and i would just add that it s not just that the opinion polls are sort of dubious or we can t trust them, i know people who do some polling inside russia, if you do it by phone, nine out of ten people hang up. so that means that any polling that you re seeing is the 10% of people who are willing to talk to pollsters. so it s not a very good sample. this is polls across the board, doesn t matter who s conducting them. i mean, you re in a society where people answer either basically because they re afraid because they think this is what they re supposed to say, because they don t know that there are any alternatives. there s putin or chaos, that s the choice they ve been given. so i think basing any estimation of his popularity on that is wrong, and i agree with you the striking thing about saturday was that people were happy to see the wagner mercenaries. they were happy to have do selfies with them, particularly in the afternoon, this was after
he is, what he s doing, and who he has around him? yeah, there s no doubt about that. vladimir putin is concerned about one thing and one thing only and that is power, maintaining power. there s nobody who s really loyal to him. there are people who fear him. he has no friends. he has no power base outside of his transactional relationships and the people who fear him, and the less fear that he perceived he has and used to control people, the more dangerous and volatile he can become certainly within russia. we have to be looking at what would i imagine will be a bit of a purge in russia in the weeks and months to come. he s probably going to be looking at who s loyal and what forces actually move towards prigozhin because there are several military units. there are several oligarchs who are quiet. fled to moscow or aligned with prigozhin s mercenary forces. so we re probably going to look at a purge to some degree of some of those folks but also a realignment that provides an opport
ammunition. part of this was a ploy. prigozhin needs money and he wanted to keep his wagner force. to the same point he s playing to a rift that could be somewhat substantial. do the russian soldiers on the battlefield in ukraine see what s going on with prigozhin, start to side with him and really feel disaffected. you know, there s a split between the lower and upper ranks of the russian military that continues to blossom. that would be a real game changer for the ukrainian military if they can make advances? how do they get that info? are they getting it on whatsapp channels? is there a communication method where they re learning about what s happening with prigozhin and vladimir putin? i know we see that video of prigozhin being cheered and hugged and keir was telling us it s not being shown on tv in russia. no, i think the key point is there s a big achilles heel for putin and all of the russian federation in terms of their media. remember, prigozhin owns not just the wagner g
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wasn t of the messages was that prigozhin killed several russians, killed russian people, attacked russian forces. what prigozhin is coming back with right there is that he was unprovoked. he was just having a nice march to moscow and that this helicopter showed up and started firing at them. they had to shoot back. he s trying to fight that media battle right now, trying to win over the hearts and minds of people inside russia that he really was for the people. i think that s where the real split is here. prigozhin, he s trying to be the populist. down in the ranks, you re talking about the lower educated, the poor, those in rural locations. they re the ones that get forced into the russian army. it s not the elites of moscow. and that s been the big claim of prigozhin over the last few months. one of his chief criticisms against the russian military, is that the russian military is hiding in moscow, the elites are not supplying him with