When a plane carrying the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, crashed northwest of Moscow last week, observers in Russia and around the world were immediately reminded of two indisputable facts.
First, Prigozhin openly challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin. And secondly, countless others who have defied Putin have met violent and untimely deaths.
In trying to understand what happened, another fact became clear: the Kremlin was not the place to look for simple and credible answers. The word of the Kremlin is not, shall we say, a good independent and reliable source of truth.
In fact, when Putin’s spokesman called claims that the country had Prigozhin killed an “absolute lie,” it sounded like a statement of protocol we’ve heard before. Meanwhile, Putin’s critics, one after another, meet gruesome ends.
Putin and his inner circle have been at war with the truth for decades. More recently, and famously, it has been falsely claimed that Ukraine will be ruled by Nazis and that, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, it is not a real country.
Dictators, autocrats, and strongmen have a long history of fighting the truth in pursuit of their goals. The same is true of would-be autocrats, individuals who would like to enjoy the benefits of enormous and lasting power and are willing to break all manner of norms to acquire and maintain it.
In one of the most notable split-screen moments in history, Prigozhin’s accident competed for the news spotlight with a wave of arrests related to former US President Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse the result of the lost 2020 election – his own denial of truth and reality.
The world is in the midst of a global authoritarian drift. In different ways, both Putin and Trump are key players in this phenomenon. And each of them is facing determined resistance against their efforts.
Putin’s efforts to remake the world to his liking, and his mission to bring Ukraine under Moscow’s rule, have clashed with the reality that Ukraine is, in fact, a country and is unwilling to submit. to Putin’s whims.
And Trump, who still lives in a country where there is an independent judiciary, is grappling with the fact that no matter how much freedom you have to shout lies into a microphone and try to deceive the country, there is no First Amendment right that guarantees the attempt to intimidate election officials or subvert election rules.
Last week, Trump turned himself in to jail in Atlanta, where he is charged with a criminal scheme to essentially steal the 2020 election. Trump has denied all charges on this and three other criminal charges.
In their own context, and within the limits of their power, the Russian strongman and the would-be American autocrat have waged war against the truth and are being attacked by it. But they are nowhere near defeated.
Today, the world keeps a close eye on Putin and the war he launched against Ukraine under false pretenses, while monitoring with alarm how Trump’s multiple criminal prosecutions have failed to undermine his standing among Republicans.
Of course, politicians stretch the truth. But this is of a different magnitude. Autocrats and would-be autocrats have been telling lies for centuries.
In the 20th century, a declining Soviet Union was famous for a system in which, as the writer Alexander Solzhenitzyn observed, the government lied, the people knew the government was lying, the government knew the people knew, but it all went on. Beyond its borders, Moscow has woven a tapestry of deception, entangling countless believers.
Neither Trump nor Putin are new to the art of conjuring up big victories by waging war on the truth. They are masters of gaslighting and it has served them well for a long time.
Trump built his public persona by manipulating the media coverage of his business acumen. Then, as he prepared to become president, he slandered the legitimate media, branding them as propagators of fake news, so that he could lie with impunity and evidence of his falsehoods could be rejected.
He was embraced by such a lying network that he later paid $787 million to settle a case of promoting fake election news by Trump and his allies.
His government began to lie from the first day of office. On his first full day in office, Jan. 21, Trump fantasized about the size of the crowd at his inauguration; his advisor justified the lies as “alternative facts”.
Over his tenure, the Washington Post’s fact-checking team recorded 30,573 “untruths”, culminating in his efforts, which continue to this day, to claim he won the 2020 election.
Putin is no less experienced in distorting reality. Many believe he secured his first presidential election in Russia by blaming Chechen terrorists for the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999.
Many are convinced that they were carried out by the Kremlin (although this has never been conclusively proven). The crisis and his tough attitude helped consolidate his image as a strong man who would protect Russia.
Over the years, Putin has turned Russia into a global purveyor of disinformation — another word for deliberate, politically motivated lies.
Putin has denied interfering in the 2016 US election, an operation coincidentally run by Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency.
That operation, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that indicted Prigozhin concluded, was part of an effort by the Kremlin to sow discord in the United States through “what they called information warfare.” The mercenary, who had a penchant for telling the truth, later admitted to doing so.
He also contradicted Putin’s pretext for going to war with Ukraine. Imagine Putin’s fury.
Putin likes dates
Prigozhin’s death comes precisely two months after his mutiny, a challenge to the authority of the RUSSP president.
Symbolic dates are important in Putin’s Russia. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic, was murdered on Putin’s birthday, for example. He launched the full-scale war in Ukraine close to the 8-year anniversary of the 2014 invasion of Crimea.
Putin has denied having anything to do with the 2015 murder of Boris Nemtsov, a popular politician who criticized his 2014 intervention in eastern Ukraine.
He has denied any involvement in the 2020 poisoning of his critic Alexei Navalny and the many others who died suddenly after challenging his views.
When asked who killed the man they still idolize, Prigozhin’s grieving fans, even as their faces were blurred for an interview with CNN they can only say “no comment”.
It’s understandable. One must be careful before deciding to antagonize a powerful man engaged in an open war with the truth, who breaks rules and norms as a matter of course, in pursuit of his own interests above all else.
See also: Accusation against Trump is very serious
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
