On Saturday morning a friend calls me, he's all hungover, and asks me who we're going with, Putin or the others. He proceeds with the question because, eliminating experts, correspondents, editors of the International sections, scholars and, as I read in a great tweet, those who speak with glasses in hand, nobody has much of an idea of what is happening in Russia. I answer that with those of Wagner surely not.
It's not pretentious, it's simply that a few months ago I saw an overwhelming documentary on TVE about Wagner. Of French production, with the title everything is understood: Wagner. Putin's mercenaries. What is decadent is the reason for the name of the organization. Its founder, Dimitri Utkin, a veteran of the Russian special forces, was known by the nickname Wagner because of his affinity with Hitler and the Nazis (he has tattoos of the Third Reich symbology all over his body). Funded by the Kremlin, currently the visible head is Yevgueni Prigozhin, absolute protagonist of the cable collection (as it is said now) never seen before in the history of the 21st century.
We are in a time when it is more important to explain where we come from than where we are going. For too many years we have taken the past for granted without giving society much of a context to analyze the present. Social networks (especially Twitter) force you to position yourself without even counting to ten, which is why the information elaboration and key management of the past is so important to understand the present. We know more about Russia in two days than in a year of war, and it has helped that Saturday's historic episode was a televised series with an exciting plot (possible coup in Russia), a suffocating knot (mercenaries advance towards the Kremlin ) and a disappointing outcome (three-way pact). A war series explained in Russia in the most western way: two voice notes by Prigozhin and a finale with the protagonist taking selfies on the street.
A frustrating ending with uncertain continuity. Perhaps Prigozhin's Truman show. After his rise and fall, the world is watching if, how, and by whom he will end up killed. And, of course, if the cameras will broadcast it strictly direct.
