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Prigozhin Claims to Control Rostov-on-Don and As Fighting Breaks Out Near Voronezh
Calling to mind WWI, frustrated army abandons the front and goes after Russia’s ‘czar’
It is a simple axiom. History holds all the lessons we need for the present and future. On my fourth marriage, trust me when I saw this: Listen to the murmurings of history because it knows exactly what it’s talking about.
The Russian front is not collapsing — yet — but the Wagner founder and popular figure with the frontline troops, Evgeny Prigozhin, has spoken the words that history loves: Basta (enough). Khatit, in Russian.
The next words that work perfectly here in Russian, ones more than likely echoing through the hearts, and shredded souls of many Russians on this morning, exactly 16 months to the day since Putin so confidently — and foolishly — sent his unprepared army across the border into Ukraine: “Shol’ko mozhno?” In this context, they translate to roughly “How much is possible to tolerate?”
That is the question the beaten, terrorized, and poorly-trained and supplied Russian soldiers will have to ask themselves on this day, 2 days after the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany in 1941. History is sending up so many trial balloons. It’s telling the average citizen, the ones for whom retirement age was so easily raised to 65 from 60, the ones who were ripped from their homes, dachas, jobs, schools, and families and so unceremoniously shipped with guns in some cases to the slaughter in Ukraine. Some estimates put the Russian frontline dead at 200,000 and more. As Ukraine attacks, the death rate has skyrocketed.
Why was the war started? For no reason but to maintain a steady flow of new money into the lethargic Russian economy. As Evgeny Prigozhin so rightly said (I paraphrase): There was no reason to invade Ukraine. No one was planning to invade Russia. The invasion was done to keep the Moscow elite fat and happy.
Imagine how many expensive watches, cars, and apartments in elite buildings this war has bought for Russia’s generals and Putin’s coterie of cowards? These are the questions that Russian patriots must ask themselves today, tomorrow, and in the coming days, as Evgeny Prigozhin’s “march for…
