The events of the last few hours have shaken chancelleries and securities that are more than ever relative. Europe demonstrates once again, not very proudly, that it is the undisputed heir of imperial legates who imprint policies that look to cyberspace but which still tinge the brocades of palaces with purple which, despite men of steel, sickles and hammers, have preserved the tsarist double-headed eagle gene. This must be why the Yankees of a coarse and recent far west continue not to understand but to write screenplays made up of painted twists and turns as obvious artifices, but which for us Europeans remain as concrete and unimaginative possibilities.
Realism and power, that's what reinforces the foundation. The telephone communications from the second Ottoman Rome to the cold and distant third, the only concessions to modernity, bring to mind the palpable memories of 2016 and of a coup d'état destined to remain obscure probably forever.
But in Moscow, was there really a coup d'etat?
At the moment, net of fortune-telling predictions about the aftermath, it seems to be possible to say that the "nights of the long knives" are common to European culture that turns towards the East; retention of power and its redistribution characterized the Germany of Hitler and Röhm and now the Russia of Putin and Prigozhin, with one significant difference: Prighozin is not in a cell with a loaded gun in front of him.
Third actor, useful but of relatively low specific weight, the Belarusian Lukashenko, who should begin to study a little history and get educated about the fate that generally awaits the needles of market scales.
First considerations: an army that needs mercenaries and Islamic militias should raise more than one question; mercenaries to whom the autocracy of the Kremlin has allowed to elevate to command a chief of more or less renowned kitchens must inspire, as has always been the case, more than one fear; is it a re-edition of the "tu quoque", or the awareness of an increasingly dangerous real nudity?
It is clear that a crisis that lasted less than 24 hours will require the payment of a duty both by those who ignited it and above all by those who supported it in the field. We will have to see who will have paid more in the end. In short, the command line of a war that has never been so difficult and unpredictable (other than Georgia and Ossetia) will have to answer for its failures, pay a tribute, perhaps thinking of the next victory parade where it will not be easy to find regular units worthy of shouting their hurray to the flag, and where the hovering presence of mercenaries once useful for any climate will be cumbersome.
The Kremlin will negotiate, Belarus will become a military-political mediator, Prigozhin will play the role of savior of a despondent "national pride", everyone will resume their march towards the Ukrainian West, expected by the legitimate fears of the Baltic nations, of Transnistria, of Poland, who are well aware of the Russian double-headed eagle.
Resuming the Italian and Badogliano refrain for which "the war continues", we will not see immediate changes: the Europe of interests and commerce will notice them later, towed by the overseas ally, which certainly no one will now be able to remind of shamans and assaults on the Capitol. But certainly, in a dacha or under the dome of the Kremlin, for the autocrat on duty the fear of the uncontrollable power of the buildings, the long knives, the ex-cooks and the lights out is now stronger.
Photo: Kremlin
