One, Two, and the Ruskie Flew

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

I used this space last August, the day after Putin critic Yevgeny Prigozhin fell to earth and died when the private plane in which he was a passenger mysteriously came apart in the sky, to discuss the fact that political opponents and critics of Russian President Vlad Putin seem to routinely die before their time.   Well, Prigozhin's death really wasn't that mysterious.  Two months earlier Prigozhin, who had been the leader of the Wagner Group, a mercenary army employed by Russia to carry out much of Putin's war against Ukraine, had scared the yellow water out of Vlad when he turned his mercenary forces toward Moscow.   Prigozhin backed off a day later, but the damage to Putin's image had been done, and Vlad has never been known for being the forgiving sort.    An aviation "accident" in August ended Prigozhin's military influence in Russia - permanently. 

Putin seems to be a fan of permanent solutions.

In that August blog post I noted that for awhile critics of Vladimir Putin were being eliminated through "mysterious" - there's that world again - poisonings, but some victims were surviving those nefarious attempts on their lives, and soon the poisonings subsided and Putin critics and political opponents started falling out of high-rise windows instead, resulting in the death of the "jumpers"  or clumsy oafs at a rate of just under 100 percent.  (At one point when three doctors who were out of favor with the Kremlin jumped or fell from an upper story of their hospital, one survived.  Perhaps he landed on the other two.)

But, all-in-all, a fall from a high window seemed to be far more effective in eliminating pesky political opposition than poison.

Now, as the year ends, another Russian politician has bitten the dust, or more like the hard-packed frozen tundra, after a fall from another high window.  Vladimir Egorov, age 46, a Russian lawmaker and political ally of Putin, fell thirty feet from the third floor of his home in Tobolsk in western Siberia and was found dead in the courtyard.  Police are investigating - carefully, no doubt.

(Today's takeaway:  If your travels take you to Russia, request hotel rooms on the ground floor - at least until there is a change in the country's leadership.)