Analysis
Prigozhin’s death would leave lasting mark on
Russian army and elite
Pjotr Sauer
Since the Wagner group’s abortive coup, many have felt
its leader could be living on borrowed time
Yevgeny
Prigozhin on passenger list of plane in fatal crash, says Russia
Wed 23 Aug
2023 21.08 BST
Ever since
the abortive coup, speculation had been that Yevgeny Prigozhin could be living
on borrowed time.
When the
head of the notorious Wagner group launched his historic uprising, inflicting
the biggest crisis of Vladimir Putin’s 23-year reign, many were left wondering
how the Russian leader would respond.
During the
mutiny, Prigozhin’s band of mercenaries shot down at least two helicopters and
killed about 15 Russian service personnel, many of them airmen. More
significantly for Putin, Prigozhin’s rebellion, which reached the outskirts of
Moscow, exposed the fragility of a regime many deemed to be stable.
The cause
of the crash on Wednesday, which killed all 10 people on board – Prigozhin
listed among them, officials said – was not immediately clear, but the Wagner
leader’s longstanding feud with the military and the armed uprising he led in
June would give the Russian state ample motive for revenge.
Putin does
not suffer betrayal gladly and is known to divide those who oppose him into two
categories: enemies and traitors. Prigozhin’s uprising undoubtedly placed him
in the second category.
But Putin’s
initial response to the mutiny left many puzzled. Despite promising to
“liquidate the traitor” in a televised address to the nation, Putin allowed
Prigozhin to strike a deal with Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko and leave Russia
for exile.
Unusually,
weeks after the mutiny, the Kremlin said Putin had a three-hour meeting with
Prigozhin and Wagner group commanders days after the rebellion.
Putin also
remarkably admitted that he sought and failed during the meeting to have
Prigozhin replaced as the leader of Wagner’s fighters in Ukraine.
Having
initially left for Belarus, where his Wagner troops set up camp and trained
local security forces, Prigozhin was seen moving freely back and forth between
Moscow and his home town of St Petersburg, reportedly picking up stacks of cash
and gold bars that he held at his opulent mansions.
Not much
later, Prigozhin was spotted on the sidelines of a major Russia-Africa summit
in St Petersburg, where he met African officials at a hotel that he owned.
Those who
knew Prigozhin were not surprised, believing that the warlord at some point
would probably pick up the tab for his foray into revolutionary politics. A
former restaurant tycoon turned mercenary leader, Prigozhin has always been a
risk-taker, and was not one to sit in exile in Belarus while his mercenary army
was dismantled.
Attempting
to explain Putin’s timid behaviour, analysts argued that the Russian leader,
who had not previously faced dissent from the ultra-nationalist flank, was
looking to pacify rather than destroy his former ally.
But
Prigozhin’s brazen conduct left many in the elite wondering whether Putin still
held control over the country, according to western officials.
“For a lot
of Russians watching this, used to this image of Putin as the arbiter of order,
the question was, ‘Does the emperor have no clothes?’ Or at least, ‘Why is it
taking so long for him to get dressed?’” CIA director William Burns said
earlier this month.
Prigozhin
was last seen earlier this week when he released a video in which he claimed to
be in Africa, where his mercenaries have relocated since the abortive uprising.
But it was unclear when it was taken and whether he had returned to Russia
since it was shot.
As
speculations swirl on the role of Putin in the crash, the warlord’s death will
surely raise tensions within the Russian army. While his uprising was largely
condemned by the armed forces, he remained a popular figure among some elements
of the troops who sympathised with his critiques of the Russian military
establishment and the faltering war.
“If he is
really dead, [I will] grab my stuff, we don’t need this fucking war,” wrote
Egor Guzenko, a Russian soldier who runs a blog under the callsign “Thirteenth”
shortly after the news of Prigozhin’s death emerged.
“We should
be killing our enemies, not our own,” wrote Sergei Markov, a popular blogger
and former adviser to the Kremlin. “All our enemies are celebrating … The death
of Priogzhin is Ukraine’s biggest achievement this year.”
The crash
of Prigozhin’s jet also comes on the day that reports emerged indicating that
Moscow had relieved Gen Sergei Surovikin of his command of the Russian
aerospace forces, in the highest-level sacking yet of a military commander
after Prigozhin’s mutiny.
Prigozhin’s
public support for Surovikin, a veteran commander who was seen as an ally of
the Wagner militia in the Russian defence ministry, had raised questions over
whether he or other senior commanders aided the mutiny or at least had prior
knowledge of Prigozhin’s plans.
In an
earlier interview with the Guardian, a Kremlin insider said that “in half a
year or a year, novichok will catch up with Prigozhin,” a reference to the 2020
poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
“I don’t
think he will be easily forgiven … Maybe not immediately, but in some time, in
the best traditions, novichok will come to visit him. He should probably watch
out for his underpants,” the source added.
Putin,
however, appears to have been working to a fast-track schedule.
It seems
certain that those in the political elite will take onboard one crucial lesson
from the turbulent summer of 2023: “You come at the king, you best not miss.”
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