2023-08-24 11:18:30
After the crash of the plane with the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on the passenger list, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned against speculation. The plane crash was only a few hours ago, so you “can’t draw any quick conclusions,” said the Greens politician on Deutschlandfunk on Thursday. However, the incident underlines “that a system, that a power, that a dictatorship that is built on violence, that it only knows violence internally”. You have “seen it in a sad, dramatic way in previous years, where members of the opposition, where journalists, where ordinary people fell out of windows or were poisoned”.
When asked about the future of the mercenary force, Baerbock said there was a fear “that Russia, with or without Wagner, will continue with its cynical game, not only in the Ukraine, but above all in Africa”. According to the Foreign Minister, Prigozhin and Wagner are responsible for terrible acts “against the Ukrainian people and in one country after the other in Africa”. “Wherever Wagner goes, death and destruction and exploitation follow.”
The chairwoman of the Defense Committee in the Bundestag, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (FDP), sees Prigozhin’s presumed death as confirmation that he would “not survive” his putsch attempt two months ago. It is not yet clear whether he really did is dead, “but it would fit into the picture that Putin simply kills his opponents,” said Strack-Zimmermann in an interview with the television station phoenix.
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Even for those who still believe that the Russian president can be met with white doves, it is important to know that “he is a brutal ruler, a KGB man”. Prigozhin too “was and is a criminal and a murderer. And in this respect one devil got involved with the other. That could be a logical result of this,” says Strack-Zimmermann.
The foreign policy spokesman for the Union faction in the Bundestag, Jürgen Hardt, said that he “cannot believe in a coincidence” when Prigozhin died. The mercenary chief’s plane crash coincided with the dismissal of a leading Russian general who worked closely with Prigozchin in the war of aggression against Ukraine, Hardt said in an interview with the television station phoenix. It was clear that the alleged peace between Prigozhin and the Russian president agreed after the aborted putsch by the Wagner group would not be Putin’s last word and “now he’s hitting back with all his might,” Hardt said.
Prigozhin badly insulted Putin when he exposed the war of aggression against Ukraine as a futile attempt to bring Ukraine under control and also portrayed the Russian army as incompetent. “It was clear that there will be no peace between these two. Putin is now fighting with all his might and with increasing brutality for his personal political and perhaps also physical survival. And we will certainly experience one or the other surprise in the next few weeks or months,” said Hardt in an interview with phoenix.
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