The pro-Kremlin media personality Tigran Keosayan has been in a coma since late December. Recently, his grief-stricken wife, RT chief Margarita Simonyan, pondered going to front, if he dies (youtu.be…). I’ve never heard Simonyan say anything that wasn’t calculated, so this line made me scratch my head a little. Simonyan is still all-in on the “special military operation,” of course, but it is strange to hear her death wish expressed this way.

Don’t her words come close to admitting what Putin’s soldiers need when headed to the front? I’m thinking of the Russian “meat assaults” and their use of soldiers to fire at their own, should they dare not advance or even retreat. Still, Simonyan’s words lean on such a common literary trope that they needn’t be seen as destabilizing. If there is one thing about Simonyan we can still be sure of, she is an expert information warrior.