Putin may not be responsible for the death of Prigozhin. From M.K. Bhadrakumar at indianpunchline.com:
Yevgeny Prigozhin speaks to camera in an image taken from video released on Wagner-linked Telegram channels on Aug. 21, 2023
There has been an avalanche of western media reports within minutes or hours of the ghastly death on Wednesday of the head of the Wagner organisation of Russian military contractors, Yevgeny Prigozhin, which pointed the accusing finger at President Vladimir Putin as the perpetrator.
It is almost as if a button was pressed at some unknown command centre to launch a new narrative to demonise Putin for serving the cold dish of revenge to Prigozhin, to borrow the CIA director William Burns’ recent words, for staging a failed coup in Russia. No one cared to produce empirical evidence.
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth” — the law of propaganda is often attributed to the Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels who understood the power of repeating falsehoods. It is now the West’s compass to “erase” Russia.
True, Putin had every reason to be annoyed with Prigozhin — a “stab in the back,” as he put it — when the nation was waging an existential war against sworn enemies who seek the dismemberment of Russia. But three considerations discredit the hypothesis of Putin’s involvement.
