Western fantasists dreamed of Prigozhin leading the long predicted, never realized regime change in Russia. Putin is still at the top of that heap. From Martin Sieff at antiwar.com:
The idea that Yevgeny Prigozhin posed a plausible – or even desirable – alternative to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was always ludicrous. Prigozhin was catapulted high and fast by his willingness to fund and lead the Wagner Group of mercenaries which proved highly useful to the Russian government in the ferocious, long-drawn-out fighting over recent months in the city of Bakhmut.
The Russian government had watched the increasing use of mercenary units by the US government and armed forces over the past quarter century in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then-Vice President Dick Cheney was an especial enthusiast and architect of this always risky policy.
Mercenary units can be used for potential heavy casualty or ferocious down and dirty fighting as welcome alternatives to regular units precisely because they are not subject to congressional or media review in the West and because they are outside and insulated from the regular military chains of command and procedures: So they do not therefore risk contaminating the real army from within by their ruthless or unorthodox behavior in combat.
Also, if mercenary units suffer higher casualties than regular units, the political impact is negligible compared with heavy losses from a largely or partially conscript force such as the Russian army.
Over the past 20 years, there have been a chain of witless and of course false claims and prophecies by tame US and NATO sociologist “advisers,” especially the late Gunnar Heinsohn, a fawned upon lecturer at the NATO Defense College in Rome, that Russia was demographically incapable of launching any large scale sustained military operation or sustaining and winning any prolonged war because no government could survive the heavy casualties among ordinary families that would be inevitable.
