Russia's Love Affair With Itself

"For 23 years, a nonentity was at the head of the country, who managed to ‘throw dust in the eyes’ of a significant part of the population."

"The country will not survive another six years in power of this cowardly mediocrity."

"The only thing he could do usefully ‘before the end’ … is to ensure the transfer of power to someone truly capable and responsible."

"Too bad it didn’t even cross his mind."

Igor Strelkov/Igor Girkin, Moscow

Russian nationalist Kremlin critic and former military commander Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, who is charged with inciting extremist activity, sits behind a glass wall of an enclosure for defendants during a court hearing in Moscow, Russia, July 21, 2023. REUTERS/Alexander Paramoshin

Prominent nationalist Igor Strelkov, a retired security officer who had back in 2014 led ethnic Russian Ukrainian separatists in eastern Ukraine, and who accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of weakness and indecision in carrying out his 'special military operation' received a setback after charges laid against him in July of inciting extremist activity, when a Moscow court ruled that he must remain in prison on extremism charges.

The Netherlands had convicted him in absentia of murder for his role in the shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet in 2014, with the use of a Buk missile, evidently mistaking the passenger jet for a Ukrainian fighter jet, and giving orders to the Ukrainian Russian speakers rebelling against the government in Kyiv to shoot down the plane, causing the death of all aboard. 

The 52-year-old nationalist hard-liner whose actual name is Igor Girkin was ordered by Moscow District Court to remain in police custody until his trial date of September 18. Arrested on July, he faces charges of calling for extremist activities. Should he be convicted he is likely to be given five years in prison. He has insisted as a stern critic of President Putin that a total mobilization is required for victory in Ukraine.

Putin, he has stated is a "nonentity", a "cowardly mediocrity", establishing himself as one of Vladimir Putin's targets. And while a court may indeed hand out a five-year prison sentence for  his insubordinate insults to the great man of revisionist grandeur, it is highly unlikely that he will survive that incarceration before perishing of undetermined causes. 

His legal team had recommended he be held under house arrest; health issues were cited in defence of that humanitarian alternative. Yet it is those very 'health' issues that will be cited as cause of his death in all likelihood during enforced detention. "The court decision is unfair and we will appeal", stated his loyal wife. And good luck with that one.

Hawkish critics like Mr. Strelkov will now have even more reason to act with a little more circumspect caution in their criticism of Vladimir Putin and his dwindling prospects of completing his goals for the 'special military operation'. Strelkov now represents another warning sign that critics of the regime should exercise greater caution because the Kremlin is taking careful note of their activities and actions, and there are consequences waiting in the wings.

In the wake of Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary group's aborted mutiny where Rostov-on-Don was captured before the mercenaries marched on to Moscow in a seemingly unchallenged drive to take the capital, approaching up to 200 kilometres to Moscow while demanding the ouster of the country's top military leaders, Strelkov was arrested,  Prigozhin met his death in a surprise air crash, and Ukraine's drone attacks are intensifying within Russian borders.

What Strelkov had in common with Prigozhin was his criticism of Russian military leaders. He denounced their incompetence, but he also had contempt for Prigozhin, noting his actions represented treason, a major threat to the Russian state. Prigozhin returned the compliment to Strelkov, a mutual detestation -- with Strelkov's supporters claiming that the criminal inquiry that scooped their leader into an arrest warrant and trial was initiated by a Wagner leader.

 

Igor Girkin, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on July 11, 2014 | Alexander Khudoteply/AFP via Getty images

Playing China's Environmental Challenges Game

"It is, above all, a political institution and its purpose is to bring in money and legitimacy to China's often feeble attempts at combating local pollution and climate change overall."

"By making foreigners and foreign organizations invest in this political venture, they effectively silence them."

Czech sinologist Filip Jirous

"As the world faces the interrelated crises of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss -- threats that cross all borders and require urgent international co-operation -- CCCED [China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development] has been a been a meaningful forum for global sustainable development."

International Institute for Sustainable Development

 

"Existential global environmental challenges cannot be effectively addressed without China's contribution, given its size, population and carbon-intensive economy."

Samuel Lafontaine, spokesman, Environment Canada

"Canada's funding is, I believe, a rather pathetic way of keeping our foot in the door in Beijing."

"Unfortunately, it also helps sustain the fiction that China is somehow unable to act in its own self-interest, much less in ours."

David Mulroney, Canadian ambassador to Beijing, 2009- 2012

Cars move along a highway in a coal-producing region in Yulin in northwestern China's Shaanxi province on April 24, 2023. (Ng Han Guan/AP)

 

Canada's Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is on a visit to China to attend a climate conference. Diplomacy between China and Canada is at its lowest ebb in recent memory. China, taking fierce umbrage at Canada taking a Huawei executive (daughter of its founder) into custody on an extradition warrant issued by the United States, took its own steps by immediately imprisoning two Canadians and charging them with espionage in a revenge hostage-taking. They were imprisoned for almost two years before the U.S. dropped its charges against Meng Wanzhou and Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavrig were released and returned to Canada.

 

A Canadian think tank actually dating from the time of the arrest of the two Michaels, has been acting as the international secretariat for a Chinese environmental agency whose head is a powerful Communist Party leader. Canadian-led projects for the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) under Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development manages international donations and appoints advisers, government having taken over the secretariat from Simon Fraser University.

 

The project is spearheaded by the Canadian government, providing funding equal to China's own. Its supporters claim that it is vital to engage with the advisory organization since China is recognized as key to combating climate change, given it is the world's highest source of carbon emissions. Chair of the Chinese group is China's vice premier, Ding Xuexiang, a member of the Politburo standing committee and formerly director of the office of President Xi Jinping. And Canada's Guilbeault is executive vice chair of the council.

"Even before the meeting starts, they're giving us our marching orders."

"Don't push the envelope. Don't push China to do more. And frankly, the minister [Guilbeault] himself said he was going to have an open and frank conversation. Good for him."

"That makes for a potentially constructive discussion with them."

"They're holding out that carrot that if you're sufficiently deferential and polite, and if you say everything we want you to say, and don't challenge us on climate change and the environment, then maybe, just maybe, other elements of the Canada-China relationship will be improved."

"That's just another way of putting us down, so that we are on our back foot at the beginning of the meeting [China's Global Times reporting that Canada's unusually intense wildfire season 'has resulted in significant excess carbon emissions'.]"

Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, board member, China Strategic Risks Institute

The CCICED focuses on green issues but is the leading organization in the campaign by China to co-opt environmentalists globally, according to sinologist Filip Jirous, who reported to the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, detailing that some of its top officials have backgrounds in agencies involved in globally projecting China's influence. Environmentalists from the West who work with Chinese groups avoid criticism of China, which doesn't take kindly to critical observations.

With the distinction of being the world's largest generator of carbon dioxide emissions (the United States second) and Canada 11th, Beijing, though having invested heavily in renewable energy and electric vehicles, continues to build new coal-fired generating plants, the largest emitter of pollution worldwide. In fact, Canada's largest export in raw materials to China is coal. 

Even as Chinese propaganda is heralding the significance of Canada's environment minister's trip, warnings abound that Guilbeault not take a "condescending tone with his Chinese counterparts". Recent revelations of Beijing's interference in Canadian elections saw Canada expel Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei after it was revealed he was involved in intimidating a Conservative Member of Canadian Parliament. China responded by expelling a Canadian diplomat.

Interviewed by CBC News before his departure to China, Guilbeault refused to commit to raising the matters of election interference and Chinese human rights abuses. "We will confront them when we have to confront them. But we will also co-operate on issues like climate change and nature", he stated.

 

Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault speaks at the opening of the Seventh Global Environment Facility Assembly in Vancouver on Aug. 23, 2023. (Ethan Cairns/Canadian Press)

"We cannot solve the climate crisis without international co-operation -- which means continuing engagement, even when tensions are high."

"CCICED has played an important role in fostering this diplomatic dialogue with China over the years."

Caroline Brouillette, Climate Action Network Canada

The Unexamined Reality

"School attendance by Indigenous children was only made compulsory in 1920 for the same reason that that rule was applied to all other children."

"The majority of Indigenous schoolchildren attended day schools, and those who attended residential schools only did so after applications were signed by a parent or guardian. A great many of these application forms are publicly available through government archives, and have been conspicuously ignored by those who find them inconvenient to their zealous mythmaking."

"Out of this farrago of malicious nonsense came the self-addressed blood libel of a genocide perpetrated against First Nations."

Conrad Black, columnist, (former media baron), National Post

A fire destroyed the century-old Catholic church in Morinville, Alta., about 30 kilometres north of Edmonton, on June 30. (David Bajer/CBC)

The volatile, shocking and shameful issue of "unmarked graves of missing aboriginal children" in Canada consumed headlines across the nation and internationally when the first reports were aired of 'unmarked' graves having been discovered on the sites of former residential schools in Canada. Controversy over these allegations arose, but not questions leading to evidence and proof of the accusations. The public was quick to shrink in shame at what earlier generations of government action had perpetrated on First Nations in Canada.

 

And the current Liberal Prime Minister of Canada leaped at the opportunity to once again charge that Canada was a deeply racist country, guilty of maltreatment of First Nations, guilty of ignoring its past sins, guilty of imposing white values, customs and expectations on visible minority groups, and amends were long overdue. This from a man whose privilege as an elite and an aspiring celebrity figure didn't hesitate to find humour in dressing in brown- and black-face costume himself.

 

While Canada does indeed have a history of white privilege through its original European migration and colonialism emanating from Britain and France, and its treatment of Chinese labourers, Jews and Blacks was reprehensible, so too was its neglect of people calling themselves indigenous to the land. As earlier settlers before European migration, it is now acknowledged to be a country of immigrants from global sources and Canadians themselves largely tolerant.

 

According to the current narrative, nearly every aboriginal child was removed from their family and forced to attend residential school. On the left, the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre. On the right, students of the Metlakatla Indian Residential School in British Columbia. (Source of right image: Courtesy of William James Topley/Library and Archives Canada)

None of which stopped Justin Trudeau from his usual theatrics of playing to his audience by ordering the Canadian flag to be lowered to half-mast in shame and memory of the Aboriginal children presumed to have been murdered by the staff at residential schools operated largely by the Roman Catholic Church. These were schools meant to usher First Nations children into the wider world, to teach them the basics of a sound education so they could find their place as equals in Canadian society. 

 

Children were taught how to comport themselves, taught the fundamentals of reading, writing, mathematics, geography, history, along with social mores and personal hygiene. Many children were homesick, as children were always wont to be, away from home. Some thrived in the educational environment, some resented their absence from family. Recall that in Britain children from a young age of the aristocracy were routinely sent to boarding schools; academies for boys, finishing schools for girls. As in the residential schools there were always nasty experiences along with the good.

 

In 2021, the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in British Columbia revealed that a survey of ground-penetrating radar had discovered "the remains of 215 children who had been students of the Kamloops Indian Residential school". "These missing children are undocumented deaths", declared the First Nation chief. While the anthropologist who had conducted the GPR search cautioned excavations would be needed to verify that the survey's findings were in actual fact, burials.

 

That caveat was ignored in favour of accepting the horrifying fact of deliberate hidden deaths of children, and hysteria ensued. "For decades, most Indigenous children in Canada were taken from their families and forced into boarding schools. A large number never returned home, their families given only vague explanations, or none at all", reported the New York Times on May 28, 2021.

Flowers, shoes and moccasins placed on the steps of the Mohawk Institute, a former residential school for Indigenous children, to honor the 215 children whose remains were recently discovered on the site. Credit: Cole Burston Getty Images

Soon more First Nations that had hosted residential schools conducted GPR scans of their own, announcing similar results. All federal government flags of Canada lowered to recognize the "215 children whose lives were taken at the Kamloops residential school", and lowered they remained for six months, anywhere Canada had a presence, including missions abroad in the great wide world where the sad fate of aboriginal children became common knowledge.

 

Leading China to sneer at the deliberate killing of indigenous children, even as Beijing slammed Canada for implying official China was leading a genocide against Xinjiang province's Uyghur population and Turkmen Muslims.  Evidence to back up the allegations? There was none actually sought, for to do so would serve to dispel the overwrought self-flagellation by a distraught public, and would also offend the suffering sensibilities of those claiming victimhood.

 

Then in June the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan announced the discovery of 751 unmarked graves close to the site of its former residential school. This was the time when 68 mostly Roman Catholic churches, many established Indigenous parish churches, were vandalized, several torched in reprisal for the "murdered children". There were no investigations that might identify those responsible for the vandalism, a general public aura of 'serves them right' prevailed. 

 

Fire consumes a church at Gitwangak near New Hazelton, B.C. A number of fires have destroyed Catholic and Anglican churches across the country. (Submitted by Chasity Daniels)

 

Any Indigenous individuals who found their experience at the residential schools had given them opportunities they would never otherwise have had, and who had gone on to build on the education given them to become members of highly respected professions, or those who recalled their parents having expressed appreciation for the opportunity to learn how to live responsibly and with confidence in their abilities had their protests drowned out by the shame heaped upon them as betraying the narrative.

In point of fact, no groups of unmarked graves were discovered anywhere in Canada. Public funds were provided to conduct forensic investigations, but nothing has been done to clarify whether the disturbances in soil represent human burials. The majority of the GPR research took place in community cemeteries where others besides Indigenous people would have been buried. As for 'unmarked; originally simple wood crosses were erected and time and the elements had their way leaving thousands of unmarked graves.

As for "missing children", Alberta political scientist Tom Flanagan identifies that as a fabrication the Truth and Reconciliation Commission fantasized in its zeal to have the Canadian public accept that Canada had committed a 'social/cultural genocide'. In the 19th century many children died of communicable childhood diseases and of tuberculosis. Aboriginal children were particularly vulnerable to communicable diseases. All such deaths were recorded and families informed.

Unravelling the mystery: Archaeologist Scott Hamilton’s report for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the burial of deceased Indian Residential School children included a wealth of information about how and why they died and what happened afterwards. This was available many years before the ground penetrating radar survey in Kamloops in spring 2021.

 

Never were there enquiries of missing Indigenous children filed with police or other authorities. Indian resident school students were enumerated meticulously in the calculation of per capita subsidy to the schools by the Department of Indian Affairs. And nor were 150,000 Aboriginal students "forced" to attend residential schools. Canada committed to $4.7 billion in reparations and federal budgets allocated hundreds of millions to "addressing the shameful legacy of residential schools". 

Schools that lifted children out of illiteracy, launching them into an educated adulthood. 

"Regardless of the start date, it is important to note that these schools were initially created at the express request of Indigenous leaders who wished to secure a formal English-language education for their people.In fact, a federal requirement to provide education was a key component of all nine numbered treaties covering Western and Northern Canada. The following excerpt from Treaty 3, concluded in 1873, is typical: “Her Majesty agrees to maintain schools for instruction in such reserves hereby made as to her Government of Her Dominion of Canada may seem advisable whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it.” During his 1881 tour of Western Canada, Governor-General John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, the Marquess of Lorne, met with Indigenous chiefs who made repeated requests for better education. Dakota Chief Standing Buffalo asked, “Please give me a Church on my Reserve for I want to live like the white people.” Cree Chief John Smith had a similar plea: “I want a teacher to learn the English language and to teach it to my children.”  C2C Journal

B.C. Wildfires -- Up Close and Personal

The McDougall Creek wildfire burns in the hills in West Kelowna on Aug. 17, 2023, as seen from Kelowna. Photo by DARREN HULL /AFP via Getty Images

"Then the flames started, and they started everywhere all at the same time because it was an ember shower."

"We're a pretty small fire department, we have three apparatus, so we tried to do our best but there was just absolutely no way that we could attack all of it. And as soon as  you don't attack it, it spreads."

"We fought for as many houses as we could. We stopped the flame front and saved probably, I'd say, 65 to 75 percent of the houses in Traders Cove."

"I saw my house burn. When we were fighting the fires in Traders Cove, we literally had fire personnel with their backs to their house that was burning behind them, and they were fighting the neighbour's, trying to save the neighbourhood." 

"It was extremely, extremely fast. The wind was blowing directly, I mean literally, at my house. It was a wall of fire 100, 125 feet high, travelling 35 kilometres an hour."

"It was surreal. It was watching nature at its worst. ... It just kind of ate my house."

Paul Zydowicz, chief, volunteer fire department, Wilson's Landing, British Columbia

"I quickly found myself in a pretty tricky battle. I was able to call in our own firefighters to come and help me. And that's when it became real for me that we were surrounded by fire and it was bearing down on our community hard. And we were all in the fight of our careers."

"I was thinking: If we just had one more fire engine we could save that house. And if we had one more fire engine, then we can save those other two houses. And if we had one more, we could get the other ones on the other side of the street. And, you know, of course you can never have enough resources in that situation."

"It's  unprecedented. We are not used to fighting wildfire fire against six-storey condominium buildings."

Jason Brolund, West Kelowna, McDougall Creek wildfire

 

"It moved 20 km south in under 12 hours, which is extremely [aggressive] for fire behaviour in British Columbia."

"That is a force of nature similar to a tornado, similar to an earthquake or a tsunami."

Forest Tower, B.C. Wildfire Service Information officer 

"[The fire that blew into this region] was something I've never seen before."

"When I saw the flames coming that day, it was something bigger than any of us could handle."

"but the community rallied together, they saved what they could save. It was actually just among the most impressive displays of community spirit I've ever seen."

"I want to stress the fact that we've lost structures, people are hurting, but we haven't lost lives -- not yet."

District deputy regional fire chief Sean Coubrough

"This MacDougall fire has been a very harrowing experience for everyone. I'm grateful that there has been no confirmed loss of life that we know of, and we hope that this remains."

"It's very devastating for the loss of property and the impact of businesses that has occurred. There's lots of collective grief and high emotions."

Chief Robert Louie, Westbank First Nation

Photo from the frontlines as Wilson's Landing firefighters battled the McDougall Creek blaze north of Kelowna. Photo by Wilson's Landing Fire Department

As gusting winds whipped up the McDougall Creek wildfire, airplanes dumped fire retardant in the area. Fire chief Zydowlicz had firefighters staked out on the west side of Okanagan Lake, additional crews on a local forest road. As evening fell flames could be seen thrusting toward Wilson's Landing. The two dozen on-call firefighters with three trucks stared down the fast-moving blaze, leaping and growing voraciously.

That was August 17, the start of the worst week of the worst year for wildfires in the history of British Columbia, which led to hundreds of properties damaged, thousands of evacuations across the province, and hundreds of firefighters arriving from near and abroad to pitch in and work as an emergency team to address the crisis. A day later the McDougall Creek wildfire blew into West Kelowna, roughly 13 km south.

Jason Brolund, the city's fire chief spent the day organizing how best to attack the blaze, overseeing the command post in the city. On his way home August 18 for a few hours of sleep he stopped in West Kelowna Estates to check on his firefighters and an "overwhelming" scene assailed him. A colleague pointed him to a subdivision street not yet visited by the firefighters. He knocked on doors to check that residents had evacuated, and as the night sky glowed orange fluorescence, firefighters used water from swimming pools "right before it hits the person's lawn, like inches from the house".

The inferno melted street signs, uprooted large trees, and ripped propane tanks open, blowing them into the woods. At Wilson's Landing firefighters attacked the blaze roaring north along Westside Road, work that stretched into the next morning, staying one step ahead of the flames to protect small communities, but finally forced to retreat 10 km when they reached the Lake Okanagan Resort.

 

Lake Okanagan Resort on fire  Photo: Tedd Buddwell

 

"The fire chased us out of Lake Okanagan resort" explained Chief Zydowicz. Boaters posted photographs of the 217-room historic resort engulfed fully in flames. The tradespeople, doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs who formed the troop of volunteer firefighters experienced a harrowing 22 hours. Two were injured; one with facial burns, the other a broken wrist. "These two firefighters, after being treated at the hospital, called me from the hospital and said put me in a next shift please, and preferably earlier", said Chief Zydowicz.

Along with losing his own  house, the fire had destroyed $150,000 in boats and other gear for his riverboat company, Northwest River Boats. Other Wilson's Landing firefighters lost everything and continued to fight the wildfire. The fire in the North Westside rural area destroyed or damaged about 90 properties in both Traders Cove and Wilson's Landing, as well as a children's summer camp. Most homeowners had heeded evacuation orders, even though a handful were rescued after waiting too long to leave.

In the city of West Kelowna and the Westbank First Nation another 84 properties were damaged or destroyed, along with four in Kelowna and three in Lake country. West Kelowna firefighters that afternoon fought a ground fire that was threatening a gas storage facility, a mobile home park and a number of new condominium developments. That day in mid-August was hot, dry and windy across most of the province. Other areas of the province saw mounting fire crises with several communities in the Columbia Shuswap Regional District given evacuation orders as the area faced "its most devastating wildfire day in history".

A base camp for 400 firefighters west of Adams Lake was forced to evacuate when the fire risk was acute and cold air whipped up the nearby Bush Creek East fire. Under 12 km from the camp the Lower East Adams Lake fire was increasing in intensity close to the Interfor Adams Lake Mill, a major area employer. It was saved, while flames tore south attacking other communities on the north side of Shuswap Lake. Losses of 100 homes were reported by residents in Scotch Creek and Celista.

By August 20 the situation began to change when Chief Broland said "We're now four days in. It feels like months. But things are looking better. We are finally feeling like we're moving forward rather than we're moving backwards, and that's a great feeling for all of us to have. In saying that, make no mistake, there will be difficult days ahead, and we are continuing to prepare and address those."

A recent photo of some of the Wilson’s Landing firefighters. Thirteen people in the 24-member department lost their homes in the blaze. Photo: GoFundMe jpg

Mining The Mercenaries

"I told him: 'Yevgeny, do you understand that you will doom your people and will perish yourself?'"

" He had just come back from the front. On an impulse he said: 'I will die then, damn it!'" 

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko  

"[If a surface-to-air missile hit the plane], you would see that sort of vapour trail in the final stages of its approach."

"Therefore, either that could be an explosion, or it could be a surface-to-air missile system. This is almost certainly not smoke [and is probably] fuel venting. It's a large quantity, that is a massive damage to the aircraft that's caused that."

"Now, you put all of that together... there's lots of reasons why that might have occurred, but that is not a natural accident."

"[Footage of the plane closer to the ground appears to show it without its wing or its tailplane, which could explain why it came down] vertically, not unlike a falling leaf."

"[Other pictures from the crash site show the tailplane] some distance [from the main part of the aircraft]. That is a catastrophe that's happened in the air... there were rumours that a case of wine [containing a bomb] was put on the aircraft at the last minute."

"The trouble with that theory is that generally speaking, [an explosion] inside an aircraft blows it out... whereas a surface-to-air missile system or an air-to-air missile system generally tries to seek out the juiciest, meatiest part of an aircraft."

"That would explain why it potentially could rip a wing off. And as soon as it did that, the fate of the aircraft was sealed."

Military analyst, former pilot Sean Bell 

 

The Kremlin has rejected allegations of its involvement in the plane crash that killed mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. They have also announced discovery of the black box, to aid in the investigation of the crash. An investigation that will thoroughly examine the cause of the crash which will most certainly negate all the unfounded rumours circulating wildly both within Russia among the many admirers of the former Wagner boss, and abroad in elite intelligence services.

Prigozhin and his dedicated fighting men, feared for their military skills and brutality in Ukraine, Africa and Syria was honoured by a eulogy delivered by his old friend Vladimir Putin a day after the plane carrying him and six other members of the Wagner executive team crashed mysteriously soon after takeoff from Moscow, in a routine flight en route to St.Petersburg. 

 According to a preliminary American intelligence assessment the plane crashed as a result of an intentional explosion. It was determined that Yevgeny Prigozhin was "very likely" the target of the crash that resulted in the death of the three air crew and high-ranking Wagner members. The clumsiness and obvious conclusion held by many that the bloodless 'punishment'-driven Putin agenda was responsible for the drama that wiped out yet another Putin-authority critic is not untypical of the Russian leader's modus operandi.

The mission succeeded in removing another irritation, an erstwhile friend and supporter who had become tediously irrepressible in his aggravating claims and behaviour. An event whose success and purpose lay in delivering a message to any others who might harbour thoughts of challenging the primacy of President Putin and his decision-making on such issues as 'special military operations' that have so far proven inadequate to his goal of tucking Ukraine securely under his wing again as a Russian appendage.

"Right now, of course, there are lots of speculations around this plane crash and the tragic deaths of the passengers of the plane, including Yevgeny Prigozhin. Of course, in the West those speculations are put out under a certain angle, and all of it is a complete lie."

"He [Vladimir Putin] said that right now all the necessary forensic analyses, including genetic testing, will be carried out. Once some kind of official conclusions are ready to be released, they will be released."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov

According to Britain's Defence Ministry, the death of Prigozhin could serve to destabilize the Wagner Group. His "exceptional audacity" and "extreme brutality" permeated the organization "and are unlikely to be matched by any successor", they concluded. The fighting group's reputation and success in the battlefield is one that President Putin would like to harness and bring tightly under  his control, as part of the Russian military, as a national fighting force.

There was an earlier call from the Russian military elite for the Wagner militias to surrender their weapons to the military and allow themselves to be enrolled as a regular part of the military, though with their special skills and personal thuggery intact they could be deployed as special-events units to be mobilized when the need for ruthless deadly action was to be deployed. 

 

This was a recommendation by the Russian military which Mr. Prigozhin took exception to, and outright refused. On that occasion, the Russian President sided with the military, no doubt for the first time abandoning Prigozhin's confidence, which eventually led to his insubordination. Now, Prigozhin gone, Mr. Putin has signed a decree making it mandatory for the mercenaries to swear an oath of allegiance to the Russian State - to Putin.

"It is a concealed message to military intelligence to find and prosecute Wagner fighters."

"[And a clear message to the fighters]: Either take the oath and keep your arms or disarm yourself."

"You obey or you go to prison."

"They chose Wagner because Wagner gave them special treatment, without the bureaucracy of the huge Russian army. If they get special treatment under Putin's orders, I don't think they care about where, to whom and for whom they will fight."

 Petro Burkovskyi, head, Democratic Initiatives Foundation, Ukraine think tank

The Man  Reuters

 

Russia, One Sprawling Mafia

"It's not a state, it's not Russia. It's just one sprawling mafia, one tentacle of which is colliding with others."

"Prigozhin could have been quietly poisoned and he would have died of a heart attack, like many previous opponents of Putin or his generals."

"But apparently it was intended to serve as a show of uncompromising control over the situation."

"It is clear that just removing one person is not enough, you need to remove his key people, because they probably had a Plan B in case of losing their boss."

"Therefore, the ideal option is to eliminate them all together, which, in fact, happened."

Dmitry Oreshkin, professor, Free University Riga, Latvia 

"[The failure to punish Prigozhin initially had served to erode Putin's authority, sending] an open invitation to any potential rebels and mutineers."

"They [Russian spy agencies] could have worked on it for a long time and had the opportunity only now."

Abbas Gallyamov, former Putin speechwriter

A woman lays flowers at a makeshift memorial in Moscow for Yevgeny Prigozhin, believed to have been killed on Wednesday. Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

 

Others of high influence, besides Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary group chief, were on the plane that so mysteriously crashed in flight just a short distance from Moscow. The flight manifest included Dmitry Utkin, an ex-military intelligence officer who directed Wagner's operations and the group's security chief, Valery Chekalov, along with four other Wagner elite officials. Best not to leave unscathed anyone who could invoke authority among the Wagner troops.

Leaderless, the fighting group could be persuaded to meld with the official Russian military. The Wagner group fighters are considered to be a more effective fighting force than the regular military and their additional numbers could benefit a military that has demonstrated its incapacity to succeed in its assigned 'special military operation', unable to effectively counter Ukraine's counteroffensive, much less ensure that Ukrainian drones were kept from plaguing Muscovites.

President Putin's previous order to his old pal Prigozhin, to integrate his forces with the Russian military were challenged by Prigozhin. Vladimir Putin does not tolerate insubordination, nor does he forget and forgive a former ally whose bravado and tactless insinuations and declarations brought chagrin and international attention to the Russian dictator's inability to control his appointed proxy turned challenger even if the challenge differentiated between Russia's military leaders and its supreme political leader.

 

Yevgeny Prigozhin a businessman with ‘difficult fate’, says Vladimir Putin – still from video

 

The embarrassment was Putin's at the hands of the swaggering, swashbuckling buccaneer who considered himself more fit to lead the military than Putin's appointed military elite. First it was General Sergei Surovikin, commander of the Russian air force, a collegial ally of Prigozhin's whose loyalty was suspect when he failed to order the Wagner convoy heading to Moscow bombed to stop their advance. 

 

Instead the Wagner convoy succeeded in shooting down Russian planes and killing Russian pilots. Surovikin's absence from public view in the months following the aborted insurrection was notable, and his dismissal preceded the crash of the business jet carrying the top leaders of the Wagner group.

 

Wagner mercenaries sit atop a tank outside the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on June 24. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces were making a "march of justice" to Moscow.

 

All ten bodies, passengers and three crew were recovered, taken for forensic examinations. There could be no visual identification, they were burned beyond recognition. The crash widely accepted as a mass assassination, payback for the June mutiny that challenged Vladimir Putin's authority. The Russian president expressed his condolences for the deaths of those aboard the jet, in a televised interview. The field was cordoned off by police, where the plane crashed and burnt a few hundred kilometres north of Moscow, for investigators to study the site.

Pro-Wagner messaging app channels saw supporters of Prigozhin asserting the plane was deliberately destroyed, that it might have been hit by an air defence missile or targeted by an onboard bomb. "The downing of the plane was certainly no mere coincidence", declared director of NATO's Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, Janis Sarts. Witnesses watched as the plane plummeted from a large smoke cloud, wildly twisting, missing one of its wings. The jet "exploded in the sky", "something sort of was torn from it in the air", said one of the observers.

According to a preliminary American intelligence assessment, the crash was intentionally caused by an explosion, but further than that blunt assessment no additional details were offered. For Putin, "revenge is a dish best served cold", observed CIA Director William Burns, speaking of the Russian leader as "the ultimate apostle of payback". The plane crash represented a signature tactic of dictatorial regimes to "bring an enemy or a traitor closer before destruction", as criminal clans do, in the opinion of Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Endowment.

"It is no coincidence that the whole world immediately looks at the Kremlin when a disgraced ex-confidant of Putin suddenly falls from the sky, two months after he attempted an uprising."

"We know this pattern in Putin's Russia -- deaths and dubious suicides, falls from windows that all ultimately remain unexplained."  

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock

People carry a body bag away from the wreckage of a crashed private jet, near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. (AP Photo)

And The Mystery Perpetrator?

"Putin has been suspected of murdering people since 2000."

"After the arrest of [exiled tycoon Mikhail] Khordokovksy, the assassination of [ex-FSB officer Alexander] Litvinenko, the use of Novichok against [double agent] Sergei Skripal — only idiots would think that they're safe. [The taking down of a private jet will bring the Russian elite even closer to heel]."

"They have nowhere to go. They're terribly afraid for their own lives, their families, fortunes, and so on."

Kirill Shamiev, political scientist, visiting fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations

If any event was predictable, this was, given the astonishing number of Russians falling out of favour with Russian President Vladimir Putin; those who criticize him, those uncertain whether he is worthy of their loyalty, those who look elsewhere for the authority they can believe in and retain their self-respect. Businessmen, oligarchs, heads of government institutions, academics, opposition politicians, critical journalists, erstwhile friends and supporters have been given ample rewards for straying from the fold. 'Suicides', sharpshooter-headshots, poisoning, strangulation, hanging, falling out of windows, all and any methods of assigning penalties of a final nature to the deserving.

 

Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. Lev Borodin / TASS

"Multiple individuals have changed their name to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, as part of his efforts to obfuscate his travels."

"Let's not be surprised if he pops up shortly in a new video from Africa."

Keir Giles, Russia expert, Chatham House think-tank

"Of course it's Putin."

"Putin as a leaddr cannot afford to be humiliated in the way that he was. Putin functions on two things: Loyalty above talent ... and the consequences of betrayal."

"The FSB remains loyal to Putin."

Unnamed Russian interior intelligence source

"[News of Prigozhin's death was] unsurprising."

"Most people will jump to the conclusion that this isn't an accident."

Sir Richard Dearlove, former head, MI-6, Britain

Ukrainska Pravda

 

Russian mercenary leader of the Wagner Group, the most 'successful' fighting force out of Russia, with its international presence in African war scenes and it's more recent militia action in Ukraine including its very public incendiary disagreements with the leaders of the Russian military is no more. That was a forgone conclusion from the moment back in June when he suddenly brought  his troops back over the border into Russia to begin a march on the Kremlin, determined for a showdown with the Russian military elite.

 

The founder of the private military company known as Wagner -- a longtime personal friend of President Vladimir Putin who admitted in the tense days of the approach of the militia to Moscow that he had orchestrated the funding through state funds of the group -- stated that his complaints of military ineptitude in the prosecution of the war against Ukraine, and the criminal neglect of support at critical times of his group by the military that withheld badly needed weaponry was never against his friend Putin.

Ostorozhno Novosti/via REUTERS

Footage of the crash site of a plane linked to Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, near Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, August 23, 2023 

 

But of course, it was Vladimir Putin's dirty little war, and his decisions and orders that were being played out in Ukraine, and any criticism of his elite military commanders implicated the president fundamentally. So that betrayal of Putin's trust in the frangible psyche of a man given to urgent outbursts and irrational decision-making was unforgivable, consequences outstanding and just biding time. That Prigozhin was given leeway to absent himself to Belarus from whence he could have decamped to safety, yet chose instead to return to Russia bespeaks an astonishing lack of awareness.

That brief, surprising, embarrassing armed rebellion spelled the instigator's death knell, and he was a dead man walking for months while those around him wondered when and how the issue would play out, knowing it was inevitable, while he remained seemingly oblivious. Until a plane carrying three pilots and seven passengers en route from Moscow to St.Petersburg mysteriously corkscrewed out of the sky missing a wing. 

A succession of events, one the dismissal of the Russian General who was head of the Russian Airforce, a colleague of Prigozhin's and possibly a co-conspirator as well, unable to deflect suspicion which led to his disappearance from public view. His penalty is not yet finalized, but 300 kilometres distant from Moscow the crash that killed all aboard spelled the final chapter in the Wagner Group chief's story. Russia's civil aviation regulator reported his name on the manifest, and in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, Wagner commanders confirmed their chief had been aboard the plane along with his top associate, Dmitry Utkin. 

"We have seen the reports. If confirmed, no one should be surprised", commented Adrienne Watson, U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman. The Associated Press flight tracking data indicated a private jet previously used by Prigozhin took off from Moscow Wednesday evening and minutes later its transponder signal went silent while the plane was at altitude and travelling at speed. An image posted by a social media account linked to Wagner showed burning wreckage, a partial tail number identifying the jet.

 

Wreckage at the crash site of the Embraer Legacy jet. Russian Investigative Committee

Other videos shared by the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone show a plane dropping from a large cloud of smoke, wildly twisting as it falls. A frame-by-frame analysis by the Associated Press of two videos are consistent with an explosion of some kind in mid-flight. The images also indicate a missing wing on the plane. The Russian investigation is in good hands; Russia's Investigative Committee is investigating the crash on the charges of 'violation of air safety rules'.

British security sources on the other hand, believe the private jet had been shot down by the FSB intelligence agency, Vladimir Putin's old Alma Mater -- and, of course on orders of President Putin. "All the mood music, all the habits, all the history point to the FSB", commented one Russian inside source. Just incidentally this very week Prigozhin had posted his first recruitment video since the mutiny, that Wagner is conducting reconnaissance and search activities, "Making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free".

"[Prigozhin was a] talented businessman [who had significant achievements in his professional life]."

"He was a man with a difficult fate. He made some serious mistakes in his life."

"… He achieved the needed results both for himself and for a joint effort that I had asked him about during the last months [Prigozhin’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the capture of the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut earlier this year]."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Putin at the celebration of Soviet victory in the Battle of Kursk, shortly after Prigozhin's plane crashed. Gavriil Grigorov / TASS

Greece Afire!

"Given that there have been no reports of a missing person or missing residents from the surrounding areas, the possibility is being investigated that these are people who had entered the country illegally."

Ioannis Artopios, spokesman, fire department, Avanta area

 

"When we add the fires in Canada, the United States, Africa, Asia and Australia to those in Europe, it seems that the situation is getting worse every year."

Antonello Fiore, president,  Italian Society of Environmental Geology

Helicopters fly over as wildfire rages near Alexandroupolis, northern Greece, on August 21, 2023. Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP/Getty Images

 The bodies of 18 people were discovered by firefighters scouring the area of a major wildfire in northeastern Greece, burning out of control Tuesday for a fourth day. Authorities were left to consider whether the group remains might be those of migrants who had entered Greece through its nearby border with Turkey.

Hundreds of firefighters were battling dozens of wildfires breaking out across the country, with galeforce winds fanning the flames. Two people died on Monday while two firefighters were injured in separate fires in northern and central Greece. The 18 bodies were found in the Avanta area of the city of Alexandroupolis.

The hot, dry summers of southern Europe are especially susceptible to wildfires. Across Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands, another major blaze has been burning for a week, with no injuries or home damage yet reported. Blame is being placed by European Union officials squarely on climate change to explain the increasing frequency and intensity of European wildfires.

Police activated Greece's Disaster Victim Identification Team in hopes of identifying the 18 bodies discovered close to a shack in the Avanta area. Alexandroupolis sits close to Greece's border with Turkey, along a route frequently used by people fleeing poverty and conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, seeking to enter the European Union.

Many villages and settlements close by Avanta were under evacuation orders, push alerts sent to mobile phones. A massive wall of flames raced overnight through forests toward Alexandroupolis that prompted authorities to evacuation an additional eight villages along with the city's hospital. The sky over the city was flaming red and choking smoke with swirling ash flecks filled the atmosphere.

Firefighters battle flames during a wildfire near Prodromos on August 21, 2023. Spyros Bakalis/AFP/Getty Images

The city's hospital transported 65 of its over 100 patients to a ferry boat docked at the city's port; mores were taken to other hospitals in northern Greece. Another 20 patients were ferried to the port town of Kavala, to be transferred from there to yet another hospital. Speaking on Greece's Skal television the country's deputy health minister explained that the Alexandroupolis hospital moved its patients elsewhere given the smoke and ash circulating, as a threat to health toward already compromised people.

 

Patrol boats and private vessels evacuated another 40 people by sea from areas west of Alexandroupolis, ferrying them to the port. Satellite imagery showed smoke from a fire burning through forest in a protected national park, blanketing northern and western Greece. Woodland northwest of Athens and at an industrial area on the capital's western fringes were susceptible to new fires that broke through in parts of the country.

From the industrial area of Aspropyrgos, small explosions resounded as flames reached warehouses and factories, authorities shutting down a highway and ordering the evacuation of nearby villages. Greece, with its firefighting forces stretched to the limit, appealed for help from the civil protection mechanism of the European Union.

The response was five firefighting planes from Croatia, Germany and Sweden, and a helicopter, 58 firefighters and nine water tanks from the Czech Republic heading to Greece on Tuesday. Two aircraft from Cyprus arrived on Monday as did 56 Romanian firefighters. A blaze on the island of Evia was being tackled with the assistance of French firefighters. "We are mobilizing actually almost one third of the aircraft we have in the rescEU fleet", EU spokesman Balazs Ujvari recounted.

Flames burn a forest during a wildfire on Parnitha mountain near Hasia suburb, northwestern Athens, 22 August 2023.   AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis