The Moscow Times, an anti-Putin publication now operating out of Amsterdam, NL, is reporting that a fairly famous pro-war Russian blogger and soldier has supposedly committed suicide:
Prominent pro-war blogger and Russian soldier Andrei Morozov has reportedly committed suicide after upsetting his commanders for disclosing high military casualties in Moscow's recent capture of the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka.
Morozov, known by his call sign “Murz,” regularlycriticized Russia’s military and political leadership on his Telegram channel over shortages of weapons, bureaucratic inefficiencies and rampant deception.
“Murz has shot himself. We spoke last night, nothing foreshadowed [his death],” lawyer Maxim Pashkov, who knew Morozov, said Wednesday, adding to a series of reports of his suicide by other pro-war bloggers.
Morozovwrote last week that 16,000 Russian troops had died in the capture of Avdiivka, which he compared to the deaths of some 7,000 retreating Ukrainian troops. Russian forces stepped up their efforts to capture the eastern industrial hub in October and declared its full seizure over the weekend.
…
A series of what appear to be lengthy suicide notes were published earlier Wednesday on Morozov’s Telegram channel, which has over 100,000 subscribers.
In the notes, Morozov accuses his commanders of forcing him todelete a post about Russia’s high casualties in Avdiivka and implicates state TV news anchors of pressuring his commanders.
“Russia is my home, invaded by enemies: the servile a**-lickers of their superiors; generals ready to sacrifice thousands of soldiers just to ‘distinguish’ themselves; journalists who build their careers on lies from the screen,” Morozov wrote.
The Moscow Times could not immediately verify the reports of Morozov’s death.
No great loss obviously if he really thought Russia was being ‘invaded by enemies’ — but then I guess pretty much all Russian imperialists think Ukraine is and always has been an integral part of Holy Mother Russkiy Mir, even if its current inhabitants might strenuously disagree. But the fact that his lawyer spoke with him just last night and he did not seem to be at all suicidal certainly suggests that, like with Navalny, there may be more to his death than what the authorities are willing to admit to openly.
Could this be yet another none-too-subtle message from the Kremlin that even the pro-war mill-bloggers need to fall in line with official propaganda pronouncements and stop their criticism of the Russian military’s many manifest failures?
Rusputinstan delenda est!