Originally published at: Soon-to-be-found-dead "missing" Russian General purportedly just fine | Boing Boing
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“Nothing happened to him, no one arrested him, and he’s in his office,” Veronika Surovikina was quoted
“And as long as I keep saying that my life will also remain normal! That man in the trenchcoat there? Pay no attention to him. Just an old family friend…”
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Basements flood and ventilation systems fail.
There is no safe haven from a creative assassin.
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Is any of this sounding a little fishy?
I can’t seem to find any legit analysis of WHY all this went down the way it did.
I’m likely not informed enough to make an opinion but all this seems a little too convenient. For example - was this some ruse designed to spur more volunteers to join the military? Protect the Homeland!
Was it some attempts to back out of the conflict in some crazy way?
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When one comes for the king, it is essential to land their shot, and these guys just made Putin look bad.
Now I’m wondering what became of the little kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes…
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Is he dead yet?
Is he dead yet now?
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Hanlon’s Razor?
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Surovikin may be the key to the mystery.
Apparently a lot of coup attempts fail. Most, in fact. And the most common cause of failure is probably that expected support fails to materialize.
I’ve seen it suggested that Prigozhin thought he had Surovikin onboard. The fact that he met little organized resistance from the regular Russian army at first may have given him confidence that this was the case. But Prigozhin needed Surovikin to do more than just stand aside; he was counting on him to actually throw in actively with Wagner, and when he didn’t, Prigozhin knew it was over.
It’s possible that Surovikin took a wait-and-see approach, waited, saw it wasn’t happening, and decided to stay with the regime. If that’s the case, he may be facing some hard questions about why he knew about the coup but didn’t pass the info up the chain to his bosses.
Another possibility is that Surovikin got busted. Western intelligence saw Prigozhin’s move coming well ahead of time. So too, reportedly, did Putin. And once Putin knew what Prigozhin had planned, he may have guessed (or been told) that Surovikin would need to be involved. One commentator described Surovikin’s recorded message calling on Wagner to stand down as looking like “a hostage video”. For all we know, there were a handful of Bortnikov’s men sitting just out of camera shot.
Or Surovikin may have ratted on Prigozhin the moment that Prigozhin first approached him. The temptation to do so in a Russia where everyone informs on everyone else must be very strong. That’s pretty much why Putin is still in power: expert management of fear and mistrust.
If Surovikin knew and didn’t tell Putin, he’s done. It’s not so much that his loyalty is suspect as that he’s shown that he doesn’t fear Putin enough, and that will not do. Maybe he’ll have a window-related accident; maybe he’ll end up counting paperclips in a barracks in Siberia. Putin is probably conducting a quick assessment of Surovikin’s own level of support before deciding on the best course of action.
This is all speculation. It does seem likely, however, that if Prigozhin was actually planning to go all the way, he’d have needed Surovikin’s cooperation. And apparently, at the end of the day, for whatever reason, he didn’t have it.
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Putin needs to mix these things up a bit. Maybe he could be on his mega yacht when it mysteriously explodes?
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Surovikin may also have felt his head was already on the chopping block as he was one of the military leaders in charge of invading Ukraine, and it’s always possible that someone in that role can be a convenient scapegoat as the war drags on with less success than Russia/Putin hoped for.
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One theory I’ve heard, it wasn’t planned as a coup, the Wagner head was desperate to get Putin’s attention, but his “attack” went way better than he ever hoped or planned due to Russia’s hollowed-out military, and he had to find a way to back down, since there was still no way he’d actually be able to take and hold Moscow.
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Or my favorite of George Carlin’s underrepresented maladies:
Sudden total weight loss
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