It took the political acumen and analytical powers of a second-tier New York City cab-driver to “predict” what British (lack of ) intelligence and the British media would say about the events in Russia. The better-than-average Alex Christoforou of The Duran, speaking “off the cuff” as he was preparing to get his show underway, laid out what was about to be served up to the populace from the now dog-eared and frayed Anglo-American Ukraine Cyber-media Playbook: “I’m just going to give you a couple of very quick takes…. What Prigozhin has done is a gift to the collective West, and I think that’s going to be the main takeaway when all of this is said and done…. It’s going to probably lead to the Zelenskyy regime getting more money and more weapons. I don’t even know if they have to do anything now, before the NATO meeting on July 11. They’ve got their talking point, they got their distraction.
“This entire conflict from 2014, and even before that, has been about regime change in Russia. And with this action from Prigozhin, in my opinion, this has just now emboldened Nuland, Sullivan, Blinken, von der Leyen, and all of them. They now have a sense that they are close to a regime change, or fractures in the Russian military, or fractures in the Russian government. We’re going to hear stories like this now for the next 16 years.”
While Christoforou is perhaps wrong about his 16-years timeline, on cue, British media lined up to serve up to the public the exact same dish of steaming-hot deception from the multiple orifices of the tabloid world. The Times of London ran a frontpage full-page headline: “Putin Humiliated by Mutiny.” The front page of the tabloid, The Sun had a top kicker: “Armed Coup Rocks Kremlin” with the main headline reading: “Putin at the Brink; Humiliation as Rebels Close In on Moscow; He Clings on After Desperate 11-Hour Deal.” London’s Telegraph raises the 1917 parallel:
“As Yevgeny Prigozhin astonished the world by calling off his march on Moscow, Vladimir Putin, it seems, has narrowly avoided his 1917 moment. Russia has had a varied experience of coups and mutinies, from palace revolutions in the 18th century, an abortive mutiny in 1825 by liberal army officers who had tasted freedom in the West fighting Napoleon and, most importantly, in 1917, when the army high command told Nicholas II that his time was up.”
