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Eastern Express 07.10

The topics covered in this episode of Eastern Express are the clashes, public controversies, and personal intrigues amongst Vladimir Putin’s close associates, as well as the latest hypotheses and predictions regarding the succession to the incumbent Russian president. In view of speculations about Putin’s health and the unsuccessful course of the war for Russia, these are increasingly becoming the order of the day. Are those close to the Kremlin dictator smelling blood?

War is war, and one’s own interests must be attended to first and foremost. This is the principle followed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder and sponsor of the Wagner Group. The enterprising mercenary, who is close to Putin, seems to have decided that the military’s defeats in Ukraine can be used for another political advance in the Kremlin, as with each passing day, more and more government officials are coming forward to criticise the actions of Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. According to Prigozhin, the Russian army, unlike the Wagner Group he created, is failing on the front lines and fighting with old-fashioned methods.

Officials can no longer pretend that the Russian army is invincible: several hundred mobilised Russians refused to go to the front, disembarking from a train near Belgorod. A recording that surfaced on the Internet on Wednesday evening, shows some 500 recently mobilised men complaining of being kept “in conditions fit for cattle”.

Regional politicians are also beginning to speak up against the Defence Ministry. On Wednesday, Kursk Regional Governor Roman Starovoit published a text in which he described the chaos he witnessed when visiting the mobilised men in their units. He saw outdated, inoperable equipment and no food, medicine, or even a roof over the heads of the mobilniks.

On Thursday, the Kremlin’s official website published a document on the “deferral of mobilisation” signed by Vladimir Putin. Public sentiment, however, is unlikely to be the driving force behind the move, but the fact that at least seven hundred thousand people have left Russia in the past two weeks, fleeing the draft.

Eastern Express’ guest

Małgorzata Bonikowska, President of the Center for International Relations. was TVP World’s guest invited to shed more light on the issue.

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