Published: Less than 40 min ago
The audio recording has hit the Russian elite like a bomb.
Two people close to Putin are singled out in the conversation in which the president is seen completely.
At the same time, a Russian expert states that the oligarchs may “silence” the Russian leader in order to keep the secrets.
The conversation was posted on Youtube a few weeks ago without attracting much attention.
This weekend, the matter was taken up by a Ukrainian TV channel. Then it really hit.
According to reports, the clip is an intercepted conversation between gas billionaire Farhad Akhmedov and music producer Iosif Prigozhin.
“Putin is Satan”
In the conversation, the duo complain about the war and Putin. The president is described in very condescending terms.
– Putin doesn’t give a damn about anything. And completely shits on the people. He is for the hell of it, says one of the people in the intercepted conversation.
– How are we going to clean this up then? It will be fascism, a military dictatorship. It will show. That’s how this will end, says one of the voices.
The duo also put forward a theory that Putin’s closest associates are in conflict with the military and that guidelines have been drawn up for a plan to bring down Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
– They blame everything on Shojgu. They call him a cockhead – behind his back of course – and now they have been given the task of crushing him, says the voice said to be Prigozhin.
Created sensation
The details of the conversation have “created a sensation” within the Russian elite, The Moscow Times reports.
Akhmedov is a multi-billionaire who made his fortune in the Siberian gas industry. He worked for several years in Russian politics as a senator and lives under sanctions after the war.
Music producer Prigozhin and his wife, singer Valeria, are close to Putin and participated in the 2018 election campaign, writes The Moscow Times.
Prigozhin first came out on Telegram and dismissed the audio recording as a fake.
However, later, in an interview with the Russian site Fontanka, he said that parts of the conversation were authentic but that other parts were “totally fabricated”.
Verified by FSB
The Russian independent site Important Stories stated on Monday that it has sources within the Russian intelligence service FSB who testify that the recording is genuine, writes The Moscow Times.
If the information is correct, it could signal trouble for Putin. A large part of his power base rests on the fact that the elite fully supported his rule and war in Ukraine.
But that can change in step with the setbacks in the war and the sanctions that hit many powerful people in Russia.
Vlad Mykhnenko, expert on Russia and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, tells Newsweek that the International Criminal Court ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin may have made the president’s position at home more fragile.
“May want to silence Putin”
There are many secrets that oligarchs and others in management do not want to reach the ICC.
– Considering Putin’s large network of contacts through Europe and what he could potentially tell the judges about corruption and shady dealings between Moscow and the major capitals of the Western world, there is plenty of incentive to silence him before The Hague, says Mykhnenko to Newsweek.
According to Mykhnenko’s theory, a change of power in Russia could mean that a new leadership chooses to extradite Putin to the court, even though Moscow does not recognize its legitimacy.
In such a situation, people close to the current leadership with a lot to lose may work to “silence” him.