Kendall Stanley: Such a pain

Aaargh! I mean AAAAAARGH!

Credit card bill comes in the mail and there are three “Kindle” charges, one for $172, the others a couple bucks.

The problem? I didn’t order anything from Kindle, and the toll-free number attached to the charges in a Google search brought up the fact it was connected to a scam.

Great! Just what I wanted to deal with.

Calling my friendly Chase reps, unlike disputing a charge, if you claim fraud and the card’s fraud squad gets involved they cancel your card and send you a new one. Which back in the day, wasn’t a hassle.

But now — and the reason for the AAAAAARGH! at the start of this column — there are a million places that have my old credit card number, which I can recite at will, that need to be changed.

Mich Con gas? Yup. Netflix and other streaming services? Yup. And there are plenty more regular payments (but if you have regularly paid them for more than six times they will be migrated to your new card automatically, so sayeth Chase).

But here’s the kicker. You know all those shopping and other sites where you’ve said sure, keep my card on file. Can’t wait to see how many of those I’ll have to change in the future.

More worrisome is where did this breach occur. Was it through a retailer, a health care provider as they are often targets of ransomware, probably not a bank, but who knows?

I try to be a conscientious user — antivirus, end-to-end encryption for passwords, avoiding well-known scams such as phishing — but still, I got caught.

So yeah, aaaargh aaaargh and more aaaargh!

Rumblings in Russia

Pity poor Vladimir Putin.

His best fighting force in Ukraine was not the regular Russian Army but rather the Wagner Group, a particularly brutal but also effective mercenary force under the direction of one Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, known at one time as Putin’s “chef.”

Prigozhin is currently in Belarus, seemingly in exile, after he started a small mutiny a couple of weeks ago back in June.

It seems that Prigozhin has a beef with some of Russia’s military leaders. Twenty-five thousand of his troops started a trek from Ukraine to Moscow, stopping about 125 miles south of the city. Not only were his forces not repelled by the Russians, but they were also met with cheers in some spots.

Then, abruptly, after some negotiations, Prigozhin headed to Belarus and the troops returned to Ukraine. They were also offered positions in the Russian army.

Here’s the flaw in Putin’s use of the Wagner Group — mercenaries are in it for the money and their loyalty can be, let’s say, not rock solid to the cause.

As the ongoing war in Ukraine has shown, while Putin may be able to crush Prigozhin and his forces it wouldn’t be a walk in the park. The Russian army has not been effective in taking control of Ukraine, although the damage Russia has inflicted will take years to repair.

Prigozhin’s short mutiny was, of course, an embarrassment to Putin. When a rebel force pretty much strolls to the capitol it’s not a good look. And Putin is all about looks, how he is perceived, how much control he does or doesn’t have.

Do not think for a minute that Western intelligence agencies weren’t all carefully watching what was happening in Russia.

Who knows how Putin will deal with Prigozhin, and whether or not Prigozhin’s troops will return to the Ukrainian battlefield. One thing, if Putin’s past is any indication, is Prigozhin is a dead man walking. Putin’s critics have a nasty habit of somehow vanishing. Puff, just like that they are gone.

Putin may have used the Wagner Group to keep from having to conscript Russians to go fight in Ukraine which would be very unpopular.

It may have looked like a good idea at the start, but now it appears Prigozhin’s troops’ loyalty is not to Putin. Just one more reason invading Ukraine was not such a hot idea after all.

— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Kendall Stanley: Such a pain