Who will pay Prigozhin now?
Prigozhin's private army existed thanks to Putin's dirty money.
For the money from selling oil, gas, timber, metals, gold and other resources of Russia to the West and to the East.
Yesterday, Russian media reported that during searches in the offices of the PMCs, colossal amounts of cash were found - 4 billion rubles, (about $50 million).
Prigozhin immediately admitted that this was money of the PMC and that it was intended for paying the so-called "coffin" money - payments to the relatives of killed mercenaries.
"Wagner PMC has existed for 10 years using cash only. When we were working in Africa, in Ukraine and in other countries, when America was a nightmare, everyone was satisfied with cash. And now they came with searches," Prigozhing commented.
Let's talk about the dirty economy of Wagner PMC.
Using simple arithmetic calculations, multiplying the declared number of mercenaries in the PMC - 50,000 people, by their average payment for a bloody contract - RUB 240,000, we get the amount of $150 million a month. And this amount does not include any other costs for the maintenance of Prigogzhin's private army.
According to my rough estimates, maintaining a private Wagner army cost Putin between $250 million and $350 million in cash per month.
It is possible that one of the reasons that prompted Prigozhin to revolt against Putin was the conflict over the verification of how he spent more than $2 billion received from Putin and his oligarchs during the 15 months of war.
We still do not know the reasons why Prigozhin stopped his march on Moscow by his mercenaries. Neither he, nor Putin, nor Lukashenko made a single public statement after the talks.
But I have several questions:
1. Will Putin, after Prigozhin's rebellion, finance his PMC in the same way as before? I highly doubt it! And if not, then where will Prigozhin get $250 million per month to maintain PMCs?
2. Will Prigozhin now be provided with shells, cartridges, missiles - after his mercenaries shot down helicopters and a Russian plane yesterday with the same missiles? I don't think so!
3. Will the Russian military, who until this moment idolized Prigozhin as a real military leader, forgive him the Russian pilots and officers killed by him? I think that he lost their trust, both after the murders and after a cheap provocation about the alleged shelling of the rear camp of the PMC, staged by Prigozhin himself as a pretext for rebellion.
4. How will Prigozhin withstand the powerful blow of Kremlin propaganda? Already last night it was clearly visible how quickly and clearly the position of Kremlin propaganda in relation to the Wagner PMC has changed. From yesterday's heroes, they quickly began to turn into traitors, rebels, and murderers of valiant pilots. A few more weeks and instead of Prigozhin and his accomplices, instead of the Wagnerites "heroes of Russia", propaganda will show them as a bunch of scoundrels, rebels and murderers - which, in fact, they are.
Therefore, future events look obvious to me - yesterday Prigozhin lost his chance to seize power in Russia.
There will most likely not be a second campaign against Moscow, since Wagner PMC will slowly collapse through a gradual reduction in funding for salaries to mercenaries, through contradictions between those who are 100% loyal to Prigozhin and who feel deceived and thrown into the furnace of the ambitions of the bloody Bakhmut butcher.
And Ukraine only benefited from this failed rebellion, as fascist Russia became even weaker - and that's good news!
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