Bolstered by a pliant media that drowned out any bad news, Erdogan came in first during the election’s opening round and then comfortably defeated Kilicdaroglu in the runoff.
Foreign affairs
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Sunday 9 July 2023
News Notes 12:00 Noon
Books:
Ben Terris (2023) The Big Break: The Weirdos, Wonks, and Wannabes Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses its Mind.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/07/06/psychedelic-drug-policy-washington/
Prigozhin
- Lukashenko “suggested Wagner forces had remained at their established bases rather than traveling to Belarus. Whether these are bases in Russia, Ukraine or both has not been revealed.”
- One Wagner commander said in an interview that members are still able to move about freely. He said they were resting until early August when they would relocate to Belarus.
- Video posted online showed a disused based in Belarus intended for Wagner mercenaries.
- The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) did an assessment of the situation with Wagner and wrote that this freedom of movement went against “the public understanding that Wagner fighters should already be signing contracts with the Russian MoD (Ministry of Defense), going home to retirement, or moving to Belarus.”
Russia: Media
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-state-media-1.6898524
- 7/7/23
- Nearly 65% of the Russian population gets news primarily from state TV
- A video of Putin holding flowers and squatting down to hug an eight-year-old has been played repeatedly on state TV.
- The little girl’s father was shown praising Putin. “In my opinion,” he said “someone like you can probably not be replaced ever.”
- “Russia media watchers see it as a deliberate attempt to try to boost Putin’s image in the wake of last month’s rebellion, when a group of Wagner fighters, lead by Yevgeny Prigozhin, threatened to march on Moscow after railing against the country’s Defence Ministry.”
- The main narrative seems to be that Russia is united and stronger than ever before.
- Masha Borzunova is a Russian journalist who worked for the independent media outlet TV Rain until it was shut down. She now has her own You Tube channel and produces a show about “fake news” and propaganda.
- Prigozhin once portrayed as a patriot is now cast as a traitor obsessed with wealth and power.
- Repressive laws have forced many independent publications and broadcasters to pull out of Russia.
- According to Borzunova, propagandists in Russia were scared by the mutiny. “They were confused. They didn’t know what they needed to write about.”
- Vladimir Sollovyov is one of Russia’s most prolific voices. He was recently sanctioned by Canada and other countries for spreading propaganda and disinformation.
- Borzunova said that before the mutiny, there were frequent advertisements for Wagner on Solovyov’s Telegram channel.
- Prigozhin was liked by mamy in state media. Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of RT was one of Prigozhin’s admirers.
- RT had been banned from Canadian airwaves.
- Simonyan was absent the weekend of the mutiny. She later said she wasn’t paying attention to what happened.
- On the day of the rebellion, there was little media coverage of it. Channels played entertainment shows and didn’t show the footage of Wagner advancing towards the capitol until it was over.
- Borzunova (who left Russia in March 2022 and was labelled a foreign agent by the government) said that she learned from her sources that talking points were handed down to Russian politicians during the rebellion and told to speak about how the country was coming together and uniting behind Putin.
- “Borzunova said that the state media is trying to convince the public that Prigozhin was motivated by ambition and money, while at the same time trying to play up Putin’s popularity.”
- “Borzunova said it’s as if they were trying to hand-deliver Putin a bigger reception than the one Prigozhin and Wagner received.”
- The host of the Russian 60 minutes, Yevgeny Popov, a politician who was also sanctioned by Canada, was talking to CBC the day after the rebellion about Prigozhin being motivated by money and ambition.
- 60 minutes (state television) showed what it called an “investigative report” that showed the raids on Prigozhin’s office and his lavish estate, his personal helicopter and stashes of cash.
- There has been virtually no programming about how Wagner managed to get within 200 KM from the capital.
- BBC journalist Francis Scarr monitors media reports around the world including Russian state television.
- Presenter Olga Skabeyeva compared Putin’s popularity with that of a “rock star.”
- Scarr said that Russian TV was covering the riots in France as an example of how Western countries are in decline and Russia is on the right track.
- “They were coming out and saying … if you look at France, they’ve been battling to stop these riots for a week and they don’t have an answer to it … whereas ours was successfully put down in a matter of less than 48 hours.”
- (Note: Compare this to the way mass shootings are covered in the US. It could have been worse had it not been for the effective response of law enforcement. )
- Scarr maintains that Russian state TV is not designed to inform people, but to “stir people’s emotions.” (Note: Like Fox News).
- “Scarr said Russian TV frequently throws around threatening warnings about nuclear war almost as if it was a “game,” and can at times be so outlandish and absurd that it’s how he imagines North Korean television might be.”
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Saturday 8 July 2023
4:45 PM
News Notes
Prigozhin
Yahoo News: Ridiculing Prigozhin
https://news.yahoo.com/series-leaked-photos-appearing-show-154138909.html
- Leaked images appear to show Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in bizarre disguises.
- The photos, shared by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, could be an attempt to humiliate the Wagner chief.
- Business Insider refers to the disguises as “comical.”
- Russian news site URA said that the disguises show Prigozhin as: “a Ministry of Defense officer in Sudan, a diplomatic aide from Abu Dhabi, a senior lieutenant from Benghazi, a colonel from Tripoli, a merchant from Syria, and a field commander named Muhammad.”
- “Reuters reported that Russian state television first shared the images of the raid (on Prigozhin’s house) on Wednesday in an attempt to discredit Prigozhin and accuse him of hypocrisy for saying Russia’s military is corrupt.”
Wall Street Journal: Prigozhin’s movements
- Prigozhin appears to be back in Russia.
- Supporters of Wagner gathered in St. Petersburgh Saturday.
CNN
- Prigozhin ran a business empire including a private military company, a troll farm, a multi-million dollar catering company and a media group.
- CNN describes the “deal” brokered by Lukashenko as requiring that Prigozhin leave Russia and move to Belarus. His men were given three choices: follow Prigozhin to Belarus, join the regular Russian military, or stop fighting and go home.
- Lukashenko at first claimed that Prigozhin had arrived in Belarus, but that fact could not be confirmed. Then, Thursday (6/6/23) Lukashenko announced that Prigozhin was in St. Petersburg and might be traveling to Moscow or “elsewhere.”
- Lukashenko also said that the Wagner fighters were not at the camps Belarus had apparently set aside for them.
- It is a mystery why Putin has allowed him to remain free even as he fails to abide by the “deal.”
- Prigozhin has always claimed that Putin was led into the invasion of Ukraine by an incompetent and corrupt military leadership.
- The Kremlin appears to be dismantling Prigozhin’s valuable companies and putting them in more “reliable” hands.
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Prigozhin News Notes, Friday 7 July 2023
Prigozhin, Newsweek
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/why-prigozhin-is-still-a-free-man/ar-AA1dyeY0
- The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) released an analysis of why Prigozhin was reported to be in Russia not Belarus.
- Lukashenko stated that Wagner fighters were still in camps near Bakhmut. Referring to Prigozhin, he said: “…he’s not in Belarus.”
- Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, said that the Russian government had neither the “ability” nor the “desire” to follow Prigozhin’s movements.
- The ISW argues that Prigozhin is either “protected by some security guarantees” or that the Kremlin thinks undermining his reputation is more important than killing him.
- Kyiv has said that Russia intends to assassinate Prigozhin and that Ukrainian intelligence knew about the plans for the mutiny and a plan by the FSB to assassinate Prigozhin.
- The ISW analysis concludes that Putin probably “decided that he cannot directly eliminate Prigozhin without making him a martyr for causes concerning the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) mishandling of the invasion.”
- In addition, mobilizing forces to eliminate Prigozhin risks those troops turning “their arms against the regime itself.”
- Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a self-exiled former Russian tycoon, told Newsweek that not punishing anyone for the mutiny made the risk for another mutiny “more likely.” Khodorkovsky headed the energy company Yukos before he spent ten years in prison in Russia until 2013 for what critics say were politically motivated charges.
- “You start punishing people, then you could suddenly find out that half of the active army are siding with Prigozhin and then by that, you could actually promote a greater mutiny and much greater clash,” he added.
Putin Fled Moscow, Newsweek, (7/5/23)
- The self-exiled tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky told Newsweek that he had been monitoring Putin’s movements during the failed coup. Putin, according to a contact of Khodorkovsky’s, left Moscow, most likely to his house in Valdai, some 250 miles away
- K said that a plane “which is only used by Putin” left Moscow on June 24 and headed toward Russia’s northwest.
- K also reported that a lot of heads of departments left Moscow as well.
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Friday News Notes: 7/7/23
Friday 7 July 2023
Friday News Notes: 4 PM
Prigozhin Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/yevgeny-prigozhin-calendar-wagner-chief-putin-kremlin-ties-2023-7
- A copy of Prigozhin’s calendar obtained by Die Welt was shared with Insider.
- Prigozhin had access to Putin’s inner circle for nearly a decade.
- Entries note meeting or calls with Aleksey Dyumin, Putin’s former bodyguard (now governor of the Tula region).
- The concern for Putin is Progozhin’s allies “embedded across Russia’s…state security an military bureaucracy.”
- The Russian general Sergei Surovikin, who has close ties to Wagner, has already disappeared from public view and is thought by some to have been detained.
- “Prigozhin regularly scheduled meetings or calls with Russia’s ranking general and numerous top Putin deputies.”
- Earlier in 2023, Insider (along with Die Welt, the Dossier Center, and Politico) obtained files from a hacking group (named knights). One of the files was Prigozhin’s personal calendar that recorded events over a 10 year period.
- There are gaps in the calendar, some of them during periods of “Wagner’s most notorious operations” (2014 invasion of Ukraine, 2020 US election).
- The Insider calls him “a de facto cabinet member” and Wagner “an indispensable tool of the Kremlin’s efforts to extend Russian influence into Africa and the Middle East.”
- 75 entries for Ruslan Tsalikov, deputy minister of defense since 2012.
- 73 for Anton Vaino, chief of staff for Putin’s executive office since 2016, and 73 scheduled appointments with Prigozhin.
- 33 entries denote meetings or calls with Aleksey Dyumin, former bodyguard for Putin. He has been suspected since th attempted coup. While Prigozhin was marching towards Moscow, speculation in the Russian media was that Dyumin might replace Shoigu as minister of defense. Dyumin reportedly helped negotiate the deal that led to Prigozhin going to Belarus.
- Calendar entries end in November 2021.
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Prigozhin Friday 7 July 2023
Belarus is admitting it has fields with tents in them, ready, but arguing that there are NO WAGNER TROOPS THERE. OK.
Almost no news coverage of the Israeli attack on the Benin refugee camp (which contains people’s permanent homes).
Another night of endless Trump legal trivia on the corporate media. I wish we had a news channel. I want one run by Elie Mystal and Keith Olberman.
Will be back later. Reading “Laura” by Vera Caspary. Made into film with Gene Tierney.
I do a “Novel to Classic Movie” series for the public library. We choose a theme and then get four novels turned into classic movies. This series was put together because participants wanted to talk about crime. So, we are discussing and watching Laura, Leave Her to Heaven, The Razor’s Edge and Dragonwyck. We meet on Tuesdays to discuss the novel, then watch the film together on Thursday and discuss afterward (usually over drinks).
I put out a newsletter about the series if you would like to follow along in the discussion, or participate in it. That would be great. Christinajjohns@icloud.com
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WEDNESDAY 5 JULY 2023 THURSDAY 6 JULY
News Notes:
- Lindsey Graham: It does my heart good to hear Lindsey Graham booed in his own state. He is pathetic. He has aged 30 years in the past 7. I can’t think of anybody who deserves it more. I cannot wait to find out what he really did to make all this humiliation worth it.
- “You have to hold wanna-be dictators to account.” Chai Komanduri (MSNBC) (Note: While saying this, Komanduri then followed up claiming Nancy Pelosi was one of the people who realized that Trump had to be stopped? What? Pelosi didn’t even want to impeach him. She had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the hearings.)
Articles:
Prigozhin
- Prigozhin has reportedly won back more than $100 million in cash and gold bars seized by Russian authorities during his coup attempt. He continues to negotiate with the Kremlin about the stripping of his assets and the terms of his residence in Belarus.
- It has been reported by a Russian news outlet that the assets were seized in raids on Prigozhin’s properties on June 24, the day after the coup.
- The assets were reportedly returned to Prigozhin’s driver who had been granted power of attorney on July 2. It was reported that criminal investigators did not want to give up the funds but “judging by yet another reversal, a higher power intervened.”
Reuters
- Reuters is reporting this morning that Prigozhin no longer in Belarus and it is not clear whether his fighters will move there. (Note: I read that there were already Wagner troops in Belarus and that Lukashenko had given them land. Lukashenko stressed that this land was just land, not a military base. It’s like somebody who prefaces his statement with “Honestly.”
