I am quite sure he's dead, and they're responsible. There would be no value in not telling the truth here. If he were to pop up after such an announcement, it would destroy what little credibility they have.
as someone who has personally known psychopathic narcissists, they lie without rational reason. the point is to lie. that's the end goal. the individual lie doesn't necessarily have an individual strategic gain. as far as i can tell, there are two purposes for constantly lying.
one, they get an internal sense of power. it's like a pleasurable reward for them similar to the feeling a hungry person gets when they eat food. their brains are wired that way. two, it serves to keep others constantly confused and dependent on the narcissist for reality because if everything is disordered, then others can't make sense of reality, so the narcissist has control over the narrative. think of Trump. lawyers have repeatedly argued successfully in court that he cannot testify because he cannot stop lying.
i'm not saying Putin is not lying in this case. what i'm arguing is that he doesn't need a clear individual gain from a lie to lie. it could be part of a greater deranged strategy. we just can't be sure.
Maybe that was the deal. Prigozhin fakes his death and lives out the rest of his years incognito while Putin ends up looking like he’s assassinated the leader of the coup.
Please explain the universe in which there is utility for Putin to have an incognito Prigozhin running around on a beach somewhere sufficient to fake a plane crash.
there's no way that putin and wagner cooperated on faking priggo's death. what for? they competed for african businesses/colonies and putin had to show that he's in charge since coup
"Molecular-genetic testing has been completed," it said in a statement.
"According to its results, the identities of all 10 deceased have been established, and they correspond to the list published in the flight manifest."
Not sure what’s more impressive; fact that they were able to turn the test results back so quickly, or fact that all 10 deceased, including the flight crew, have their DNA in some sort of database. Isn’t it supposed to take weeks to do the analysis?
Humans can be very naive. It could be as simple as Putin got in contact and said "I know you never said anything bad against me. You know. We've been through a lot. Why don't you come back to Moscow in secret, and we can work out a better deal where we can still play Grand Theft Auto and no one has to know its you"
Alternatively, Putin threatened someone he cared about. "Get back here or Mr snuggles gets it"
By Russia faking the DNA test results to save face. They wanted him dead, that plane crash wasn't an accident, and to say anything but "yeah he's dead" or otherwise admit that Russia got outsmarted would be an embarrassment to Russia.
In Russia? If they wanted they could have the desired results from a DNA test even without taking the specimen. Instant results, satisfaction guaranteed™