We all have our own favorite (or not-so-good) memories of our school years, do we not? For example, one of my favorite memories is of the drama club, which I was a part of. Those were fun times.

But, I am certain — because EVERYBODY has them — you must have some negative memories of those times as well. Who doesn’t? One negative memory I have is of the laughter. Do you remember the laughter?

It was always derisive. It wasn’t unlike Maga. It came covered in noxious privilege — the privilege of popularity. And that laughter would be directed by whatever poor soul crossed the path of the “untouchables” – the loved, the invincible, the people everybody fawned over.

Many years ago, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was one of these untouchables. As you may have heard, a documentary has been made and it debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, covering the Kavanaugh accusations. Kavnaugh has denied all of them.

It was created by Doug Liman of Bourne identity fame. And it’s searing. I have not yet seen it though I intend to. But reading about what was in this documentary — reading the words of Kavanaugh’s alleged victims — made me sick and brought back to mind the merry laughter of these strange groups we call the untouchables.

The untouchables are not just the privileged –they’re the ones who have no problem sneering at and/or harassing those less fortunate than them.

The investigation that was done by the FBI was in my humble opinion, a complete sham. Of course, with Trump then president — what else could it have been? This small and exclusive group of untouchables — live in their own privater bubble, a bubble that never floats open, that never allows entry from anything than their own arrogance.

I can easily envision the laughter of, Kavanaugh. It is so easy to remember those parties, those parties where the untouchables all wore that same look of loving smugness, the looks that said: “I can do anything I want.”

I thank Mr. Liman for making this documentary. I will be viewing it, and I encourage everyone reading to view it — and to remember. Remember the ones who were and are NOT untouchable, who did not or do not belong to that strange and secretive club of unchained arrogance, who were and are not its friends but its victims. It is the least we can do.

The post Untouchables appeared first on Palmer Report.

(NewsNation) — Jury selection began Monday for the trial of former South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh who is charged in the 2021 deaths of his wife and son — allegations that potential jurors were well acquainted with.

Prosecutors have said Alex Murdaugh shot and killed his wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, to buy sympathy and time amid a series of separate alleged financial crimes.

On Monday, Alex Murdaugh’s legal team said they look forward to the “opportunity to clear his name” so “the attorney general can begin looking for the actual killer.”

Alex Murdaugh arrived Monday at the Colleton County, South Carolina courthouse, the sleeves of his suit jacket covering the handcuffs around his wrists.

A connected Lowcountry attorney, 54-year-old Alex Murdaugh is well known in the area, and details of the case didn’t escape the pool of potential jurors in the courtroom Monday.

When the judge asked the group to identify themselves if they had heard of the case, nearly everyone stood. The judge then asked who had formed an opinion about the case wouldn’t be swayed by the trial. Several jurors were excused as a result.

Jurors who are ultimately chosen will be expected to remain impartial.

Neither the prosecution nor the defense have filed motions requesting a venue change.

Alex Murdaugh called 911 on June 7, 2021, to report that his wife and son had been shot. Prosecutors say it took him more than an hour to call 911. About a year later, Alex Murdaugh was indicted on charges accusing him in the killings.

The man’s legal team filed a request Monday seeking to block testimony about alleged blood stains on the white T-Shirt Alex Murdaugh was wearing the night of the shootings.

Details about the case have been protected under gag orders that both sides requested.

(NewsNation) — Border agents are stopping individuals on the federal terror watchlist at a significantly higher rate than in previous years, and experts fear the ongoing immigration crisis could create a national security problem.

Agents along the southern border have stopped individuals on the government’s terror watchlist 38 times since October, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

At the current pace, encounters involving individuals on the watchlist will surpass 150 by the end of this fiscal year. That’s well above the 98 stops made last year, and marks a notable increase since President Joe Biden took office.

From 2017 to 2020, border patrol agents recorded just 11 total encounters with individuals on the watchlist at ports of entry along the southern border.

“This is a significant threat to the United States,” said former U.S. Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott. “We’re ignoring the fact that there are real national security threats mixed in with this mass migration.”

The recent uptick in watchlist apprehensions coincides with a record-breaking number of migrants attempting to cross into the United States through Mexico.

In December, CBP agents encountered more than 250,000 migrants along the southern border — an all-time high for a single month. In December 2020, CBP encountered just over 40,000 migrants along the southern border.

The current data only takes into account migrants who have been caught, but authorities estimate tens of thousands of others have gotten away.

Despite the recent increase, encounters of individuals on the terror watchlist remain extremely rare. The 38 stops since October account for a tiny fraction (0.0060%) of all U.S. Border Patrol encounters.

Some of those stops may include multiple encounters with the same individual, CBP notes.

The terror watch list has an estimated 2 million names of people who represent a potential threat to the United States.

Meanwhile, the number of non-citizen gang members apprehended by border patrol increased to 751 last year — the highest total since CBP recorded nearly 1,000 gang-related stops in 2019.

So far in 2023, agents have apprehended 146 gang members, about a third of whom were affiliated with the international street gang MS-13.

Local officials believe more deterrence is the first step to slowing down the flow of illegal migrants.

“The lack of willigness of this administration to surge at the border, shut it down and deny illegal entry is something that needs to be addressed,” said Jonathan Lines, supervisor for District 2 in Yuma County, Arizona.

Recidivism rates among people attempting to cross the border has also risen in recent years.

More and more, agents stop migrants who’ve already been apprehended once before. In 2021, 27% of stops included someone who had already been encountered by CBP. In 2019 that rate was 7%.

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said personnel changes were being carried out at senior and lower levels, a move that follows the most high-profile graft allegations since Russia’s invasion nearly a year ago.

Ukraine has a long history of corruption and shaky governance.

On Sunday, anti-corruption police said they had detained the deputy infrastructure minister on suspicion of receiving a $400,000 kickback over the import of generators last September, an allegation the minister denies.

Separately, a newspaper investigation accused the Defence Ministry of overpaying suppliers for soldiers’ food. The supplier has said it made a technical mistake and no money had changed hands.

“There are already personnel decisions – some today, some tomorrow – regarding officials at various levels in ministries and other central government structures, as well as in the regions and in law enforcement,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Monday.

His plans include toughening oversight on travelling abroad for official assignments. Several Ukrainian media outlets have reported that cabinet ministers and senior officials could be sacked imminently.

The corruption scandal could dampen Western enthusiasm for his government just as European countries bicker over sending German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

One of the most widely used Western tanks, Ukraine says it needs them to break through Russian lines and recapture territory this year.

Ukraine and Russia are both believed to be planning spring offensives to break the deadlock in what has become a war of attrition in eastern and southern Ukraine as the first anniversary of the Russian invasion nears.

Germany, which must approve re-exports of the Leopard, has held back, wary of moves that could cause Moscow to escalate. But under strong pressure from some of its partners, Berlin has said it is willing to act quickly if there is a consensus among allies.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, whose country borders Ukraine, said on Monday that Warsaw would seek permission to send the tanks to Kyiv and was trying to get others on board.

Germany is not blocking the re-export of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, the European Union’s top diplomat said on Monday.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price at a press briefing on Monday dodged repeated questions about Germany’s wariness over the supply of tanks and whether the United States would support other countries supplying Leopards without Germany’s approval.

“We may be hearing more from our German allies in the coming hours, in the coming days,” he told reporters.

The Kremlin said the splits in Europe over whether to provide tanks to Kyiv showed there was increasing “nervousness” within the NATO military alliance.

‘ACTING AGAINST THE WEST’

Following Ukrainian advances in the second half of 2022, front lines have been largely frozen in place for two months, despite heavy losses on both sides.

On Monday, the new general in charge of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine used his first public comments to warn that modern Russia had never seen such “intensity of military hostilities”, forcing it to carry out offensive operations to stabilise the situation.

“Our country and its armed forces are today acting against the entire collective West,” Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov told the news website Argumenty i Fakty in remarks published late on Monday.

Military reforms, announced mid-January, could be adjusted to respond to threats to Russia’s security, which include Sweden and Finland’s aspirations to join NATO and “the use of Ukraine as a tool for waging a hybrid war against our country,” he said.

Russian forces are shelling and attacking Ukrainian positions on the front lines around the clock, Zelenskiy said in his address.

Ukraine says Western tanks would give its ground troops the mobility, protection and firepower to break through Russian defensive lines and resume their advance.

American lawmakers have pressed their government to export M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, saying even a symbolic number would help push European allies to do the same.

Britain has said it will supply 14 Challenger 2 tanks. French President Emmanuel Macron said he did not rule out the possibility of sending Leclerc tanks.

Moscow sought to apply its own pressure.

“All countries which take part, directly or indirectly, in pumping weapons into Ukraine and in raising its technological level bear responsibility” for continuing the conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Since its invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, which it has cast as defending itself from an aggressive West, Russia has taken control of parts of Ukraine it says it will never return.

Ukraine has said that restoring its territorial integrity is not open for negotiation.

U.S. farm and trade officials raised “grave concerns” over Mexico’s agricultural biotechnology policies in meetings with their Mexican counterparts on Monday, as lingering disagreements threaten decades of booming corn trade between the neighbors.

Washington’s concerns center on the Mexican president’s push to ban so-called biotech corn, or varieties developed with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), from entering Mexico if it is destined for human consumption. The United States accounts for most of Mexican corn imports.

“We made it clear today that if this issue is not resolved, we will consider all options, including taking formal steps to enforce our rights under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA),” the office of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai said in a statement on Monday.

“Mexico’s proposed approach, which is not grounded in science, still threatens to disrupt billions of dollars in bilateral agricultural trade, cause serious economic harm to U.S. farmers and Mexican livestock producers, and stifle important innovations needed to help producers respond to pressing climate and food security challenges,” it added.

U.S. officials traveled to Mexico to discuss Mexico’s approach to agricultural biotech products.

Mexico’s agriculture ministry declined to comment, while the country’s economy ministry, which handles trade, did not immediately provide comment.

The countries have been at loggerheads over a decree issued by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2020 that sought to phase out imports of genetically modified corn and the herbicide glyphosate by 2024.

Mexico decided to postpone its ban of GMO corn purchases from the United States until 2025, a decision deemed satisfactory by the U.S. government, Mexican Agriculture Minister Victor Villalobos said last month.

Mexico is one of the biggest buyers of U.S. corn with American farmers sending about 17 million tonnes of mostly GMO yellow corn to Mexico annually, the majority of which is used for animal feed. Mexican officials have said they will keep importing GM corn for animal feed.

U.S. officials are “making it crystal clear” that Mexico must abide by its USMCA commitments and this “is a significant development and good news for corn growers,” said Tom Haag, president of the National Corn Growers Association.

Biotech industry group BIO said it appreciated U.S. efforts to get Mexico to “maintain a science-based risk regulatory system,” according to statement from Beth Ellikidis, vice president for agriculture and environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the first drop in the known number of human-trafficking victims in 20 years as trafficking opportunities and policing were reduced, but the Ukraine war has probably now caused a new surge, a U.N. report said on Tuesday.

The number of detected trafficking victims fell 11% in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available in most countries, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in its seventh Global Report on Trafficking in Persons.

“In 2020, for the first time, the number of victims detected globally decreased,” the UNODC said in a summary of the report, adding that the biggest drops were reported in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in south and central America but also sub-Saharan Africa, east Asia and the Pacific region.

“This change in trends could be the result of three different factors affecting especially low- and medium- income countries during the pandemic: lower institutional capacity to detect victims, fewer opportunities for traffickers to operate due to COVID-19 preventive restrictions, and some trafficking forms moving to more hidden and less likely to be detected locations,” it said.

Initial data for 2021 from just 20 countries suggests a further fall in 2021 in parts of southeast Asia, central America and the Caribbean, it said.

Trafficking for sexual exploitation saw the sharpest drop of 24%. For the first time since the UNODC started collecting data, detected trafficking in this category as a percentage of the whole was roughly the same level as that of trafficking for forced labour, at around 39% each, the report said.

“Sexual exploitation may have reduced due to the (pandemic-related) closure of public spaces and it may have also been pushed into less visible and less safe locations, making this form of trafficking more concealed and harder to be detected,” the UNODC said.

Conflicts tend to increase trafficking and the war in Ukraine is unlikely to be an exception, it added.

“The refugee emergency in Ukraine is elevating risks of trafficking for the Ukrainian displaced population. The 2014 conflict in Ukraine quadrupled the number of Ukrainian victims detected in Western Europe in 2016,” it said, referring to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

It expects an even larger number of trafficking victims following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, it added.

Brazil’s federal police said on Monday they had a “strong conviction” a gang leader known as “Colombia” ordered the brutal murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, killed in the Amazon rainforest last June.

The gang leader, Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, is already in police detention after being charged along with three other people for double homicide and concealment of corpses.

Villar allegedly planned the killings because Pereira, a former head of isolated and recently contacted tribes at federal indigenous affairs agency Funai, was carrying out inspections of illegal fishing operations, causing major losses to Villar’s criminal group, the police said in a statement.

According to police, Villar was the leader and key financier of an armed criminal group engaged in illegal fishing in the Amazon. Villar, a Colombian national, has also been charged for use of a false document after allegedly using a fake birth certificate to work in Brazil, as well as using a fake Peruvian identity.

Pereira and Phillips vanished last year in a trip to the remote Javari Valley, on the border between Peru and Colombia. Days later, a fisherman who had confronted indigenous patrols in the area confessed to killing them.

Phillips, a freelance reporter who had written for outlets including The Guardian and Washington Post, was on a trip with Pereira doing research for a book.

A 72-year-old man fatally shot 11 people celebrating the Lunar New Year at a ballroom near Los Angeles on Saturday night, according to the county sheriff.

Here is what is known so far about the weapons involved and the regulations that govern them:

The shooter, identified as Huu Can Tran, used a semi-automatic pistol with an “extended large-capacity magazine” attached to it to attack people in the Star Dance Ballroom Studio in Monterey Park, California, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna. This is a type of handgun that fires one bullet with each pull of the trigger and automatically loads the next cartridge from the magazine.

Luna said the gun was a semi-automatic 9 mm MAC-10, which is a civilian type of pistol based on a fully automatic military-use submachine gun. He did not disclose the capacity of the magazine attached, although under California law a “large-capacity magazine” is defined as one that holds more than 10 rounds.

The shooter used a second gun to kill himself after fleeing the ballroom. Luna said that one was a Norinco 7.62 x 25mm handgun.

Investigators also found a .308-caliber rifle at the shooter’s home, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Officials said they were still investigating how and when Tran obtained the weapons. Luna said the Norinco handgun was registered to the shooter.

California has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the United States, the country with the highest rate of private gun ownership in the world.

The state bans many kinds of guns that are legal in other states, and obtaining a required California gun license is relatively difficult. However, a California resident intent on breaking the law can illegally obtain banned weapons from parts of the country where guns are sold more freely.

Semi-automatic pistols are the most widely carried guns in the country, and some kinds are legal in California. But the state bans what it defines as “assault weapons,” which is determined by the gun’s features and includes semiautomatic MAC-10 guns. A Californian can continue to legally possess an assault weapon that was legally owned and registered before the 1990s or early 2000s, depending on the type.

The assault weapons ban was ruled unconstitutional and thrown out by a federal judge in 2021, but remains in effect while legal appeals are heard.

California also bans the buying and selling of large-capacity magazines, although a Californian can legally continue to possess any large-capacity magazine he or she obtained before Jan. 1, 2000.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Americans have a fundamental right to have weapons, including many kinds of guns, at home and, in a landmark ruling last year, in public for self-defense under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms.”

Maja Hitij/Getty Images (right), Ian MacNicol/Getty Images (left)

• Musk defended his “funding secured” tweet in a securities fraud trial brought by Tesla shareholders.
• He testified that he sent the tweet after verbal assurances from Saudi investor Yasir Al-Rumayyan. 
• Musk placed the blame on Al-Rumayyan, who he accused of “backpedaling” on their plans. 

Elon Musk said he’d tweeted about planning to take Tesla private in part after assurances by a major Saudi Arabian investor, whom he accused of later “backpedaling” and “ass-covering” to slink out of an alleged agreement.

In an ongoing civil trial in San Francisco federal court, Musk continued to defend his 2018 tweet about having the “funding secured,” for a Tesla transaction, saying that Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Private Investment Fund, had “verbally” expressed support for the plan. 

Musk said that in a meeting in July 2018, Al-Rumayyan told him, then-Tesla chief financial officer Deepak Ahuja, and Musk’s then chief-of-staff Sam Teller that the Saudi investors “were committed” to a plan they were discussing to take the carmaker private. 

He said that Al-Rumayyan told them that “they would do whatever it took to get it done,” and that he’d been “unequivocal” about supporting the deal. Then in a conversation after Musk’s tweet, Al-Rumayyan softened his stance to say that the Saudi PIF were interested in looking into possible investment opportunities with Tesla, Musk said. 

“At this point, Yasir is obviously backpedaling from what he told me, and Deepak and Sam, that they were committed to the transaction,” Musk said in his testimony on Monday in the ongoing civil trial, in which Musk is facing investors’ claims that he misled them about wanting to take Tesla private and having secured the funding to do so.

“This is ass-covering, for lack of a better word,” he added, suggesting that Al-Rumayyan may have been concerned about potential legal exposure. 

Al-Rumayyan, Musk, and attorneys for Musk and Tesla shareholders did not respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication. Spokespeople for PIF and Tesla also did not respond to a request for comment. The request was made outside of regular working hours in Saudi Arabia.

In text messages between Musk and the investor that were revealed last year as a part of the pretrial discovery process, the Tesla CEO accused Al-Rumayyan of throwing him “under the bus.” At the time, the texts show Al-Rumayyan said PIF couldn’t commit to a project “that we don’t have sufficient information on.”

In 2020, the sovereign wealth fund sold 99.5% of its Tesla holdings after hedging its position on the electric-car in 2019 shortly after Musk agreed to pay a $20 million fine with the Securities and Exchange Commission over his tweet.

Musk is set to take the stand for a third day on Tuesday. The billionaire claims he planned to take Tesla private at the time of tweeting “funding secured” in August 2018. Tesla shareholders that bought the electric-car maker’s stock in the days following the tweet are suing him, seeking billions of dollars in damages.

Catch up with more coverage from the trial:

Elon Musk just took the stand in a trial over his ‘funding secured’ tweet — catch up with 8 stand-out quotes from his testimony

Elon Musk testifies that he thinks the number 420 has ‘karma,’ but he’s not sure if it’s ‘good or bad’

Elon Musk made sure the jury knew that short-sellers weren’t ‘a seller of small stature’ during the Tesla shareholder trial

RIA Novosti

• A rivalry between Russia’s military and Wagner Group mercenaries has come to the fore in Ukraine.
• Recent broadsides by Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, may be attempts to justify Wagner’s struggles.
• A leadership change also suggests the Kremlin is seeking to bolster military leaders in that rivalry.

The war in Ukraine continues to go poorly for the Russians, and that is creating rifts among their leadership.

Indeed, with curses and excuses, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group and President Vladimir Putin’s favorite mercenary leader, may be preparing to justify a failure in one of the fiercest battles of the war: Bakhmut.

Two recent videos illustrate what may be pre-emptive efforts to rationalize Wagner’s failure. They may also be two of the most public displays of the intense rivalry that has developed between Wagner and Russia’s regular military.

Rivalry exposed

A mural in Belgrade that praises the Wagner group and its mercenaries fighting in Ukraine.

Pierre Crom/Getty Images

In an obscenity-laced tirade published in the closing days of 2022, Wagner Group mercenaries called Russia’s senior military officer, Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, a “fucking motherfucker” because of what they say is a lack of ammunition supplies and logistical support from Moscow to the group’s fighters.

Prigozhin not only backed his mercenaries up but continued the direct assault against Russia’s top officers. In an audio message posted on the official Telegram channel of his firm, Concord Management, Prigozhin said, “when you’re sitting in a warm office, it’s hard to hear the problems on the frontline, but when you’re dragging the dead bodies of your friends every day, and seeing them for the last time, then supplies are very much needed.”

In a second video, published in early January, Prigozhin and purported Wagner mercenaries tried to justify their lack of progress in Bakhmut, blaming a lack of materiel support from the Russian military for their struggles to overcome intricate Ukrainian defenses.

Satellite imagery of damage around Bakhmut and Soledar.

Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington DC-based think tank, assessed that with the video, Prigozhin “is likely setting information conditions to blame Wagner Group’s failure to take Bakhmut on the Russian Ministry of Defense or the Russian industrial base.”

In mid-January, Putin replaced Gen. Sergei Surovikin with Gerasimov as the overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. There are differing explanations for the change, but Surovikin, who is also commander of Russia’s Aerospace Forces, was widely viewed as an ally of Prigozhin and Wagner Group. His removal may be an attempt by the Kremlin to balance the dynamics between the two camps.

Gerasimov issued new general orders for all troops in Ukraine in an attempt to bolster morale and discipline. Prigozhin was quick to criticize them — another instance of the mercenary leader’s long-running challenge to Russia’s military leadership.

The war in Ukraine has brought Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef” for his catering business, out of the shadows. He has admitted being the leader of Wagner Group, which was long suspected, and become a visible presence in the group’s operations in Russia and in Ukraine.

Prigozhin gives Putin a tour of Prigozhin’s school lunch factory outside St. Petersburg in September 2010.

ALEXEY DRUZHININ/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images

Prigozhin, who is cultivating his own his image through social media, hasn’t hesitated to directly criticize the Kremlin, claiming that some Russian officials are traitors that want Russia to lose the war.

In an autocratic Russia where regime members and allies who cross Putin are often stripped of power and even killed, Prigozhin is likely making such brash statements with Putin’s tactic support. Indeed, Putin likely views the public feuding as a way to distract from his role in the debacle in Ukraine.

While Gerasimov’s promotion may be a Kremlin effort to boost the Russian military in that ongoing war of words, Prigozhin “may double down on his flashy advertisements” in order “to assert the superiority of his forces,” the Institute for the Study of War said in another assessment.

Wagner faltering in Bakhmut

Ukrainian soldiers on the outskirts of Bakhmut on January 14.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Since the early summer, the Russian forces have been trying to capture the town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Wagner has taken the lead, feeding its mercenaries into brutal fighting around the town.

Russian forces have only managed to advance a few miles at the cost of thousands of troops and valuable military hardware. Despite some recent successes to the north in the small salt-mining town of Soledar — which sparked more fueding — the Russians don’t appear any closer to taking Bakhmut itself.

With the campaign in Ukraine faltering, the Kremlin allowed Wagner Group to recruit convicts directly from Russian prisons. In exchange for serving a six-month tour with Wagner, convicts were offered pardons — if they survived.

Many haven’t. In December, when Russia’s attack on Bakhmut was at its height, 1,000 Wagner mercenaries were killed in just a few weeks, a US official said.

Emergency workers try to put out a fire caused by Russian attacks in the center of Bakhmut on December 23.

Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Western assessments suggest Wagner has lost more than 4,000 killed and over 10,000 wounded in total — a casualty rate of almost 30%.

But with tens of thousands of fighters in Ukraine, Prigozhin doesn’t seem phased. The mercenary leader and his forces appear emboldened by their minor successes around Bakhmut. Prigozhin recently took a photo with Wagner fighters in what appeared to be a salt mine in Soledar, scene of the heaviest fighting around Bakhmut.

But in the Kremlin, stars can fade as quickly as they rise if they fail to achieve the goals of the boss: Putin. With Wagner faltering at Bakhmut and Gerasimov in charge of the war, Prigozhin’s hopes of challenging Russia’s military leadership “seem to have been delusional,” the Institute for the Study of War said on Sunday.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. He is working toward a master’s degree in strategy and cybersecurity at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies.