Yevgeny Prighozin, the maestro of private military company Wagner, is never shy of also performing as a master communicator / troller / psyop specialist.

So no wonder when he delivered a recent rhetorical missile - here, in Russian, on War Gonzo - quite a few eyebrows were raised.

In the heat of war, and on the eve of the incessantly mythologized Ukrainian "counter-offensive" - which may or may not happen in myriad suicidal forms - Prighozin went on the record absolutely destroying the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), Minister Shoigu personally, and the Kremlin bureaucracy.

The bombshell revelations caused serial ripples among Russian experts yet not among the English-speaking crowd, which seems not to have grasped the enormity of it all, as Russian insiders who analyzed the whole interview in detail told me. Here is a noteworthy exception, focusing on the key bullet points.

Prighozin does flirt with a few absurdities, offered with no proof. Example: Russia didn't win both Chechen wars; Putin paid Kadyrov's father a bribe to wrap it all up. Or the assertion that the Debaltsevo Cauldron in Donbass did not exist; instead Poroshenko's army simply made an orderly retreat intact.

Yet it's the serious accusations that stand out. Among them: the SMO proved that the Russian Army is essentially unorganized, untrained, undisciplined and demoralized; there's no real leadership; and the MoD lies, routinely, about what's happening in the battlefield as well as about Wagner's maneuvers.

Prighozin is adamant that it was Wagner that launched an operation to stabilize the front when the Russian army was retreating in chaos following a Ukrainian counterattack.

His main point is that Russia has all it takes to win, fast and decisively; but "the leadership" keeps the resources away from the actors who need it on purpose (presumably, Wagner).

And that ties up with the success in Bakhmut/Artemyovsk: the whole plan was masterminded by Wagner alongside "General Armageddon" Surovikin.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky will leave her post next month, citing in a Friday resignation letter the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I have never been prouder of anything I have done in my professional career," Walensky, 54, wrote to President Biden, informing him that her last day will be June 30.

She added that she had "mixed feelings" about the move but noted that the end of pandemic-era emergency declarations was an appropriate moment to step down.

Ex-CIA boss Morell wrote colleague that the Hunter Biden laptop letter was a "talking point" to help Joe Biden at debate.

In a rare and candid email exchange between two former CIA bosses, Michael Morell told John Brennan in October 2020 that he was organizing a letter of 51 intel experts claiming the emergence of the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian influence operation because he wanted to give Joe Biden's campaign a "talking point to push back on" Donald Trump during the last presidential debate of the 2020 election, according to documents obtained by Just the News.

Brennan, who served as CIA director under President Barack Obama, willingly agreed to sign the letter after being told of its political intentions. "Ok, Michael, add my name to the list," Brennan wrote Morell on Oct. 19. 2020. "Good initiative. Thanks for asking me to sign on."

George W. Bush's illegal invasion came at a time when the US was the only real global power, and high on its own self-confidence.

Twenty years ago, in May 2003, then-US President George W. Bush landed on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf and declared "mission accomplished." The Texan announced the liberation of Iraq and the end of active combat, in effect a military victory.

This was technically true. Baghdad was under American control, and although Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had escaped, he would be captured six months later. In fact, the invasion by Washington and its coalition had destroyed Iraqi statehood, led to a bloody civil war, the disintegration of the country, a dramatic shift in the balance of power in the region (not in the Americans' favor, by the way), and was the root cause of the series of upheavals that engulfed the Middle East in the 2000s and 2010s.

The cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, the 14+1 initiative, has lost its significance for the Czech Republic, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lpavsky said Thursday.

"I thanked the US on their strategic leadership on China. I assured [US] Secretary [Antony] Blinken that we are ready to work with them within the European framework. The 14+1 has neither substance nor future," he said in an interview with Politico.

The 14+1 is an initiative launched by the Chinese Foreign Ministry to promote business and investment relations between China and 14 nations from Central and Eastern Europe. It is also aimed at the areas of culture, science, education, and tourism.

Dissent is brewing inside the EU and inside NATO as old aristocracy and business circles of France and Germany feel betrayed by Washington, Pepe Escobar, geopolitical analyst and veteran journalist, told Radio Sputnik's New Rules podcast."Basically, what the Americans would like to do is to have Eastern Europe leading NATO and even leading the EU, which is even more far-fetched," said Pepe Escobar.

"And the new superpower would be Poland. This is what they think and this is what they're actually working towards. The French and the Germans, and I'm not generalizing, let's say, [the] patriotic faction of French business especially, and a few diplomats are saying, 'No, we have to go back to our De Gaulle modern roots. We should be independent. We should have our own 'force de frappe', as they say, our own striking force. And we should leave NATO', in fact," the geopolitical analyst continued.

As the Biden administration is pushing ahead with simultaneously confronting Russia and China, Washington's European allies are facing risks of losing not only cheap energy commodities but a leading trade partner, too.How US Strategy Backfires on France, UK and GermanyAfter his talks with Chairman Xi Jinping, French President Emmanuel Macron told Politico on April 9 that Europe must reduce its dependency on the US and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the US over Taiwan. He warned that Europe could get "caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy."

The Kremlin was attacked by a pair of explosive drones early Wednesday morning, with the UAVs downed by anti-drone defenses before causing major damage. The Kremlin accused Kiev of trying to assassinate President Vladimir Putin. Scott Ritter puts things into perspective, commenting on how the US would respond to this sort of provocation.

Officials in Washington and Kiev have joined forces to deny any involvement in Wednesday's drone attack on the Moscow Kremlin. "We don't attack [Vladimir] Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory. We are defending our villages and cities," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured Wednesday during a visit to Finland.

"I can assure you that there was no involvement by the United States. Whatever it was did not involve us," White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby chimed in. "We don't endorse, nor do we encourage, we do not support attacks on individual leaders," the spokesman said.

The West and Russia will eventually sit down to discuss their differences, but this dialogue should be held not with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky but with those using him as a stooge, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Goa, India, Lavrov reiterated that Moscow had "never refused to settle issues arising from the actions of the US and their satellites to pump Ukraine with weapons" so that it could fight Russia.

The minister noted that many countries around the world are growing increasingly aware that these tensions cannot be defused solely by freezing the Ukraine conflict. "Everyone understands that the ongoing events are geopolitical in nature," he said.

After the recent drone incident at the Kremlin, which Moscow has called a US-backed attempt by Ukraine to assassinate President Vladimir Putin, the US and Russia are on the verge of a shooting war with each other, a senior Russian diplomat has said.

"We are working on preventing a fall of our relations with the US into the abyss of an open armed conflict," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in a TV interview on Friday. "We are already on the verge of this abyss."

Ryabkov described officials in Washington as "opponents" and "enemies" of Russia due to what he called Russophobic policies which are being pursued in spite of the risks.

"The anger and hatred towards Russia with which Washington acts in a situation in which it frankly should think of its own safety, is inexplicable," he said.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has busted a Ukrainian terrorist group in Zaporozhye Region that was allegedly planning to assassinate a high-ranking official at a nuclear plant while also gathering sensitive data on the Russian military.

In a statement on Friday, the agency said that its operatives "have quelled the activities of a sabotage and terrorist group" in the former Ukrainian region which voted in a referendum to become part of Russia last autumn, adding that the group consisted of several agents of Kiev's special services.

The FSB also said a law enforcement operation prevented "an act of terrorism against one of the leaders of the Zaporozhye NPP," the largest nuclear facility in Europe, which has been under Russian control since the early days of the Ukraine conflict.