CIA Director William Burns, 67, former President George W. Bush’s Russian ambassador, says the 62-year-old Wagner Group mercenary army chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s June 24 mutiny signals trouble for 70-year-old President Vladimir Putin. Burns showed his disinformation and propaganda skills spreading the fake narrative that Putin remains in a weakened state because of the Ukraine War. Acting like a secret Kremlin coup wants Putin out, Burns suggested that it’s a new Bolshevik Revolution brewing in Putin’s Russia, something so absurd it disgraces the CIA. “It’s striking that Prigozhin preceded his actions with a scathing indictment of the Kremlin’s mendacious rationale for the invasion of Ukraine and of the Russia Military leadership’s conduction of the war,” Burns said making zero sense. Whatever problems Prigozhein had with the Russian military, it wasn’t Putin’s fault.
Burns tries to make it look like Prigozhin’s beef with 67-year-old Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had something to do with a wider discontent or brewing coup at the Kremlin. Prigozhin’s 25,000 mercenary army was fighting for months in the bloody battle of Bakhmut, losing thousands of troops. Prigozhin’s frustration with Shoigu or Russian Ukraine army chief Valery Gerasimov have to do with Prigozhin’s trouble getting re-supplied in his long battle in Bakhmut. When the Russian military accidentally had a friendly fire incident with the Wagner Group kills some 25 soldiers, Prigozhin went ballistic telling his army June 24 to march to Moscow. Once Putin got wind of Prigozhin’s insanity, he branded him a traitor, put out a warrant for his arrest. Burns know the recent history, choosing instead to make the incident out as a wider Kremlin conflict.
Prigozhin clearly went insane after the accidental Russian air strike, leaving scores of his troops killed. “The impact of those words and those actions will play out for some time—a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war on his own society and his own regime,” Burns said, pushing the White House narrative that the Ukraine War was “unprovoked and unjustified.” But if anyone at the White House or in the U.S. press admits what happened, they know that 80-year-old President Joe Biden refused for months before the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion to discuss new Ukraine security arrangements with Putin. Putin told Biden in Dec. 2021 that supplying lethal arms to Ukraine threatened Russian national security. Putin told Biden, on more than one occasion, that if he didn’t discuss new security arrangements, he would be forced to take “military technical operations” in Ukraine.
Burns wants to make headlines for the White House that Putin faces a wider possible coup d’etat brewing at the Kremlin. Putin enjoys high approval ratings at the Kremlin and in the Russian public casting the Ukraine War as an existential crisis with the U.S. and NATO. Conducting a war with Ukraine has created hardship for the Russian people but there’s no coherent opposition to the “technical military operation.” Most Russia believe that the U.S. and NATO are trying topple Putin’s Kremlin government. So, to the Russian people, the war is viewed as bullying by the U.S. and NATO, something, regardless of the costs, must be undertaken. Burns called Prigozhin’s muting an “internal Russian affair in which the United States has not and will not take part,” not realizing that by calling Prigozhin’s mutiny and internal affair suggests a wider effort to oust Putin.
Burns did everything possible to pit China against Russia, when the two nuclear superpowers have joined a political, economic and military alliance, all because China feels threatened by the United States. Burns called Russia “future as a junior partner and economic colony of China,” all shaped “by Putin’s mistakes.” So Burns leaps to wild conclusions about China, knowing that China and Russia are part of BRICS economic bloc. “Disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership beneath the steady died of state propaganda and practices repression,” Burns said, pushing the false narrative that Putin is in trouble with the Krmlin. Kremlin officials understand the stakes in the Ukraine, viewing the war as one between the U.S. and the Kremlin. Unlike Burins, Putin knows that Biden can’t continue the Ukraine War indefinitely, without adverse consequences.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
