Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has been officially declared dead. However, the cause of his plane crash is unclear. Meanwhile, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin is in distress after the death of his ex-confidant.
Days after the crash of his private jet, many Russians still have doubts about the death of the dazzling mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. The Russian investigators have now officially declared the 62-year-old dead after a molecular-genetic analysis. But so far they have not answered the question of the cause of the crash last Wednesday. Versions continue to circulate that an explosive device on board or possibly an accidentally detonated grenade could have caused the Embraer Legacy to crash. Or was it a targeted attack with an anti-aircraft missile?
The only thing that is clear is that Prigozhin had a lot of enemies – and with his uprising against the Russian military leadership on 23/24. June Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin made the most powerful opponent. Even days after the death of the 62-year-old, the majority of political observers assume that Putin in particular had an interest in getting rid of the harsh critic of the Russian warfare in Ukraine. Putin himself followed suit and accused his former confidante of “serious mistakes” even after his end.
Yevgeny Prigozhin may have considered himself “untouchable”
The Kremlin denies having anything to do with the deaths of Prigozhin and the other six members of Wagner’s private army and the three crew members of the plane. However, comments by independent Russian media repeatedly refer to a “cold-blooded, public execution”. Some observers explain the fact that Prigozhin sat in the same plane with Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin and other important representatives and did not travel separately because the businessman considered himself “untouchable” and thus overestimated his own position. That made him careless.
The Russian secret service expert Andrei Soldierov, who lives abroad, sees the crash in a series with other major murders, for example when the opposition figure Boris Nemtsov was shot near the Kremlin in 2015 or the former secret service officer Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with the radiation poison polonium-210 in London in 2006. At the same time, he sees a “new level” of violence, because bystanders – such as the crew of the plane – have also become victims.
“It was remarkable that all our sources in Russia, including many in the security apparatus, immediately suspected that Prigozhin was killed on Putin’s orders,” Soldierov said. Many would have seen this as revenge for the pilots killed in the Wagner uprising in June. Prigozhin’s plane crashed two months after the failed revolt not far from a residence of Putin – it was on the way from Africa to St. Petersburg – after a stopover in Moscow.
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The Russian Alexander Baunow, a political analyst at the US think tank Carnegie, sees a punishment pattern typical of dictatorships and even “traits of a mafia state”. It had already been customary under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to “approach the enemy/traitor before annihilation” and to give the impression that everything was forgiven. After Prigozhin’s uprising, Putin met with him and Wagner commanders in the Kremlin.
“It’s like in movies about the mafia, the enemy groups and their bosses come together and then shoot at each other,” Baunow wrote. Putin has remained in power for 24 years because he has repeatedly eliminated every threat.
Intelligence expert Soldierov sees problems for Putin
Official investigations are being carried out into aviation safety violations after the crash, but few believe it was an accident. The prominent journalist Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-critical radio station Echo Moskvy, which was closed by the authorities, said that Prigozhin had publicly opposed Putin – and thus sealed his “end” as a traitor. The Kremlin boss never forgives such an exposure.
As a “cold-blooded and calculating dictator,” Putin took two months to analyze Prigozhin’s dealings and structures, says the expert Soldierov. As so often, the tactician Putin turned the crisis into an opportunity. “He has sought to turn the insurgency’s humiliation to his advantage, eliminating hardliners within the army and stifling the voice of dissent in military circles.” Before the plane crash, the dismissal of the deputy commander of the troops in Ukraine, General Sergey Surovikin, also became known.
Soldierov sees a number of problems for Putin as a result of Prigozhin’s death. So the Kremlin chief must now look for a new man for the rough stuff and not least keep the generals on a leash in the midst of the difficulties in the war in Ukraine. According to the Russian media, fighters from the Wagner ranks themselves could also try to take revenge for Prigozhin’s death.
Overall, however, the Kremlin must bring the now leaderless Wagner army with thousands of fighters, for example in Africa or Belarus, under its control. Russia has always insisted that it will not give up its interests in Africa. However, the first Wagner mercenaries are already complaining publicly that they no longer get any money – and cannot even pay for their treatment in the hospital.
The celebrity’s funeral is also a widely discussed question: will Prigozhin, who bore the title Hero of Russia, be buried with military honors at the national memorial complex with Heroes’ Alley and monuments near Moscow? Or in his hometown of St. Petersburg? Or, as suggested by a Moscow deputy, in the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, which the Wagner army had captured? According to Prigozhin critics, the latter variant is suitable so that nobody can make a pilgrimage there.
Many of the country’s cities already have memorials to the Wagner boss, who was valued by many ordinary Russians for his sharp criticism of the power apparatus. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was unclear whether the president would attend the funeral. His schedule is very busy.
However, it should be clear that Prigozhin will not be seen off with an open coffin, as is customary in the Russian Orthodox Church. Investigators quickly said the bodies were burned and disfigured from hitting the ground. The fact that no one gets to see Prigozhin’s corpse is likely to fuel the myth of conspiracy theorists that everything is possibly just a staging – and the businessman lives somewhere else under a new identity.
The political scientist Sergei Markov, who is close to the Kremlin, was also able to gain something from this version, as he said on the propaganda program Solovyov Live. This takes away the “internal tension” from Prigozhin’s followers; and it also helps the Kremlin, because that eliminates the question of whether the power apparatus is to blame for the crash, said Markov. “As long as people believe in myths, they don’t ask questions.”