Everyone always hopes for the worst for Putin, and that is mostly wishful thinking, although he is in fact entrenched in sort of a nightmare right now. You never like to be getting your 180th daily update or your 3-day War with at least another full year to go. That is not how 3-day wars are spozed to go. It is true that he has had to wake up to some pretty crappy news in the last three or four days and that must wear on his psyche especially since he does not have his rasputin buddy to turn to for counseling now. Let's review his last three or four days: Thursday or so he wakes up to news that some of the big attacks in the east were probably done by local resistance rather than Ukrainian military. hmmmm no big deal but he would not want that to grow. Then Friday or so, he wakes up to news that drones are knocking on the door at the Kerch bridge, and then shortly thereafter he wakes up to news that a little explosion has just occurred at Black Sea Fleet HQ, nothing to worry about as long as it does not happen again, and then the following day he wakes up to news that his spiritual mentor's car blew up and killed him, probably because he was smoking and the gas fumes, etc. You know the drill. Yeh, Vlad needs to go on vacation and get a little rest. Maybe to the beach in Crimea.
I can read this article- link below- without fiddling with it get past the paywall but I presume this assassination attempt was done by the local resistance rather than the Ukrainian military. More signs that Vlad needs to worry growing resistance movements. Mind you, I don't even remotely think that anyone is going to overthrow any government but it does bring some messiness and ugliness inside Russian territory which Vlad does not want. That is why he has held off on mobilization too. He wants everything to be off in the Ukraine and he will send ethnic kids there to fight so that the Moscow middle class can enjoy the new Tsarbucks Coffee there and not be involved. Also, as we know, in the short run, dictators everywhere feed off of attacks close to home and use it rally even more support and to justify cracking down even more so I don't get too giddy about opposition movements, immediately anyway. I will say this though, Putin is spread pretty thin these days. He is aching to send Belarus troops into Ukraine but he is afraid that it would touch off a rebellion on the home front in Belarus which is very fragile and government is only held up by Russian troops. And at the same time Kazakhstan is arming up and making it very clear that Russia is a friend but also a potential enemy and better stay home. So, there are a lot of moving parts and Vlad is spread thin so he better be careful about how he plays his cards. If I were Vlad, I would worry about that Belarus situation. Those folks there act like they could sneeze and go pro-Ukrainian in the blink of an eye, or at least more pro-Ukrainian than Putin is planning on. Especially if the Russian army that is containing them now ends out off in Ukraine. It will be harder to contain resistance on the home front in Belarus. Russian’s puppet mayor in Mariupol ‘survives assassination attempt’ at zoo https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ariupol-mayor-assassination-zoo-b2149237.html
It appears that Aleksandr Dugin was originally going to be in the car with his daughter, but he decided to take another ride home. Now it comes down to the question --- Was Putin trying to kill his "ally" (like the deaths of many others) because of some transgression, or was this car bombing done by Ukrainian supporters targeting Dugin being the "architect of the Ukraine invasion"? Car bomb kills daughter of ‘spiritual guide’ to Putin’s Ukraine invasion - Russian media https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/20/euro...on-alexander-dugin-russia-intl-hnk/index.html Russian authorities said Sunday they had opened a murder investigation after the daughter of influential, ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin was killed by a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow. The Russian Investigative Committee said it believed someone planned and ordered the car explosion that killed Darya Dugina, based on evidence already collected from the blast. “Taking into account the data already obtained, the investigation believes that the crime was pre-planned and was of an ordered nature,” the investigative committee said in a statement Sunday. Dugina died at the scene after “an explosive device, presumably installed in the Toyota Land Cruiser, went off on a public road and the car caught fire” at around 9.00 p.m. local time on Saturday, near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy, according to the press service of the Russian Investigative Committee, as reported by the Russian state news agency TASS. Dugina’s father is a Russian author and ideologue, credited with being the architect or “spiritual guide” to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He is purported to have significant influence over Russian President Vladimir Putin and was described as “Putin’s Brain” by Foreign Affairs magazine. Both Dugin and his daughter have been sanctioned by the United States. The United Kingdom sanctioned Dugina in July for being “a frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on various online platform,” it wrote. Videos of the explosion showed a vehicle on fire at the side of the road and smashed car parts strewn across the surrounding area. One unverified video appears to show Dugin at the scene. A friend of Dugina told TASS that he believed Dugina’s father was the true target of the blast – or possibly both of them – as the car belonged to Alexander. “It’s her father’s car,” Krasnov told TASS. “Dasha (Darya) drives another car, but she drove his car today, and Alexander went separately,” Andrei Krasnov, head of the Russky Gorizont (Russian Horizon) social movement and a personal acquaintance of Dugina’s family, told TASS. A Russian foreign ministry official implied that Ukrainian state structures were responsible for the explosion, a claim that Ukrainian authorities have denied. “If the Ukrainian trace is confirmed… then we should talk about the policy of state terrorism implemented by the Kyiv regime,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a Telegram post. “There have been plenty of facts accumulated over the years: from political calls for violence to the leadership and participation of Ukrainian state structures in crimes,” she said. Ukraine on Sunday strenuously denied any involvement in the car explosion. “Ukraine definitely has nothing to do with this because we are not a criminal state, which the Russian Federation is, and even more so, we are not a terrorist state,” Mykhailo Podoliak, adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said in a Ukrainian TV interview. (More at above url)
My uninformed guess would be that it was just the Ukrainian spies coordinating with local underground resistance. If he had been a general, I would say that the Americans simply gave them the intel and the coordinates and the rest is history, but I would not be surprised if Langley/CIA preferred to have this guy alive. The Americans have intel and sources on absolutely everyone around Putin and know what they had for breakfast and who they talked to that day, and then intercept the communications of the ones they talked to, etc. etc. They would have put a lot of work into rasputin there over the yearrs and he would have been one of their major sources for trying to figure out what Putin is up too. Probably- inadvertently- that works in the CIA's favor now, because it was the daughter who was killed and that would create a massive amount of communications by the father and his buzzing around connecting with others in a high emotional state. The CIA will pick up much of that. Not just through communication intercepts but through insiders on the CIA payroll. Rasputin will most likely be cranked up now and -even moreso- urging Putin to do something stupid. History will show whether that hurts or helps Vlad. If you ask rasputin there if Putin should send Belarus troops into Ukraine or Russian troops into K-stan tomorrow, we know the answer.
That is the perspective being put forward on FOX News today... Ukraine fears ramped-up aggression from Russia after Putin ally loses daughter in alleged assassination Ukraine will also celebrate its independence day this week amid heightened tensions https://www.foxnews.com/world/ukrai...tin-ally-loses-daughter-alleged-assassination
Putin has daughters (he just brought one of them into government. she was a belly dancer or modern dance type who now is some sort of economics minister or member of parliament) and girlfriends etc. While I am not in favor of targeting any of them if they should be caused to live in fear or hiding in the countryside and have to watch their backs 24/7 I am more than okay with that. Russia invaded a country where many people are now dead, half the population has had to flee for their lives, and the ones that remained behind have to change their location every two hours to avoid missiles, or have to run back and forth to bomb shelters- except for the men who have been on the front lines for six months. Vlad lost his spiritual guru? Too fucking bad. Start watching Oprah and Ekhart Tolle and wearing beads if you need a new one. Maybe do some firewalking with Tony Robbins.
Why suicide those who turned against you when you can false flag them and find a final use for them instead?