Please note that the official title of the article is:
Yevgeny Prigozhin: Wagner chief presumed dead after Russia plane crash.
Decided not to delete this post due to the many comments and discussions.
Wow, I’ve been browsing Twitter, Reddit and Lemmy for the past few hours. I’m surprised to see such breaking news first in Lemmy instead of Twitter or Reddit.
Awesome! Hope the Fidiverse keeps on growing to become bigger than Reddit and Twitter.
Look at me
Lemmy is the frontpage of the internet now
Damn right it is!
Good point. Really good sign for users if we can get breaking news stories here like this.
literally the only reason i keep going to reddit to sort by rising every now and then.
Reddit hot sorts more by popular, so things take a long time to rise up.
Lemmy hot seems to be (too much) biased to new. Can be a bad thing because it looks like things don’t get popular. They do but you don’t see it by hot, you see it by top 12 hour.
Early 2010s Reddit was so addicting, if there was something in the world it was on the front page in 15 minutes. I remember being excited to check on Reddit after waking up to see that was the event of the day.
After 2016 the algo was screwed up and it became a cesspool of reposts and news were late to show up.
I think the algorithm for Lemmy’s hot sorting is just based on interactions within time unit. The newer the post, the more valuable an upvote is.
Lemmy “hot” seems to function a lot like reddit’s “rising”
The one thing current Reddit seems to do right is give smaller subreddits a chance to show up on Hot. Lemmy tends to be a little too simple, and the frontpage gets dominated by the one or two big groups.
Yeah, I’m pretty happy with the sorting algorithm in general for the way content gets presented, but some weighting to better include smaller communities would be great. Lemmy is still struggling with getting a critical mass in users to support niche interests, and a better post sorting could help a bit at least.
On Reddit you want to sort by “Rising” for this sort of breaking news stuff.
Now I learn this, 2 months after tossing that platform in the bin.
After years of wondering where the hell the breaking news went…
Yesterday i switched to active for a while, because hot was almost identical to new.
No problem, let’s have Hot 1 and Hot 2!
Hot 1 is Hot
Hot 2 is Top 6 hours
At least how I use it.
We’re missing “most comments in the last <time>”</time>
The Future is Federated.
old man
I saw it first on YouTube and got really mad about that
I think it’s only a matter of time. The enshitification of reddit is guaranteed, it’s really inevitable and it’s going to keep getting worse. Long live the Fediverse!
Who would have expected this? Surprised pikachu
But the only one who opposed Putin (with any military power) being dead isn’t necessary a good thing (imho)
Yeah, but he was stripped of all of his power. Wagner group is being rolled into the state military. The opportunity for Wagner to push back and or give Putin the boot has passed.
And, this dude was also an evil corrupt piece of shit. If he overthrew Putin, Russia would’ve still been an authoritarian disinformation state.
He was a straight-up Neo-Nazi and named the group after Hitler’s favorite composer. So yeah, he would have been infinitely worse than Putin… and that’s saying something.
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Yeah but a guy with a Stalin pfp told me Ukrainians are the real Nazis /s
This baffles me. That anyone would idolize Nazism is baffling, but particularly Russians. I mean does nobody remember Stalingrad?
Anything you hear from Russia, you can just as well forget, it’s nothing but propaganda, lies, spin, and disinformation. They use Nazi guys like Wagner to fight what they call “Nazis” in Ukraine. It’s the “we fake it so hard that people couldn’t believe it someone would lie that bad” tactic. Never engage with Russia / Russians who aren’t publicly opposed to Putin and the status quo. You can only waste time.
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The picture of Utkin with nazi tatoos is not Utkin, they don’t look the same and it’s unsourced.
LOL.
When Bellingcat says that’s not Dmitry Utkin, I listen.
LOL. You’re hilarious.
Wagners are straight up fleeing into neighboring countries and Africa. They must have read the history books about what happens when one warlord assimilates another’s forces (they kill them quietly and easily now that they’re disarmed).
i don’t think, russia and historical knowledge can come together
Yup.
A couple months ago? There would be an argument that he could do more good than bad.
Yesterday? He was a powerless nazi thug
Today? Maybe he is in exile. Maybe he is a charred corpse on the ground. Either way, one less nazi.
Seems like most reasonable folks didn’t think he’d reform Russia. The only “good” he’d cause would be unrest that would force Russia to pull out of invading their democratic neighbors.
I don’t think anyone expected a reform.
But it would have been a comparatively bloodless coup by a powerful military figure that would likely have ended the current war in Ukraine. As opposed to the likely outcomes of
- putin finally loses it and hits the red button (which is actually a lot harder in russia, to my understanding, but is still a threat)
- Some less powerful individual(s) attempt a coup and we end up with warlords vying for control of russia’s nuclear arsenal
Like, there is no good outcome of this. But prigozhin probably would have been the lesser of the evils as it would start another cycle of russia preparing for war (and ravaging The Global South but… nobody cares about them) and allowing The West to try and prop up a more palatable person to take control in a future coup.
If he overthrew Putin, Russia would’ve still been an authoritarian disinformation state.
He would at least cause a schism between the putin fanatics and everyone else.
But the only one who opposed Putin (with any military power) being dead isn’t necessary a good thing (imho)
Replacing one dictator with another who has the support of something like the Wagner group would not have been good for anyone but the Wagner group.
There would be no clean replacement. It would get very bloody and chaotic. Not a bad hypothetical scenario. But that ship has sailed when Prihozhin surrendered (he didn’t stand much of a chance anyway).
If we could avoid another “oops, all Taliban” outcome though, that would be grand.
The most surprising thing here is that nine people were willing to get on a plane with Prigozhin. That’s arguably much closer to actual suicide than any of the convenient window deaths that keep happening.
Good thing for Africa for sure.
Not really. Meet your new boss, same as your old boss. Russia isn’t pulling out of Africa.
Clearly more missiles are needed.
The Sahel is full of oil and minerals so the “war on terror” is in full swing.
Somehow I always thought they would poison him. More personal. But if he brought his own water, I suppose this saves everybody some time.
It’s not too late for them to identify the body by the “Polonium-210 tracer” he got during check-in.
I honestly thought he’d go via the classic window fall, but this was far more original.
He opposed Putin for like 20 minutes… he embarrassed himself completely
It’s not like Putin and his closest cronies are in any way competent. They are removing anyone who dared to criticize. Before the coup Prigozhin, Girkin were allowed to say whatever they wanted as long as they did not undermine the general effort. Now Putin’s inner circle will ultimately disconnect themselves from reality: govern the country and the war from a bunker filled with scared yes-sayers with no alternative voices.
I’m pretty sure Ukraine still opposes Putin so at least we got that.
Lotta windows in airplanes.
Tragically the plane crashed into a surface to air missile.
Edit: yeah, this is actually what happened, no subtlety here, damn.
Like, fucking literally.
“Crash” my ass, BBC, you say it got shot down in the article, how is that not a more accurate and sensational headline?
“Prigozhin got blown the fuck up, like everyone knew he would the moment he pussed out, the Nazi coward.”
He needed to take Moscow, only chance he had to survive.
Technically, they just say that a Wagner linked Telegram channel said it got shot down. They’re probably waiting for better proof/additional sources before they take the full step of saying it was shot down themselves (at which point I think it’d get added to the headline).
Because the only source for that (at present) is the Wagner Group, who have a (dead) dog in the fight and are not bastions of truth. NYT will be trying to confirm it before saying so.
Do they have a dog in this? Last I heard they were getting executed in the field if they showed support for the coup.
Well, it did definitely crash at the end.
So he fell out of a window created by a surface to air missile.
Totally an accident of course
I didn’t know airplanes couldn’t handle their polonium.
more windows are reserved only for stauncher enemies.
I’m honestly surprised that he lasted this long
I feel like when the attempted coup fizzled out there was a Russia expert who predicted he’s be dead within 90 days. Sounds like that guy was right.
Honestly didn’t need to be a expert on Russia to predict that
No kidding, literally everyone figured he’d be dead soon. Not sure how he didn’t realize that.
“Person vaguely aware of how Russia works predicts Prigozhin will be dead in 90 days”. That headline doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Weirdly enough, it’s exactly two months between the mutiny and his death. Interestingly enough, the invasion started on 24th as well. Weird.
Damn I was hoping he would be able to cause more chaos inside Russia before Putin had him killed.
That window of opportunity closed. Wagner got folded into the state military.
No window is ever closed in russia
How else would people fall accidentally out of them?
Makes it easier to
push peopleaccidentally fall out of.Harder to push people out of a closed window.
They have windows in the basement?
if they have it in planes…
golf claps
All that means is that Wagner has infiltrated the Russian military… while pooty might get lucky and get a few knuckleheads, trust and believe the hardcore of the hardcore have gone to ground and are dead set on putting Vlad’s head on a pike
You sly dog lol
One of the cardinal rules of power struggles is “If you’re gonna shoot for the king, don’t miss.”
Man didn’t even miss, he just got scared halfway through
From what I gather, he backed down because all his top men’s families were being threatened. Prigozhin’s family was kept safe, of course, but I don’t think they expected Russia to threaten the families of those further down the ladder.
This all just makes him seem naive and unprepared for the position he was in.
I have a theory.
I think the Slavic Russian Nazi a total dictator let run a private army might have been a little dumb.
It was just a prank, bro!
halfway through the first day
Furthermore,
Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies
-- Machiavelli in the Prince
Not to call out Putin’s Russia for being amateur hour, but the Prince is probably the first thing to read for an aspiring dictator.
Wait, I’m listening to The Prince in audiobook form. Does that mean I’m an aspiring dictator?
Well, if you are, there might be a job opening in Russia for you soon!
He just stopped. It was the most bizarre coup attempt, really.
I mean he had to know, right? With guys like Putin if you go hot, you either kill him or he has you killed. There is no in-between. His entire image relies on that. Maybe they had Prigozhin’s family or something?
It might be that he was counting on the support of one or more Generals. That fizzled at the last minute, and then he didn’t know what to do.
When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.
“When you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die. There is no middle ground.”
The guy wasn’t stupid. He knew going against Putin meant death if he failed. At some point during his attempted coup, he realised it wasn’t going to work and was faced with a choice: die now, or “back down” to scheme his way out of an almost certain death later. Turns out he couldn’t. ¯\_༼ •́ ͜ʖ •̀ ༽_/¯ Oh well, nothing of value was lost.
I have nothing to add to your comment other than the fact that your text person clearly has a large nose and I think that’s a stylistic choice and I appreciate that as someone who also has a large nose.
Oh, and fuck Putin.
I also don’t have anything to add other than that I really appreciate comments who pay respects to details of other comments. I don’t know, just makes me happy, so thank you for that!
Oh, and fuck this fucking asshole named Putin, may he die a painful and slow death.
consider yourself rewarded for that comment … thx for the smile
I’m not sure he couldn’t have done it if he’d kept driving into Moscow. The defenses of the city were just in shambles. Almost as bad as Denmark in 1940.
However, having tucked tail he should have known better than to come back.
Now there are rumors that Wagner would stage a second coup attempt if the deaths were confirmed (which they are now).
That would be a complete suicide mission now. 2500%.
Still, interesting times.
Yeah, there’s pretty much no chance with the leaders dead, their camp far from Moscow, no surprise factor, and the potential allies like Surovikin pushed from power. It seems like Putin has completely outplayed them.
At some point during his attempted coup, he realised it wasn’t going to work
When was that, exactly? Putin fled, reserve forces were standing by and not fighting Wagner, and he was a day out from an undefended Moscow. Worst case scenario was a protracted civil war, but he still would’ve lived longer than this.
Honestly, none of this makes sense. The fact that he aborted in the first place makes the idea that he was conspiring with Putin the whole time to flush out disloyal elements within the Russian armed forces seem credible… but then why kill him after? I’m not ruling out the possibility that either this was a genuine accident, or it was another false flag and he and his second in command just faked their own deaths.
Couldn’t he go hide in like Central America or something? Though I suppose Russian intelligence would still find him and get to him.
Maybe he could hide on the South Pole of the moon.
Who’s to say he didn’t?
Pretty sure Russians are the only ones investigating, and we all know how much they can be trusted.
reportedly he was going back from some african country that day. he also could stay in belarus, but he chose to go back to moscow
Hey Putin! I heard Trump talking shit about you.
The whole Western political apperatus has been saying Putin doesn’t have the guts to release any of the compromat he holds on them and that he needs them more than they need him.
To think he avoided drinking polonium tea and falling out of a window and self inflicted gunshot wound to the head for all this time just to die in a freak tragic accident.
I wonder if there is a correlation between drop height and importance of the persons he’s killing.
Plane must have accidentally ran into a surface-to-air missile. Y’know, as you do.
Classic MH17’d
I heard the plane had marital issues and gambling debt, no surprise it tried to end things on its own. Its unfortunate all the passengers were innocent victims and in no way targeted. /s
World’s most expected accident victim.
I’m so shocked right now. He didn’t fall out of a window?
I mean it’s pretty similar to a really high window
The plane crashed after jumping out of a window.
They are getting more creative…
Everyone was seated next to a window
No, no. His plane fell out of a window. It’s different.
He survived the crash, and on the way to the hospital he fell out of a window.
Plot twist: the stewardess had a parachute, “fell” out window after hearing “red team go”.
How do you know the plane didn’t have a nice window on it?
Damn that’s a high quality image
