Are...are we sure Yevgeny Prigozhin is really dead?

I won't be satisfied until they show us a body. And even that might not be enough.

News coverage about Russia reminds me of Bill Simmons’ concept of the “Tyson Zone,” in which any report or rumour about Mike Tyson, no matter how outlandish, sounds at least somewhat plausible because of the crazy confirmed information about him.

(Ah, for the days when our so-crazy-it-must-be-true news was about celebrities, instead of former Presidents.)

You could report pretty much anything about Vladmir Putin, his government and the world’s largest country, and even if it would sound completely insane and implausible under any other circumstances, where Russia is concerned I might be inclined to give it a hearing.

And so it is, with this detail I noticed in today’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Wagner Group founder’s alleged death in a completely unsuspicious and coincidental plane crash:

Keir Giles, a Russia expert with the international affairs think tank Chatham House, had urged caution about reports of Prigozhin’s death. He said “multiple individuals have changed their name to Yev…