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Notes -
And Igor Girkin/Strelkov has been imprisoned for over a month now. Unlike Prigozhin and Utkin, he probably had close to zero actual power, but he was a very vocal critic of the regime (in particular, a very direct critic of Shoigu, but also an only somewhat less direct critic of Putin) and was beginning to try to build an "Angry Patriots' Club" of ultra-hawks disappointed with the regime's incompetent handling of the war.
The most open pro-war critics of Putin/Shoigu (well, to the extent that Prigozhin was actually pro-war, which is not completely certain) are vanishing from the Russian political landscape. The anti-war ones already either fled or are keeping silent.
There's a lesson here: never be loyal to a regime that doesn't return the favor. It's ironic that patriots often face harsher crackdowns in Russia under Putin than even leftists now. Also says a lot about the sclerotic state of Russia. The elite doesn't even seem to care about winning so much as about self-preservation.
This was always the case.
"Russia Will Always Betray You, Son"
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