Most Westerners would hand wave this away, because in the Western world our politicians are open whores and their reputations mean nothing. However, this is a Western perspective, not a Russian one or an authoritarian one. All authoritarian regimes, but especially the Russian Federation, are built on the premise of strength. Putin releases propaganda videos of himself training judo, shooting guns, riding horseback bare chested, and visiting and ordering around the military for a reason. In authoritarian regimes, the people's perception of your power, of your infallibility, is at least as important as your actual power and infallibility. Let's use Ceaușescu as an example. Near the end of his dictatorship he lost actual, real, tangible power. However, it wasn't until he appeared on his balcony and raised his hand and told/asked the crowd to be silent, and the crowd refusing, that the people collectively realized he had lost his power, including himself. You can actually see the moment on his face when he realized he has lost control. Ceaușescu then fled as Bucharest openly revolted, which was crushed, but the revolution spread across Romania rapidly. Four days later he and his wife were executed, which was shown later the same day on Romanian television. What's important to note is that the revolution did not begin until everybody collectively realized that the dictator no longer had power or a people's mandate. It wasn't until he wasn't able to silence the crowd in Bucharest that all of Romania's discontent and scattered protests turned into a nation-wide revolution. To sum up, a perception of weakness of the state and dictator is death to authoritarian regimes.
This is precisely what happened in Russia on June 23-24. A private citizen was able to embarrass and ratio the state military and security apparatus, the President was forced to make a national broadcast which he is no doubt kicking himself over and which is keeping him up at night, where he had to compare the situation Russia is in to 1917 (when the government was violently overthrown and the ruling class exterminated or exiled in a years long civil war) and admit that the situation in Rostov is "difficult" and that "the civil and military administration is effectively blocked from doing their job".
From years of "Russia is mighty" propaganda , and then almost 1.5 years of "Russia is winning the full scale invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine does not stand a chance", to the President of Russia issuing a speech discussing the potentiality of defeat, capitulation, embarrassment, loss of territory, civil war, and other disastrous prospects and words being associated with Russia, coming from none other than the President's mouth. And in the end, it's the dictator of your alleged client state that is seen as saving the day, where the Russian President, Russian military, and Russian security services failed. Utterly embarrassing and delegitimizing.
As part of the unknown deal, Prigo is allegedly on his way to exile in Belarus. If he is not eventually executed/assassinated, then that basically verifies that he does indeed have blackmail on Putin which he promised will be released upon his death. Now of all times, the President of Russia being exposed for selling Russian assets to Western oligarchs after the collapse of the 1990's would be almost as embarrassing and delegitimizing as the Wagner mutiny. Even if he is executed or assassinated it's possible he still had this blackmail and used it for years, but Putin was able to find a way to prevent it from being released while also killing Prigo.
In summation, on June 23-24, the Russian Federation lost several aircraft, a dozen or near enough experienced pilots, unknown other casualties, but most importantly their authoritarian regime suffered an immense blow to its most important requirement, the perception of its own power.
On November 29, 2022, I wrote a 3 post series discussing the potential collapse of the Russian Federation,
which you can read beginning here or as
a Counter-Currents article here.
