Alexander Mercouris Really Doesn't Understand What Prigozhin and Other Russian Patriots Are Saying

Please read this, Mr. Mercouris

Hello, esteemed colleagues at the Duran. It has come to my attention that you guys have heard and commented on the recent Prigozhin tell-all bombshell interview with WarGonzo. I had not seen anyone in the English-speaking media provide a translation of what Prigozhin said in his interview, so I took it upon myself to watch it from start to finish and jot down literally all the relevant points that he brought up. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out here:

So, the first question that I have for you is quite simple: did you or did you not watch the full interview yourselves? Have you read my write-up? Maybe you haven’t, I suppose. We all have busy schedules (well, I don’t, but you probably do) and so maybe you didn’t have time to examine it.

This would certainly explain why you came out with this video analysis that focused on Prigozhin’s interview:

And yet, you covered none of the main points that Prigozhin raised.

I think this is very curious on your part, and we should start a conversation about this. Our positions are so radically different, and it is really strange that this is the case, don’t you think?

Worth having a nice, respectful dialogue about it, in my opinion.

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Now, I am sure my audience of Russia-watching pros knows, Mercouris is a big name out there in the “alternative” media and puts out a lot of content, a lot of it in the form of these YouTube talks.

If you do not have the time to watch the full hour long video, let me just summarize what Mercouris says, or rather, what he does NOT say. In short, he simply talks about the war equipment and shell shortage that Prigozhin brings up, but completely misses the point of what Prigozhin was saying and misrepresents the position. Here is what Mercouis said:

• General Mizintsev was fired because he gave too much ammo to Prigozhin

• But, also, it could be the complete opposite and actually the two hated each other

• Prigozhin might be getting too big for his britches and becoming a loose cannon

And that’s about it. That is his entire summary of the Prigozhin interview.

But here are the relevant points that Prigozhin brought up that I reported on:

• The SMO proved that the Russian army is totally demoralized, unorganized, untrained, undisciplined and unprepared

• The MoD routinely lies about realities on the battlefield even about Wagner’s operations

• The military command gives bizarre orders to its men

• There is no real leadership in the army

• Russia has the resources to win, but the leadership keeps the resources away from the people who need it on purpose

• Lower level officers are pressured to lie to higher-ups because everyone will get in trouble if they don’t

• Mentally-ill people in the command believed in saving funds and supplies for a later attack, but this decision was eventually reversed

• Prigozhin says he knows where the supplies are being kept, there are enough supplies to fight another half-year

• MoD Deputy in charge of supplies Aleksei Krivoruchka has to be fired

• On paper, the Russian Army has soldiers on Wagner’s flanks, but they are not there in reality

• Prigozhin believes this is a political sabotage campaign directed at Wagner

• Wagner has been cut-off from supplies. Their representatives are sitting 4 days in line to get an appointment from the bureaucracy

• The KGB stands for Club of Senile Grandpas (in Russian this acronym works) or the Club of Emotional Midgets

• The KGB hates Russia. All their mistresses live good lives in the West so what do they care about the war. They demand that the officers lie to them and only tolerate nice-sounding lies.

• The Russian army has been transformed from the world’s second-best army into one of the worst - Russia cannot even deal with Ukraine

• Russia’s defenses won’t hold if supplies are not released to the soldiers

• Prigozhin reaffirms that political intrigue is what prevents the release of these supplies

• Prigozhin wants to launch a federal investigation into the corrupt officials responsible for this and the blood that they have on their hands

• Prigozhin keeps a list of the thousands of Russian deaths caused by the MoD

• Poor medicine leads to more deaths

• Bakhmut could have been taken if Shoigu had given them their supplies

• Wagner might have to retreat unless they don’t get supplies

• Time to tell the truth and stop lying to the Russian people

• Wagner’s intelligence says that they have spies, satellites, the whole works and according to their information, the Ukrainian threat is very real and can reach the Russia-proper border with the forces that they have

• Wagner takes the opinions and analyses of their soldiers seriously, the Russian Military, in contrast, treats its soldiers like trash

• Interviewer: “are you a demoralization agent?”

• Prigozhin: the Russian people need to know because they will have to pay in blood for this. The bureaucrats will simply flee to the West. They are the ones afraid of the truth

• Prigozhin asks why Russia continues to sell oil to the West through India? Says this is treachery. The elites in Russia are in secret negotiations with the Western elite. [A word-for-word Strelkov talking point].

Now, compare and contrast and ask yourselves: did you hear any of these points brought up in Mercouris’ analysis of the interview? Would you say that Mercouris provided an accurate or thorough overview of the main topic of his talk if he did not include any of the main points that Prigozhin brought up? Because it seems to me that Mercouris appeared to be giving an overview of this bombshell interview and yet did not even address any of the absolutely INCREDIBLE allegations that Prigozhin lobbed at the MoD, the FSB and the oligarchy.

There is something strange going on here, folks. A conspiracy of silence, perhaps.

I have to ask: is this deliberate? Does Mercouris not speak Russian and so missed all the important bits about treachery, sabotage, imminent catastrophe? Or did he think that this wasn’t relevant or interesting enough to report on?

Another question that I have for these people is why they do not simply work for Russian state media? I mean, their talking points are identical to Russian state media. How anyone can call them an alternative media project then can only be explained by a complete misunderstanding of terms. Yes, Russian state media is an alternative to Western state media, but is it “alternative” in the sense that it presents a non-state-affiliated point of view?

Because, in America, for example, you have alternative media that actually provides an alternative position on the lies being fed to the public by the corporate and state media of the US government. They do not simply repeat, say, Iranian propaganda or North Korean propaganda, but, on their better days, provide an alternative perspective held by many disaffected and voiceless people living within the United States. This is what many people understand the term “alternative media” to mean.

But in terms of alternative media that provides a voice for many disaffected and voicelss people living in Russia, I am the only blogger out there (apart from my good friend Slavsquat) who fulfills this function in English-speaking media. In contrast, the others simply repeat what Russian state media says and this is NOT representative of the opinions of a large swath of patriotic Russian people. Therefore, these other analysts cannot be reasonable referred to as “alternative” media in the sense that we refer to alternative media within the United States or within Russia.

And there can be no debating this point because it is simply self-evident.

Now, Mercouris, from what I understand, is a well-to-do man from a well-connected family in Greece, who lived in the US and the UK and was a lawyer by trade, but around 2012/13/14, he started appearing on RT a lot. At some point though, he and another Greek man, Alex Christoforou, also from a prominent and well-connected Greek family, started the Duran. Christoforou lived and studied in the US and spent most of life in the West as well. Mercouris lives in London and Christoforou probably in Greece/Cyprus.

The relevant point here is that neither of them live in Russia or speak Russian. [EDIT: Christoforou apparently does.]

In terms of their views, I suppose I would characterize them as center-right, but it is hard to use these terms to categorize them because they do not make public their views on many of the key hot topics. I do not know where they stand on, say, non-European immigration into Europe, America or Russia. They also do not talk about the You-Know-Whoish agenda. Are they secretly in the know, but chose not to reveal their power level? Is it a John 20:19 type situation? Who knows. Both men are probably cultural Orthodox Christians though.

None of this should be read as an attack on them, mind you because I am just providing the background facts as best I understand them. I’m also not attacking the Duran because I think they are evil or something and I don’t even think we’re on opposite “teams” in this info war. Clearly, we share the same disdain for the current Western-dominated empire of lies and want an alternative system to take its place. My complaint with them is that they are lying and misrepresenting the situation within Russia, the current situation with the war in Ukraine, and seem to be actively ignoring actual, alternative perspectives coming from the Russian patriot community.

But they are not the only ones and not even the most egregious example of this kind of behavior. Take Scott Ritter’s latest hot-take compilation on the war as another example:

In this interview he alleges the following:

• No Ukrainian attack is possible

• They need 6x as many men and resources as Russia to attack

• Russians are well-trained and professional unlike Ukrainian troops

• Ukraine has lost 80% of its original 260k well-trained and well-equipped army

• Macgregor says that there is now a complete and total slaughter of the new Ukrainian army going on which is a humanitarian catastrophe

• Russia takes out these recruits with hundreds of thousands of precision bombs before they can even make it to the front

• The NATO equipment gets destroyed before it even makes it to the front line

• Russians have pioneered a tactic of destroying entire high-rise buildings full of Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut with bombs

• It isn’t even a war at this point but a total one-sided slaughter

• 14:1 kill advantage or higher, Russia’s plan is to kill all the Ukrainian men (this is the definition of demilitarization, this has always been Putin’s plan since day 1 and the Russians are the good guys despite, apparently, launching a genocide) [Note: they aren’t doing this. lol.]

• China supports Russia, forcing Ukraine to surrender to Russia, won’t even pick up the phone when Joe Biden calls

• US is about to abandon Ukraine

• Ukrainian militias will probably topple Zelensky soon like the Whites toppled the Tsar

• Ukraine will run out of men by summer, early fall

• Russia bombs the Ukrainians with their planes because Ukraine has run out of AD

• The Russians aren’t in the business of killing Ukrainians [see above point about Putin’s plan to genocide the Ukrainian male population. lol]

• NATO troops are fighting in Ukraine

At least Mercouris mentioned the existence of the Prigozhin interview. The others do not even acknowledge that there are people within Russia ringing the alarm.

But, in the end, this is simply a difference without a distinction.

You would have no idea that Prigozhin and others within Russia were warning about treachery in the MoD, an imminent and serious Ukrainian attack and serious problems in the Russian military if you rely on any of these “alternative” media for your source of information. They will not touch any alternative, patriotic perspectives coming out from Russia. If, in Mercouris’ case, who I believe is a more-or-less honest man, you have a situation where he may simply be mis or under-informed on the topic of the Slavic Civil War and the Kremlin’s bizarre policies, then the only way to remedy the situation is to start engaging with alternative media. Mercouris and the Duran people can avail themselves of the many alternative perspectives coming out of Russia, many from actual frontline vets and veteran analysts. If the language-barrier is a problem, or there is simply confusion from trying to figure out who is who within Russia because of a lack of information, I would be more than willing to help bring my esteemed colleagues from the Duran up to speed.

**

Now, I have started to break through the bubble of silence with the perspective that I provide on this blog. It has been very slow going (one year and counting) and I have now started to be posted or mentioned on many of the big channels covering this war and with increasing frequency. Perhaps there is still a chance that someone like Mercouris still hasn’t seen the analysis and translation work of patriotic perspectives within Russia that I provide. I hope to definitively remedy this situation with this article.

The next logical step is to sit down and have a talk and try to figure out why we have such radically different perspectives on the war. Barring that, I’d settle for Mercouris and others at least acknowledging that alternative media exists and is providing an alternative, patriotic Russian perspective on what is going on.

I want the conspiracy of silence to be broken.

They do not have to agree or unquestioningly accept my perspective on the war, but they need to at least stop pretending that people like Strelkov and others who I translate and bring to Westerners’ attention do not exist. Furthermore, they cannot keep misportraying the opinions of people like Prigozhin either through silence or selective omission of what he said when reporting on him.

Otherwise, I will be forced to conclude that there is something far more malicious at work behind the scenes, driving these Russia-aligned media peoples’ agenda and their steadfast opposition to alternative patriotic Russian media.

I don’t see why we can’t have a conversation about this, at the very least.

We can agree to disagree, but it is the silence that is simply unethical and intolerable.

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Please pass this article on to the Duran if you can, or drop some links in the comments sections of their articles, YouTube, social media. This conversation is long overdue.