Time passes, memories fade and facts are sometimes replaced by constructed propaganda. As a reminder, in 2014 the war in #Donbas was not started by #Ukraine - it was started by a group of mercenaries led by #FSB officer Igor Girkin (“Strelkov”) who had boasted about it publicly for years:
“I was the one who pulled the trigger of this war,” Strelkov said in an interview published Thursday with Russia’s Zavtra newspaper, which espouses imperialist views. “If our unit hadn’t crossed the border, everything would have fizzled out — like in [the Ukrainian city of] Kharkiv, like in Odessa,” Strelkov, who uses that nom-de-guerre meaning “Shooter” to replace his last name Girkin, was quoted as saying. “There would have been several dozen killed, burned, detained. And that would have been the end of it. But the flywheel of the war, which is continuing to this day, was spun by our unit. We mixed up all the cards on the table,” he said.
@kravietz
Ironically, even he turned against his masters. In a way: he was too radical — they don't like this because even worldview built on wrong premises sooner or later starts making sense and things making sense is not the Russian way!
So he went to prison, I don't think I ever saw the news of him getting released 🤔 And his supporters originally started making noise, but soon it died out for good — quite typical, such "heroes" get used up and then get thrown away into oblivion.
@kravietz
Well, maybe it was all an act — and he's now drinking mojitos somewhere in South America, you never know with these "ex-" KGB.
Doesn't matter, support for him was definitely grassroots — in any case the real purpose was probably to send a signal to this crowd to tone down.
Prigozhin apparently was too dumb to "read the room" so more drastic measures were taken.
They already did that in the aftermath of the first act of this war — lots of former "heroes" just disappeared into nowhere.
@m0xee
No, he’s still jailed. I don’t think he’s being treated badly, the main purpose was likely to shut up his criticism of Putin as being “too soft”.