Sometimes the order in which events happen is scary, you see that events that seemed far away are getting closer.
Of course, a scene from a video from 2022 occurred very far away. The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, harangued some prisoners in a prison 800 kilometers from Moscow.
He was looking for volunteers to go to the war in Ukraine, in exchange for freedom, and explained to them that he wanted someone with a conviction “for murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, and if possible, not just one.”
And if he had beaten up a police officer, even better.
“We need your criminal talents,” he summarized.
This search for new values allowed, for example, a cannibal from Jarsoslavl, sentenced until 2030, to join the plan. “In today's Russia, a murderer can become a hero,” concludes a wonderful report from the German newspaper
Süddeutsche Zeitung
that tells this from a less epic point of view: that of the victims of those murderers who now see how they return to their neighborhood so cheerfully.
The model of the good citizen in Russia has been under serious review for some time.
The mother of a young woman raped and murdered, cited in the text, did not even want to think about what it would be like to meet the murderer, if she was already a pimp at the trial, now that he is one of those criminals who is free.
We all know how Prigozhin ended up confronting Putin.
He was the victim of one of his own warnings: “Deserters will be executed if they change their minds in the field.”
He died when the plane he was traveling in crashed in August 2023. There were nine more people on the flight, but it is not known if they are heroes or traitors, he has not emerged.
At the other extreme, there was a truly exemplary citizen, Alexei Navalni.
We all also knew how it would end, and he himself, since he decided to return to his country three years ago, although they had already tried to poison him.
He was arrested, sent to a prison in the polar circle and died last week, it is still not known how.
The Arctic is really far away, but closer is Alicante, and the Russian criminals also arrive there calmly, since they have just killed a deserter - another - in Villajoyosa.
We didn't know this would happen, but we could imagine it, if you read the news and think a little.
In fact, I don't know if we should continue thinking, for that matter.
For example, I can't stop thinking about what will happen in eight months, in the United States elections.
If it already seemed incredible to us the first time Trump won, in the second time I no longer know how to express it.
This other criminal – already convicted of sexual abuse and fraud – is a close friend of Putin, and in Ukraine they are worried, but maybe we should too.
In 2020 he already told Ursula von der Leyen: “If Europe were attacked, we would not come to help you.
NATO is dead,” according to European Commissioner Thierry Breton.
And this month, at a rally, he said that he would not defend European countries not paying their dues to NATO if Putin attacked them.
“In fact, I would encourage him” (laughs).
The model of the civilized American has been under clear revision for some time.
Trump arrives very vengeful and breaks everything.
This is supposed to be election campaign nonsense, but if the invasion of Ukraine had happened under Trump, Putin would have had breakfast in kyiv in a few days with his feet on the table.
In June, there are elections in the EU, and a rise of the anti-European extreme right, a big fan of Trump and Putin, is expected.
And these are a bit of the geopolitical perspectives for next winter, so let's better focus on the amnesty, Don Benito's priest or whatever, things at home.
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