“Q: Are you able to forgive? Putin: Yes, but not everything. Q: What is it impossible to forgive? Putin: Betrayal.”
Did you spend your entire Saturday closely following the minute-by-minute thunder run by the Wagner group towards Moscow? I spent half of mine engaged in a debate with an old friend about the title of our previous update.
Perhaps we could have provided better clarification by posing the previous title as a question. However, we like to believe that our readers are capable of delving beyond mere headlines and exploring the entirety of our updates. The point we made about the absence of satellite imagery to support Prigozhin‘s account of the alleged airstrikes on Wagner troops should have sowed doubts about the reports circulating on social media. Nonetheless, it was good to catch up.
Anyone can read/share a Tweet
With an abundance of information available on the open web, there are also more ways to get it wrong. Anyone can read a 280-character Tweet or a message on a Telegram channel and hit the share button. But only a few make the effort to verify sources and determine the newsworthiness of the information. Moreover, the threshold of certainty for what qualifies as news varies depending on the audience and objectives. We try to identify market-relevant risks that can be both overstated and understated within the mainstream narrative. Overstated risks, as we witnessed this year with the no-recession and no-debt ceiling rallies, can have significant market impacts.
OSINT & Information warfare
There is a lot to unpack on the use of open-source intelligence (OSINT) research, source curation, and information warfare. However, we won't delve into that here. In any case, the information warfare strategy in the Russia-Ukraine war is well beyond our paygrade. Suffice it to say that relevant information is always available for those who know where to look and are willing to invest the time and effort. The version of reality that most individuals perceive on the internet is largely shaped by algorithms that prioritize the vast amounts of online data. One can either accept this as a matter of fact or delude themselves into believing otherwise. The individuals most susceptible to deception are those who believe they are immune to such influences.
Rest assured, skilled OSINT analysts can easily identify disinformation disseminated by both sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. However, they do not publicly express their opinions if they contradict the official narrative.
The Dunning-Kruger effect
As a general rule, individuals who hold strong opinions without expert domain knowledge and experience don't know what they're talking about. This phenomenon is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which we have previously discussed. Those who equate their pay with their abilities are particularly susceptible to the pitfalls of this effect.
Mark Galeotti on post-Putin era
For a brief period today, amateur Kremlinologists were getting ahead of themselves regarding post-Putin succession plans.
We recommend listening to recent podcasts or reading publications by Mark Galeotti, where he profiles the leading contenders to succeed Putin. One of them is Nikolaj Patrushev‘s son, Dimitry, who currently serves as Russia's Agriculture Minister. All the candidates lean towards ultra-nationalism and are positioned to the right of Putin. Be careful what you wish for!
It's easier to read up on this stuff ahead of time, rather than after the fact when it's too late.
Enemies vs. Traitors
On several occasions, Galeotti has also stated that Putin treats his enemies and traitors differently: some enemies may be tolerated, while others are imprisoned. However, traitors should be dealt with harshly. In Putin's eyes, opposition leader Alexei Navalny transitioned from being an enemy of the state to a traitor. The Kremlin believes that Navalny was collaborating with the CIA. After the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, it was revealed that he had been on the MI6 payroll. This raises the question of why Putin would have ordered an assassination attempt on the Skripals, a couple of retired UK intelligence assets released by the Kremlin several years earlier as part of a prisoner exchange.
Considering that Putin officially declared the Wagner mercenaries as ‘traitors' in his address to the nation on Saturday morning, it is possible that this could mark the end of the Prigozhin story?
