefits. The standard serving size of fresh fruit is one-half cup.
Nutrition Profile of Cherries
A one-half-cup serving of fresh sweet raw pitted cherries offers the following:
Calories: 50
Protein: 1 gram (g)
Total fat: 0 g
Fiber: 1.5 g
Total sugars: 10 g
Calcium: 10 mg
Vitamin C: 5 mg
Potassium: 170 mg
Magnesium: 8 mg
Like other fruits, cherries are fat-free, offer limited protein, and contain carbohydrates from natural sugars and fiber. They also have a wide variety of vitamins and minerals.
Furthermore, cherries contain polyphenols and antioxidants, which are plant compounds with anti-inflammatory and protective properties for cellular health.
When Are Cherries Not as Healthy?
Cherries are a nutrient-rich fruit that fit into almost any diet pattern. Of course, people with a cherry allergy should not eat them, but are there other potential downsides to cherries?
When considering the health contributions of cherries, remember that you get the most benefits from fresh, raw cherries than those that have undergone heavy processing.
Products like canned and maraschino cherries contain significant added sugar, which can spike your blood sugar. And they don’t offer the benefits of fiber and other plant compounds found in raw cherries. Consuming fresh cherries vs. sugary cherry products is also better for people with diabetes.
A high added sugar intake increases the risk of numerous chronic diseases. Dried cherries may not have added sugar but do contain a more concentrated amount of natural sugars per serving than fresh cherries.
Eating many cherries in one sitting could lead to digestive symptoms if you’re not used to eating whole plant foods, fiber-filled fruits, and natural sugar. If you’re concerned about potential side effects, stick to a serving size of fresh or frozen cherries, which is one-half cup at a time.
Summary
If you’re a fan of cherries, you’re not alone. These juicy little fruits are very popular, especially in the summertime. Cherries are also a rich source of vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants, and other plant compounds responsible for various health benefits. Including cherries in your diet may benefit your heart, joint health, sleep, and exercise recovery.
FILE – Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group military company, arrives during a funeral ceremony at the Troyekurovskoye cemetery in Moscow, Russia, on April 8, 2023. On Friday, June 23, Prigozhin made his most direct challenge to the Kremlin yet, calling for an armed rebellion aimed at ousting Russia’s defense minister. The security services reacted immediately by calling for his arrest. (AP Photo/File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More
MOSCOW — Over the course of a month I spent in the Russian capital, the red-and-black billboards of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner paramilitary group multiplied. “Join the team of victors!” they said, beneath an image of menacing mercenaries in balaclavas and masks, only their eyes visible.
A possible implication was that the Russian forces on the other mushrooming Moscow billboards — regular soldiers recruited by the Ministry of Defense pictured above slogans like “Real Work!” or “Be a hero!” — were the losers of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reckless gamble in Ukraine.
As heedless Muscovites headed for their offices and gyms, their Italian or Japanese restaurants, their bars and nightclubs, this military recruitment drive on two fronts offered the sole image in the capital of the Russian scramble to contain the fallout, and hide the full impact, of the invasion that began 16 months ago. Easier to order a latte than dwell on lost lives in Mariupol, Ukraine.
Now, with his blunt depiction of that invasion as a “racket” that “wasn’t needed to demilitarize or denazify Ukraine,” and his apparently short-lived armed uprising, Prigozhin has played on one of Putin’s worst fears: division and rebellion, with tanks on the streets, as in the mayhem of the 1990s from which Putin, a former KGB officer, abruptly emerged as the inscrutable president and Mr. Stability.
Since then, over 23 years, Putin has steadily consolidated his power, using his wars that began in Chechnya to cement nationalist sentiment, terrorizing the opposition to the point that dissent has become a crime, and shaping a wildly unequal economy around a coterie of hand-picked oligarchs. He has reverted Russia to type as an autocratic police state under an all-powerful latter-day czar after its brief but heady post-Communist flirtation with a freer society.
“The system Putin built is very stable,” a Western ambassador in Moscow told me this month. “But if I woke up one morning and saw tanks on the street, I would not be totally astonished.”
This surprising disclosure, uttered under customary diplomatic anonymity, is indicative of the close-knit secrecy of Putin’s inner circle that has made Kremlinology during the war in Ukraine as arduous as at the height of the Cold War. There are very few tea leaves to read. Russia, smothered in propaganda and fear, is opaque.
At the same time, even as the government has gone to great lengths, and expense, to maintain an illusion of business as usual, the placid surface Russia has until now presented during the war masks unease.
In muttered expressions across the country of bewilderment and anger, and not least in Prigozhin’s foul-mouthed diatribes against what he sees as the craven incompetence and half-measures of Russia’s generals, lay the seeds of those tanks in the ambassador’s prescient imaginings.
Russia tends not to evolve; it lurches, as in 1917 or 1991, and it circles about. Putin has perpetuated old habits in deploying double-think. He prefers to “forget whatever it was necessary to forget,” and then restore “memory again at the moment when it was needed,” as George Orwell put it.
Hence Putin’s invocation of 1917 in his brief speech Saturday, a time when internal fracture led to the nascent Soviet republic losing significant population and vast swaths of agricultural land in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the next year. Therefore, Putin vowed, he would resist the current “deadly threat” of “mutiny” through “brutal” actions.
Suddenly the glorious Soviet victory over Nazis and Fascists of “The Great Patriotic War” of 1941 to 1945, which has been the drumbeat of the quixotic Ukrainian assault, was set aside by Putin in favor of a crushing historical defeat.
He wields the past to his ends, even as he has very little to say about the future.
Nobody, for example, knows what Putin would define as victory in his “special military operation” in Ukraine. Other mysteries abound. The question, for many months now, has been how Prigozhin, a former convict who started in hot dogs in St. Petersburg and went on to provide catering for the Kremlin, has survived.
If the family of a Russian child drawing a picture of a Ukrainian flag risks prison in Putin’s Russia, how could this loudmouth in battle fatigues get away with suggesting that Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister, has enabled genocide, among a torrent of other accusations and insults?
I heard many answers across Russia. But perhaps the most fundamental lay in the recently dug grave of Boris Batsev, aged 42, a railroad worker who was killed six months ago near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, leaving a wife and two children.
Brightly colored plastic roses and carnations were piled high around his gravestone, beneath the red-and-gold Wagner flag, in Siberia, near the town of Talofka, thousands of miles from the Ukrainian front.
“Blood, honor, motherland, bravery,” a Wagner inscription said. A mild breeze blew across the Troetskoe cemetery as agents of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, looked on from a vehicle that had abruptly appeared nearby.
With Russian forces often bereft of essential equipment and sometimes operating as a human wave, Putin has needed flesh for the meat grinder. Prigozhin, recruiting in Russian prisons with offers of amnesty and big payouts, could provide that, from as far away as Siberia. He has been too effective and useful to toss aside.
In the long battle for the charred ruins of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut alone, Prigozhin has said Wagner lost 20,000 troops.
The use of Prigozhin, others suggested, was the apotheosis of Putin’s modus operandi of dividing his subordinates, shifting influence in recent years from Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, to Shoigu as the militarization of Russian society proceeded, only to undermine the defense minister through Prigozhin.
“Putin likes competition, he has liked putting pressure on Shoigu, and enjoyed the theater,” Dmitri Muratov, the Nobel Prize-winning editor of the shuttered independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, told me in an interview. “Meanwhile, the elite around Putin don’t give a damn for their country, they’re just afraid for their lives.”
Prigozhin has been useful in other ways for Putin. Through Wagner, he has helped project a ruthless and lawless form of Russian power across several African countries, including Mali and the Central African Republic. He was also a way, in the midst of an utterly misjudged war, for the Russian leader to play the moderate, to suggest that if it was not for him, things could be even worse and become as unstable as Prigozhin’s temper.
Finally, Prigozhin became an increasingly popular mouthpiece for the widespread resentment of moneyed Russian elites, oblivious to the cost and suffering of the war in Ukraine. This was cathartic, given accumulated Russian frustrations, and perhaps useful to Putin in that sense.
But the paramilitary leader also developed, through adept use of social media and compelling rhetoric over the past nine months, into a true national figure, with a notoriety that has made him the object of much debate and speculation about a possible political future.
Putin has now awakened to this danger, even as Prigozhin may have overplayed his hand.
The Russian president has spoken of an “armed rebellion,” and a former commander of Russian troops in Ukraine has spoken of a “military coup,” but Prigozhin’s description of his actions as a “march for justice” will have resonated with some, perhaps many, Russians.
These sentiments will not disappear overnight, even if, according to Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, Prigozhin has now ceased moving military convoys toward Moscow and agreed to go to Belarus in exchange for charges being dropped against him and his fighters.
To what degree the whole back-and-forth was orchestrated theater, and to what degree a genuine confrontation, seems unlikely to be clarified soon, if ever.
What is clear is that Putin has deep reserves of support. “The West told Russia that all it has the right to do is yield,” Petr Tolstoy, the deputy chair of the Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, said in an interview. “Putin said ‘Enough!’ and that ensures him of popular backing.”
The president’s control of the country’s military, security and intelligence apparatus is such that the biggest direct challenge to his rule in more than two decades appears to have been repulsed in short order, even if Putin has suffered the acute embarrassment of allowing a man he called a traitor to get off scot free the day he made that accusation.
It had been a long time since Putin blinked in this way.
There will be reverberations. Very little since the Ukraine invasion on Feb. 24 of last year has gone according to plan for Putin. Hiding a war that has taken 100,000 Russian lives, according to U.S. diplomats in Moscow, has a cost. The exercise of not leveling with the Russian people contributed to Prigozhin’s fury, as was made clear in his repeated statements that the defense establishment was lying.
Prigozhin has styled himself as the man who delivers the hard truth. In the Belgorod region on Russia’s border with Ukraine, which I visited earlier this month, he was infuriated that Putin and his state media would prefer to forget the devastation through cross-border Ukrainian shelling of Shebekino, a Russian town of 40,000 people.
In the city of Belgorod, in a vast improvised dormitory for the displaced at an indoor cycle track, I met Aleksandr Petrianko, 62, half-paralyzed by a stroke.
“Could Mr. Prigozhin have saved Shebekino?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he said in a trembling voice. “I hope he is not killed before his time.”
Haze obscures the skyline in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette via AP)
(Photo by AFP PHOTO / Nova Scotia Government) (Handout/AFP/Getty Images)
