Ben Judah
(Picture: Handout)The map is moving again. In Eastern Ukraine, after months of severe retreats, Vladimir Putin’s forces made their first significant advance: capturing the salt mine town of Soledar. It wasn’t, however, General Valery Gerasimov, the Kremlin’s military chief in Ukraine, who first rushed to claim victory — posing in a deep shaft — but Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss and the angry face of the Russian mercenary group Wagner.
From the myth of Achilles in the Trojan War, societies have always sought — or uncomfortably found — reflections of themselves in their commanders. Churchill: the fading of the British Empire. Eisenhower: American meritocracy. The increasingly prominent Prigozhin is uncannily this. This Leningrad-born street bandit, jailed for nine years in the Soviet Union, symbolises the fusion of criminal and political power in Russia.
