The Grifter’s Got To Go

By James Howard Kunstler

“Vladimir Putin is clearly losing the War in Iraq.” — “Joe Biden,” US President

Russian Revolution Two kicked off the long, hot summer freak show of 2023. Unlike Russian Revolution One (1917), which lasted over seventy years, RR2 clocked out in under twenty-four hours. It didn’t propel Russia into a political paroxysm as perhaps expected by crisis engineers in Langley, VA, and Washington’s Foggy Bottom. Rather, it energized the resolve of arch-nemesis Vlad Putin, solidified his support among the Russian populace (who turned out singing patriotic hymns along the Neva River when the revolt was quashed), and sunsetted the increasingly rogue Wagner private paramilitary company in its Ukraine duties, now to be taken over by regular Russian Federation army units.

According to commentator Andrei Martyanov — see yesterday’s colloquy on Tommy Carrigan’s Podcast — Wagner had already gone off the rails in Ukraine, inciting the costly Bakhmut operation on its own to fluff its reputation while preparing for the mutiny executed and aborted on July 24. The fate of Wagner’s business manager, Evgeny Prigozhin, remains murky now while he cools his heels in Belarus — a trial, perhaps, at some later date when Ukraine itself stops being a geopolitical psychodrama. He has been publicly branded a “traitor.”