THE REAL SURPRISE is not that Yevgeny Prigozhin is dead, but that he survived for two months after his aborted march on Moscow.
Without waiting for the DNA analysis, Putin has conveyed his condolences to the Prigozhin family, suggesting that we have seen the last of his former ally and warlord for hire.
His death has all the hallmarks of being a very predictable “accident”, less a plane crash than what Putin might call a “special landing operation”. It follows a persistent pattern in Russia whereby those considered a threat to the regime, or simply an inconvenience, have died in implausible circumstances, falling down stairs or out of windows. The method of elimination might be spectacular in this case but the motive remains the same.
The cause of the crash is not yet known and likely will never be. In the absence of conclusive evidence, several theories have quickly surfaced. Some have speculated that the plane was shot down by Russia’s air defence system, which “mistook” Prigozhin’s jet for a drone.
The rationale is that, given the unprecedented wave of Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow, local air defences might have been overly trigger-happy. But any radar operator worth his salt should be able to distinguish a plane from the relatively slow and much smaller drones that fly at lower altitudes.
Another theory circulating is that there was an explosion on board the plane. This hypothesis, circulated amongst some Kremlin-affiliated media, hints at the involvement of ill-defined enemies of Prigozhin, be they Ukrainian or Russian.
The editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-sponsored RT channel, Margarita Simonyan, claimed there is talk of the crash being staged to fake Prigozhin’s death. After all, he had amassed an impressive collection of wigs and disguises. In the years to come, we could see conspiratorial documentaries about where the Wagner leader might be and under what identity.
The Russian state authorities say they will investigate. Perhaps they will identify a pilot error or technical malfunction but who will believe anything Putin’s regime will say on the matter?
Yevgeny Prigozhin spent much of his sixty-two years involved in crime. His is a remarkable career of brutal thuggery, graduating from petty criminal to perpetrator of war crimes. During the last decade of the Soviet Union, he mugged and robbed women, resulting in a prison sentence of 13 years (of which he served seven).
His rise and fall are completely intertwined with Vladimir Putin. A junior member of the St. Petersburg gang of associates and hangers-on, Prigozhin found a niche for himself in the provision of fine dining and became known as Putin’s chef.
The internet is packed with photos of Prigozhin serving food to the likes of US President George Bush and England’s Prince Charles.
He then moved into the murky world of mercenaries, becoming a leader of Wagner, through which the Russian state outsourced many of its dirty wars while simultaneously enriching its leadership.
But for most people, it was Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that brought Prigozhin into the public eye for the first time as he presented himself as an efficient killer of Ukrainians.
One of his major initiatives was recruiting 50,000 Russian convicts, many imprisoned for murder, torture and/or rape, who were promised a pardon if they survived six months with Wagner in Ukraine.
In stark contrast to the aloof Russian president, Prigozhin proved adept at communicating via social media and he cultivated the image of a man of action. Increasingly, he used his platforms to castigate Putin’s inner circle and the military top brass – particularly veteran defence minister Sergei Shoigu – but studiously avoided criticising the Russian president.
That all changed when the mercenary chief launched a daring but aborted rebellion in June. Denouncing Wagner’s actions as “treason” and “a stab in the back” Putin went on state television to proclaim that “Those who prepared the military mutiny, have betrayed Russia, and will pay for this”.
Prigozhin retorted that “no one is going to surrender to the demands of the President, FSB, or anyone else.” Having taken Rostov, one of Russia’s largest cities, without a fight and advanced several hundred kilometres towards Moscow, Prigozhin called off the rebellion, ostensibly to avoid bloodshed. The immediate threat to Putin’s regime ended as quickly and as unexpectedly as it had begun.
Remarkably, within a few days of the march on Moscow, Putin and Prigozhin met for several hours in the Kremlin. We will probably never discover what kind of deal was hammered out at that meeting, just as we will never know what would have happened had Wagner not abandoned their march on Moscow. It was clear, however, that Prigozhin believed he had come to some kind of mutually beneficial arrangement with Putin.
His behaviour did not correspond with a man who knew he would die soon. Only two days before the plane crash, Prigozhin posted a video in which he claimed to be back in Africa, fulfilling Wagner’s mission of “making Russia even greater on all continents”.
Prigozhin’s assumed death is unlikely to have an immediate effect on Russia’s war in Ukraine as Wagner had already been pulled away from the front lines. In Africa, where Wagner played an important role in providing mercenaries to prop up regional autocrats, it’s unlikely that local leaders in search of mercenaries will care who leads the Russian troops available for hire.
There are several in Putin’s inner circle who’ll be glad to see Prigozhin gone. But an order to eliminate the Wagner leader could not go ahead without Putin’s imprimatur.
Every day he lived made a mockery of Putin’s reputation as a strongman.
Putin goes to remarkable lengths to eliminate those he considers traitors or rivals, such as Sergei Skripal or Alexander Litvinenko. In that sense, the Russian political elite is run along the lines of a mafia gang. If you take on the Don, you must win. Should you miss the target or suffer a loss of nerve the consequences are usually fatal.
Prigozhin seems to have believed he had been absolved and could continue to be of use to the Kremlin. But his utility to Putin ended the moment he openly threatened his reign. From then on, the Wagner leader was a dead man walking.
Donnacha Ó Beacháin is Professor of Politics at Dublin City University. For more than two decades he has worked and researched in the post-Soviet region and has published widely on the subject.
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