Mercenary Leader Prigozhin Reported Dead in Plane Crash by Russian State News_我的网站
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The leader of the Wagner Group mercenary front that marched his forces on Moscow just months ago was believed to be among 10 individuals who died in a plane crash Wednesday, according to Russia’s state news service.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led the failed revolt in June, was listed among 10 names on the private plane’s passenger list, according to the report from Tass, which cites the country’s aviation authority. All 10 people aboard the flight were killed.
Yet official confirmation that Prigozhin was among them was slow in coming.
Before the crash, Prigozhin – who had seemed to largely disappear from public view after he was permitted under a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to take refuge in his country in the wake of the mutiny – was widely believed to be in Africa. He released a recent video in which he can be seen armed in a desert landscape among troops, suggesting the Wagner group had returned to its roots of advancing Russian interest by trading securing guarantees for developmental rights.
“Wagner is conducting reconnaissance and search operations, making Russia even greater on every continent – and Africa even more free. Justice and happiness for the African nations,” he said in the video posted this week to his Telegram channel.
President Joe Biden, who was quiet on the rebellion as it unfolded, said what many were likely thinking when asked about the reports on Wednesday.
“I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised,” Biden said.
Asked if he thought it was the work of Russian President Vladimir Putin – whose enemies regularly fall victim to fatal accidents or mysterious attacks – Biden responded, “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind. But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”
Prigozhin appeared to maintain a precarious position within Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, seemingly allowed to remain at the head of his forces and secure billions of dollars in government contracts despite his aborted rebellion against Moscow in June, when a column of some 25,000 Wagner troops loyal to him conducted a stunning about-face and marched along with fighting vehicles and heavy weaponry toward the capital.
Progozhin, who had been increasingly vocal about his dissatisfaction with Russia’s generals as well as the lack of resources supplied to his forces, said publicly that the move was in retaliation for a Russian attack on his forces, although U.S. intelligence indicated that Wagner troops had been amassing near the Russian border for some time. The troops – who were called upon to do some of the heaviest fighting in the ongoing war in Ukraine – marched on the southern Russian metropolis of Rostov-on-Don, seizing the headquarters building of the Russian command overseeing the war. Russian officials sought the arrest of Prigozhin and moved on his convoy. Skirmishes ensued, yet Russian troops reportedly cheered and waved the mercenaries through checkpoints while some even joined the column of Prigozhin’s men that began making its way to Moscow.
As quickly as it materialized, the threat dissipated, and Prigozhin issued a statement saying his mercenary front had achieved its ambition of seizing the Kremlin’s attention and was returning to the front lines. An arrest order was withdrawn and Prigozhin was permitted under a deal brokered by Lukashenko.
Reports later emerged of meetings between Prigozhin and Putin, and the mercenary leader was subsequently seen in St. Petersburg, where he was permitted access to his vast sums of money that had been seized by the government. The status of Wagner was less clear, with some troops joining regular Russian forces in Ukraine, some remaining in Belarus and some believed to have returned to operations in Africa.
Wagner first emerged as the armed extension of Putin’s foreign ambitions for the developing world, particularly to help secure areas in which Russia could prospectively exploit mineral rights and other commercial enterprises – regardless of the tactics required to achieve the goals. Prigozhin, a catering tycoon and Wagner's chief financier who spent time in prison in Russia’s immediate post-Soviet era, parlayed contracts to feed Russia’s troops into a security company of his own.
His mercenary front rose to the public’s attention by carrying out highly deniable paramilitary operations in far-flung regions of the world aligned with Russia’s foreign policy. Wagner’s presence in Mozambique, Libya, Central African Republic and Mali resembled a business conglomerate, trading natural resource access for private military services with a penchant for human rights abuses. That expeditionary mission began to change into more of a special operations force with ultimate deniability when Putin, finding difficulty masking the high Russian death toll during the Syrian civil war, employed them to prop up the regime of Bashar Assad during the civil war and simultaneously execute a multinational war against the Islamic State group.
。 London, Oct 18 (UNI) "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" by Sri Lankan Shehan Karunatilaka, a supernatural satire set amid a murderous civil war in the island nation, has won the Booker Prize.
The novel is about a photographer who wakes up dead, with a week to ask his friends to find his photos and expose the brutality of war, BBC and other media reported.
Camilla, the Queen Consort, presented the prize, and the author said it had been "an honour and a privilege" to be on the shortlist.
Karunatilaka said as he accepted his prize: "My hope is that in the not too distant future... Sri Lanka has understood that these ideas of corruption and race-baiting and cronyism have not worked and will never work."
The writer said he decided in 2009 to write "a ghost story where the dead could offer their perspective" after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, "when there was a raging debate over how many civilians died and whose fault it was".
"I hope it's in print in 10 years... if it is, I hope it's written in a Sri Lanka that learns from its stories, and that Seven Moons will be in the fantasy section of the bookshop, next to the dragons, the unicorns and will not be mistaken for realism or political satire," the BBC reported
He added that he had "self-censored" a couple of short stories after author Salman Rushdie was stabbed in August, having faced years of death threats for his novel "The Satanic Verses", which some Muslims see as blasphemous.
"I was in the process of publishing a collection of short stories when this incident happened, and I discovered a couple which I don't think was offensive to any religion," Karunatilaka said.
"But my wife said, can you not do that? You've got two young kids. This story is not that good. Just leave it out."
He added that "this is something that hangs over all of us if we're writing in South Asia, especially writing about politics or religion", the BBC said.
Head judge Neil MacGregor praised the "scope and the skill, the daring, the audacity and hilarity" of the novel, calling it an "afterlife noir" which "takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey through life and death".
He said the judges' decision had been unanimous, adding all of the shortlisted books were "all really about one question, and that is what's the point of an individual life?"
The prestigious £50,000 prize, for a single work of fiction published in the UK in English, also gives the other five writers on the shortlist £2,500 each.
"The Seven Moons of Maali" is Karunatilaka's second novel, having previously won awards including the Commonwealth Book Prize for his debut book Chinaman, which was called the "second best cricket book of all time" by cricketers' almanac Wisden.
Born in 1975, the writer has also worked as an advertising copywriter, and his songs, scripts and stories have been published in Rolling Stone, GQ and National Geographic.
MacGregor, a former director of London's National Gallery and the British Museum, added that the judges read all 170 books put forward for the prize, then whittled them down to 30. They then re-read those, before deciding on the final six, which they read for a third time, the report said.
The other nominees were: "Glory" by NoViolet Bulawayo, "The Trees" by Percival Everett, "Treacle Walker" by Alan Garner, "Small Things Like These" by Claire Keegan and "Oh William!" by Elizabeth Strout.
The Booker-winning novel tells the story of the photographer of its title, who in 1990 wakes up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. With no idea who killed him, Maali has seven moons to contact the people he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos of civil war atrocities that will rock Sri Lanka, the Daily Mirror reported.
The judges were unanimous in their decision to award the prize to Karunatilaka, according to the chair.
Receiving his prize, Karunatilaka addressed the people of Sri Lanka in Tamil and Sinhalese. He summarised what he said in English: “I write these books for you… Let’s keep sharing these stories.”
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is published by the independent press Sort of Books. This year is the first time a book by the publisher has been longlisted for the prize.
Karunatilaka has become the second Sri Lankan-born author to win, following Michael Ondaatje, who won in 1992 with "The English Patient".
In his Guardian review, Tomiwa Owolade said the book’s “scenarios are often absurd … but executed with a humour and pathos that ground the reader”. He added: “Karunatilaka has done artistic justice to a terrible period in his country’s history.”
Karunatilaka, was born in Galle, Sri Lanka, in 1975 and grew up in Colombo.
UNI MR。
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