You are surely aware of how things got strange for Russia (and Vladimir Putin’s place as president) over the weekend. Late last week, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Putin’s private mercenary army (the Wagner Group), went HAM and accused Russian leadership of lying about its reasons for invading Ukraine. On Saturday, Prigozhin decided that he’d had enough of being angry about his soldiers being turned into hamburger meat on the battlefield. So, he rounded up his mercenaries and attempted a coup.
It still remains clear exactly what happened to make this a failed coup, but Prigozhin did lead an armed uprising and seized a key Russian military base, but he stopped before reaching Moscow. Now, Prigozhin has agreed to be exiled in Belarus, and he’s reportedly at the only available hotel where no one can jump out of windows, meaning that he won’t join the list of former Putin associates who have mysteriously fallen from great heights over the years.
Whether Prigozhin manages to stay alive, one can only guess. However, U.S. officials declared surprise over how quickly the matter began and deescalated over the weekend. Meanwhile, Majorie Taylor Greene dreamed up a conspiracy theory to accuse Biden of being behind the uprising, and a few Fox News hosts echoed a similar point. Here’s Fox Business host Maria Baritromo at her Fox News weekend gig, Sunday Morning Futures, where she, too, went into conspiracy-theory mode. In Baritromo’s mind, this uprising must have been intended as a distraction from Hunter Biden’s legal woes:
Bartiromo: The mainstream media has an excuse not to cover it. They’re covering everything about Russia and The Wagner Group as if it matters to the US right now pic.twitter.com/5nVpYy4sVe
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 25, 2023
“The White House wanted to give the media something else to cover and this is the M.O. This is the way they do things…. I said, ‘Wow, what a blockbuster WhatsApp message. I’m sure there will be an enormous story over the weekend that the White House will be pushing to take the story off the front page,’ and sure enough, we’ve got the State Department drumming up the drama that took place over the weekend in Russia. So I don’t know if it’s going to break through.”
Additionally, Rachel Campos-Duffy accused the U.S. of playing some sort of role in orchestrating the uprising, too. On that note, it’s worth mentioning that, way back in March, Brian Kilmeade shut down Campos-Duffy’s claim that the U.S. had provoked Russia to invade Ukraine.
In Russia, Putin appears to have shut down his Wagner Group nemesis’ uprising for the moment. However, an uprising by one’s own private army is not a good look no matter how it’s painted. The Russian president only recently admitted that Russia is performing abysmally, so perhaps more fireworks are on the way. Either that, or Putin has already retreated to his pickle-filled luxury hideout to lick his wounds.
(Via Fox News, Acyn on Twitter, CNBC, Al Jazeera & Mediate)