About twelve days ago, a Russian anti-war blogger Michael Nackie (@MackNack) ran a podcast discussing who Putin will whack next (after his rogue chef / mercenary warlord Prigozhin). His money was on the authoritarian leader of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov — mostly on account of him having control of military units not responding directly to Russian MOD.
This is just twelve-days-old speculation, mind you, and Nackie is just a blogger — 1.4 million subscribers do not guarantee the quality of his fact-checking.
However, a few hours ago, а guy who is (or was) a bona fide journalist, Alexander Nevzorov, posted a video claiming his source in Ukrainian intelligence says Kadyrov is in a coma, with symptoms consistent with organophosphate poisoning (Novichok or something similar).
This is sort of corroborated by Newsweek (they don’t report he is critically ill, they report Ukrainian intelligence claims he is).
Kyiv Independent runs with a very similar story, but they may all be citing the same source, so take it with a bucket of salt for the time being.
kyivindependent.com/...
Nevertheless, as the days go by, being a Putin ally appears to be less and less safe… People named by Nackie in the same video should take notice: Shoigu, the minister of defense and convenient scapegoat for the failed invasion (extra bonus: dead men tell no tales), General Gerasimov (was in command of the failed invasion), Strelkov (ultranationalist whose team shot down flight MH-17, convenient target — in jail)...
A shoutout to Mark Sumner, whose diary provides a somewhat different look on the same topic:
www.dailykos.com/...