The Chaser Report - Prigozhin's Big Accident

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Charles and Dom congratulate Putin for winning the most obvious game of Cluedo ever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Dom, a momentous day for Russian politics. Is it though, Charles? Is it? Because it's so hard to know what to believe in Russia. Whether there's a coup underway, whether Wagner or Wagner troops are on the road to Moscow to get rid of Vladimir Putin. or whether they've turned around. It's so hard to know. Evgeny Progosian, had he fled to Belarus after that

or was he still in Russia? And today, did he die in a plane crash with no survivors, part of a giant fireball of a private jet with him and some of his closest associates? Or is he kicking back somewhere in the Bahamas, having a grand old time and toasting Vladimir Putin from afar? We'll get into that in a moment. So, Dom, can I just answer the first conspiracy theory?

Yes. Which is, as well, we're going to air, or as we're recording this on late Thursday afternoon, they have found Progoshan's body. Oh, have that? Yes. Well, they say they have. They say it's his body.

So you're thinking it's like a Putin-style double-body. Easily could be. It would be extensively barbecue. There was a fireball. So look, we just set up, for those who haven't been following the story, this is the head of the mercenary group that essentially conducted much of the war in Ukraine and certainly the effective bits of the war in Ukraine. Buckwood, in lieu of the Russian army, which was massively hopeless, and which recruited

very effectively a whole bunch of murderers and rapists from Russian prisons, but were given the chance to leave and be pardoned if they joined the fight in Ukraine. You know, as it happens, Charles, if you're wanting to find people to do killing for you on the battlefield, killers. Going to murderers is a good idea. They've got the skill set. They've got the experience, the on-the-job experience, so as well. There were some great write-ups of the Wagner thing.

in the wake of the Procogian coup, there are a few sort of deep dives that, you know, the Atlantic did and stuff like that. And one of the great details was how they really did use those murderers as cannon fodder. So often it would be like, well, we'll put the, especially in the early stages of the Buckingwood takeover, what they'd do is they'd send in the Wagner murderers first up. And they'd been trained for like two weeks.

They didn't know what they were doing. Oh, except, I mean, they had experience. To be fair, up close with the murdering bit, they were good. Yeah. In terms of military regime and tactics and like all those signals where you go, go ahead, it's an occupied. I don't think they really bothered with that stuff. But what the Russian generals is, they said, okay, Wagner, you go first.

And what that allowed the Russian army to do was see where the Ukrainians were shooting from. Brilliant. Because they were basically, they were literally using the Wagner troops as cannon fodder. As canaries in the coal mine. Yes. And then the far more protective. actual infantry from the Russian army would come in and know to protect themselves from all the places that had been exposed by the Wagner trip.

So the actual losses of life in the Wagner was, especially amongst the, like, it was sort of like, okay, you've got, you get, you get, you're going to spend, you know, the rest of your life in jail, or you've got a sort of 10% chance that you won't die in the next six months or 15. Oh, would, yes. And at least you get some fresh air. Oh, yes. So the numbers are.

And also some murdering. You get to appreciate your greatest passion in life. Yes. So, I mean, this is huge. Again, this is from Wikipedia, so the numbers are a bit rubbery because we don't really know what's happening in Russia. But the allegations are that Wagner in Ukraine went from 1,000 initially to between 20 and 50,000.

Yes. All of them just about murderers and rapist. And, Charles, would you believe, would you believe that Wagner operatives in Ukraine were accused of murder? And rape and torture and robbery, as well as torturing and killing accused. desertism. Would you believe that a squad of murderers, let's call it a murder squad, if you will. Unleashed on Ukraine would do some murdering. Do you think that there are any sort of like J-walkers messed up in that sort of thing? Like do you think, they go around the prisons and offer a general amnesty? Oh, do you think they get anyone? Like get accountants. You're in jail

for some white-collar crime. Yeah, fiddling the books. Yeah, or just, you know, maybe going 30 over in a 60 zone or something and, you know. A bit dodgy on your tax return Well you'd still That said Charles Compared to being in a Russian prison Yes I think it still look pretty good

Still look pretty good So the whole point of this was Because you want J-Walkers on the battlefield Just thinking about it You want J-Walkers on the battlefield Because their school set is going Is getting through When it's supposed to be

Yeah Running the courtroom Running the country Like the problem is They put all these murderers on And they were just out in the open Going oh who do I murder Whereas a J-Walker

would just like dip across the road and avoid enemy fire. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They're the ones you want to sort of bring the, bringing the, you know, the mines in. That's the mistake that Wagner made. They didn't recruit enough Jay Walker. Also, I think the coup, in hindsight, looking a bit like a mistake. That was also, that was a bit of a... Okay, so Wagner, we're a big part of this.

And they've, for many years they've been doing this stuff, basically as a proxy for the Russian military, so they can say, oh, we're not involved there. The Russian-run Wagner Group is there But it's not actually us, it's not actually our people And to be clear, there's a long tradition of that Like the East India, you know, company of Great Britain Was exactly that, wasn't it? They basically outsourced their entire colonisation

Of the subcontinent. Yes, when you say there, you don't mean Britain Do you mean the entirely autonomous East India Company? Yes, exactly. Which would procure troops and conquer land And install despots? Yeah, it was just a company. It wasn't the British, you know,

It wasn't... Yeah, and to be fair, its behaviours have been emulated by many companies to this day. It really set a template for multinational expansion. I mean, it was the first multinational in many ways. Yes. Anyway, perhaps the Dutch tulip company as well. Look, so what's just happened is that we know that basically Progosion got some of his troops,

we think, to march on Moscow. Yes. They got very close. They had success that you would think would be surprising if you had the old view of Russia, which was their military were pretty good. But the new 2023 view is it the military is absolutely. hopeless, which is what the war in Ukraine has taught us. So they basically sawned it up to being in Moscow. It was a bit like us with the apex stunt. They went further than they thought,

so they had to turn around, so they didn't get in too much trouble. Yes. I think that's very true. I think also, because I read some accounts afterwards that said one of the other problems was the military itself, especially the lower ranks of the just Russian military, actually held the Wagner people in quite high esteem, because after all, they were sort of a successful. They were successful war heroes. So they'd come through the local town, good at killing, going, we're heading to Moscow on this march, and they'd go, well, good on you. Well, yes, because they wouldn't have liked the central government.

Yeah, they were war heroes. They were like, it was as if Ben Robert Smith was walking through you down. In so many respects, yes. Celebrated war hero. A very good killer. And you would just go, okay, you just keep walking. But also, it's not even about, it's not even about hero worship. Would you back to the force that had made a total fuck up in Ukraine or murder squad,

who actually get the job done. I mean, you know where the strength is. You might just get out of their way, I don't know. So here's the thing. I wonder whether the J-Walkers were good on the match because they would have been the first ones to get to Moscow. They would have walked right down the middle of the road. They would have.

Yes, with reckless abandon. People would have said, stop, stop. And they would have gone, no, no, I'm just going to keep going. No, because that's what I do. I don't follow that red light. So they had all the success. And so Progoshin, the head of the Wagner Group, supposedly fled to Belarus, which is weird.

because Belarus is a puppet state of Russia anyway, so I don't quite get what the idea was there. And then... Well, there was a theory, which I floated on this podcast, actually, that, you know, it was essentially relocating the Wagner forces so that they could invade from the north. Like, literally just, it was a sort of clever way

to get Wagner out of Russia, but also be useful. Which I found plausible, except for the fact that you floated it on this podcast. But so anyway, it's hard to know what's going on. But eventually, he went back to Russia, progotion, to the surprise of many. And we gave advice, didn't we, on the podcast?

We said, I wouldn't stand near any windows. What we should have said, Charles, is don't board any private planes. I wonder whether he took our advice and just decided not to get the window seat on the plane. Oh, no, that was very foolish. But also, he might have been listening to the podcast and thought, well, as long as I stay away from windows, I'm safe because the usual way in which people who oppose Putin meet a coincidental death is by falling out of a window. But it's not the only way, Dom. No.

There's also Novichok and the underpants. There's Novichok, there's polonium. There's a whole bunch of... I mean, do you think he free-balled it ever since the crew? Definitely. You wouldn't wear underpants. You wouldn't. I mean, sometimes they have a suspicious heart attack, which is consistent with poisoning.

Avoid tea that tastes like polonium. Yeah, definitely, definitely do that. I mean, you shouldn't drink tea anyway. The stuff's a mug. Perfew. Remember that you... Oh, yes, the perfume bottle in... Absolutely in the UK.

Was that polonium as well? It's so hard to get track of nerve agents, isn't it? Although that said, it wasn't hard because they managed to trace his signature all through that town. There's a great episode of Matt Bevan's podcast about that, by the way. So, Charles, getting into a private plane with some of his closest allies and friends. Yes, including the co-founder of Wagner, who I found out was the guy who actually led the march on Moscow, like two months ago. It was almost as though all the people who Putin wouldn't have minded. killing were on the same plane. It was like one of those murder mysteries in Agatha Christie

where every single person is a likely suspect because they all hate like sort of the reverse that. Putin, they were all likely victims. So presumably Putin's people contacted them all and said, would you like a free flight on this plane? It's like playing Cludeau, but all the characters are dead. And the person who killed them, like it didn't take long. There's only one suspect and there's only one murder weapon, which is a plane. Charles, when you heard of the death of Progosion, how long did it take you to think, well, that was

probably Putin? No, I went through some possibilities. I thought, well, did he was he jaywalking at the time and did he get run over? I mean, how quickly does the human brain operate? Because however quickly an obvious thought follows, a thought that takes absolutely

no time. It's in the millisecond, and this would have been everyone who heard the story. Yes. But Vladimir Putin probably happy about it, because this sends a message that if you oppose Vladimir Putin and you fly private and this is why I never fly in private jets by the way it's Putin's signature it's like the windows

The Chaser report More news Less often But how did he arrange it? Because I don't know Like was it a jet fighter I mean because I saw the footage of the plane falling out of the sky

It didn't seem to have any missile So it's worth noting this, it was an Embraeer private jet and none of them have ever crashed except one situation where the crew fucked up, okay? So they don't spontaneously combust at all. No. And one

theory on this that I've read on Wikipedia which has already been updated on this is that it was shot down by Russian air defences. Yes, yes. Which is possible. Another possibility is that Russia supplied surface to air missiles to a bunch of dissidents somewhere around there and they just shot down any plane that was nearby. I mean, when's that ever happened before except for that Malaysian

Airlines plane. Do you think, yeah, well, hang on, but weren't the Wagner people involved in the Malaysia Airlines being shot down? It's also entirely possible. It's possible that. Maybe it's ironic. Maybe this is a hugely ironic death. Nothing to do with Putin.

Oh. They looked at it and they thought, oh, there's an innocent Malaysia Airlines flight. Someone accidentally put a Malaysia Airlines logo on the fuselage of the plane. I'll shoot it down because that's what I do. Well, this is the tricky thing. I mean, I was talking earlier in the. the week about how foolish it was to board an aerosloat plane, right?

Yes. It's so hard to know, is this foul play or is it simply Russian aviation as usual? That's the thing that's really hard to know. But it's not the sea, because it's not an aerosloat, it's an embryo. It's an embryo. And it was, according to the flight recorder, which somehow they've managed to access,

it was just going along normally and then suddenly started descending 30 seconds before it hit the ground. Do you think he just sort of went, Progosion, when, you know what, like, I'm probably dead anyway. Like, if Putin wants to be dead, it doesn't matter where I go in the world. I might as well just keep going. It's a better death from Novichok. Yeah, rather than do this whole, oh, I'll flee to Mexico or go and buy a football team in England.

It's got an integrity about it, doesn't it? And that's, if there's one thing you can say of Progation, such integrity. Integrity. If you hired him to run a mercenary death squad, that's what you. you got. He delivered. He was reliable. It was what he said on the package. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's very true. And it's so hard to know what's going on. But also the telegram messages on the telegram social networking app from Wagner have been quite something. The Wagner Telegram channel supposedly confirmed that it happened. Yeah, well, fairly early on, like just literally a couple of

hours after it got shot down or exploded or spontaneously combusted or whatever it happened. They were pretty sure that, you know, like even really early on, the Wagner channels were going, oh, he's dead. So maybe, therefore, we should be a bit more suspicious. Well, the best thing that they've put in this, one of the messages was a full air crash investigation will be launched by Russian authorities. So it's good to know they're going to get to the bottom of it. You know what? I'm going to love the episode of air crash investigations of this. Oh, it's going to be very.

It's going to be the best. And in fact, the Wagner Telegram Channel has already accused the Ministry of Defense of shutting it down. I mean, we probably shouldn't laugh at this terrible tragic incident. You know, like, in some ways, this is the 9-11 for murderers and rapists. This is the rapists' 9-11. I'm just really trying to ponder how that in any way is going to get you cancelled. It's very challenging. You know, one of the telegram messages, the one I'm most excited about was

The head of the Wagner group, a hero of Russia, a true patriot of his motherland, which I think Vladimir Putin might challenge, died as a result of the actions of traitors to Russia. So what are they saying there? Is Putin a traitor to Russia? Or are they saying it's a false flag? It's a false flag operation. And here's the bit I like best. This is in this grey zone.

Very complicated false flag operation. This is how I want to be remembered, Charles. Oh, yeah. But even in hell, he will be the best. Glory to Russia. That's a great epitaph, isn't it? Oh, yeah. I want to be the guy at your funeral, Charles, who says,

Even in hell, he will push the line slightly too far when it comes to a joke and get in trouble. Even in hell, he'll be cancelled. He'll be cancelled, that's right. Our Geerstrom Road, we are part of the iconoclast network, and I'm just going to go and catch a flight. Just make sure it's an embryo. Those things never get shot down.