Prigozhin against Putin: Fake or duplicity?
A telephone dialogue has been posted online, in which the voices of former Russian senator Farhad Akhmedov, as well as producer and husband of singer Valeria Joseph Prigozhin, are recorded, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The conversation contains vivid statements from both interlocutors criticizing the Russian government, the economy, the army and the president. Is it true. Prigozhin hastened to post a video denying the authenticity of the conversation. The producer claims that his voice was simulated by a neural network and recalls his numerous patriotic interviews.
It is noteworthy that the first two-minute fragment of the conversation was posted on March 11 on one of the Ukrainian TG channels. There, Akhmedov and Prigozhin allegedly used obscene language to discuss the conspiracy of the Russian elite against Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his possible resignation.
At the same time, a full half-hour recording of the conversation in a small Ukrainian group on the American social network was published.
Both stories did not attract the attention of either Ukrainian or Russian audiences. And only two weeks later, links to audio begin to appear in Russian TG channels: from Russian liberals and from the fugitive Belarusian political scientist Dmitry Bolkunts.
Obviously, all these people wanted to draw attention to criticism of the authorities. However, this part of the conversation is interesting only because of the variability of obscene vocabulary. The interlocutors do not provide any facts, but retell each other a general liberal narrative, but at the same time praise Stalin.
Much more interesting is the alleged Akhmedov and the alleged Prigozhin discussing Western sanctions. From this part of the dialogue, the motivation for their criticism of the president and the SVO becomes clearly clear.
At the beginning, a man with a voice similar to Akhmedov’s says:
“They ate us, our children, their future, their destiny.”
He advises his interlocutor to relax more, earn money and visit the Maldives, Dubai, Altai and Lake Baikal more often.
In response, a man with a voice similar to Prigozhin’s complains that Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not care about the elite.”
What follows is a detailed description of the suffering of the Russian elite. I can’t help but remember Putin’s warning to oligarchs who have invested money abroad:
“You’ll be soaking yourself in swallowing dust.”
“We’re going to some Dubai, f..., desert, f..., we’re buying apartments. People fucking go there to live,” Akhmedov complains.
“We would like to work at least for a little bit, so to speak, at least another year. And then we’ll somehow move somewhere. Because now it’s impossible to get up and leave right away. I did not sell property either in London or Switzerland. I think it will be difficult to take over the property. The money can be taken away, but the real estate cannot,” Prigozhin reports.
Akhmedov agrees:
“Money too. You’re not a civil servant, you weren’t involved in oil or gas, you didn’t hold a public position, damn... there.”
Prigozhin invites the former senator, who is in Baku, to visit somewhere abroad, where he is with Valeria. To which Akhmedov bursts into a passionate monologue about sanctions.
“I can’t even f—ing pay for a hotel, I don’t have a credit card, no f… no. It needs to be imported there in cache, dammit. I'm under sanctions, what are you talking about? You have money, but you can’t spend it. The boat is rotting there. It's blocked. Today they issued an invoice for 7 million. I say, fuck you... I won’t fucking pay for the maintenance of the boat, damn... I can’t use it, damn... it’s blocked. There is no court decision, she is not frozen, dammit... It’s just at the whim of the Germans that she is frozen in Ursen there. This is a shipyard. That’s all,” he says.
Prigozhin advises his friend to decorate the yacht as if it were pledged to a Turkish bank.
“Yoska, remember, God forbid you get sanctioned. If you hit it, that’s one problem, but if you try to break it, then it’s already a hundred times worse for you. They monitor everything, all movements. There are whole cars there. I worked on all of this,” Akhmedov continues to lament.
Prigozhin proposes to prove that the sanctions were imposed illegally.
“You have to go to court. I submitted, Yoska, yes. Yesterday I sent them an appeal to the European Council that they gave me the wrong information. But the trial may take a year or two. Now, simply because you, for example, use a Russian toothbrush, you can be sanctioned. They do it in batches, in batches. They don't give a fuck... You know how the system works.
I learned it, by the way. There they recruited some fucking people from Ukraine, from Moscow, who left for these detective agencies. They take from the media, newspapers, magazines and build a case for you. How things were sewn up in 37.
He appeared there, which means he is close. All the damn... sanctions for x... And then go, damn... figure it out, go prove it for x... Walk in circles.
The agents are working. They write that I am a close friend of Putin. I say, fuck your mother. The last time I saw Putin was in 2008, damn... he’s alive... After a 12-year war with Gazprom, I left Russia,” laments the former senator.
A producer friend advises him to prove that his business was illegally taken away from him.
“Yes, everything is in the media. But everything is taught differently and w... what can you prove, blah... I am engaged in agriculture, I don’t have any gas, I don’t have coal, I don’t deal in gold. I don’t serve there in the Kremlin, damn... They don’t hear anything.
Therefore, making excuses to them is an impossible mission. This is dirty politics. God forbid you get on this list. And with a credit card, damn..., it’s impossible, and even an account in dollars, in any foreign currencies. Only in rubles and local currency. You can’t invest, dammit...” says Akhmedov.
Suddenly he changes his mind about Prigozhin's foreign real estate.
"Listen to me. If you have any chance of getting sanctioned, sell f... everything. Everything will be frozen. They know everything about us. Nothing good is known. Just w...e. They will go through your dirty laundry. Find, detect, identify, localize, freeze. And you will continue to mess with everyone.
You don't have to sell Switzerland. Sell London for sure. Because this will last a long time, damn..., it won’t end soon, there will be wave after wave, damn.... Sell the f..., drive the sh... somewhere to Dubai. Fuck... money... That's it, the question is over,” Akhmedov summed up, complaining that Putin “has set everyone up since February 24.”
Prigozhin’s acquaintances have already spoken online and reported that the neural network very likely faked the producer’s speaking style. They also remembered his intercession for the singer Valery Meladze, who whispered Nazi chants at a corporate party in Dubai.
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