Russian servicemen inspect a part of a crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino, in which Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin reportedly died. Photo / Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP
Russian servicemen inspect a part of a crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino, in which Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin reportedly died. Photo / Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP
EDITORIAL
The sudden death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is nothing to celebrate.
Russia’s most powerful mercenary and self-declared enemy of the Russian Defence Ministry was declared dead after his jet plane tumbled from the sky and crashed en route from Moscow to St Petersburg on Thursday.
Prigozhin, 62,led a brief armed rebellion against the Russian military earlier this year and the crash immediately raises suspicions as the fate of the founder of the Wagner private military company has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted the mutiny.
The Kremlin had said he would be exiled to Belarus, but the mercenary chief, whose troops were some of the most effective fighting forces for Russia in Ukraine, had since been seen back in Russia.
Earlier this week, Prigozhin posted his first new recruitment video since the mutiny, boasting that Wagner is conducting reconnaissance and search activities, and “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free”.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group military company, speaks on a recruitment video from an unknown location. Photo / Razgruzka_Vagnera telegram channel via AP
The brazen attempt to restock his forces while also becoming more present in Russia will have raised the focus of several quarters who would not want a resurgent and emboldened Prigozhin.
Of them, most obviously, is Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose enemies and critics have some of the poorest misfortunes once their potential to threaten the regime is noticed.
Businessman Dan Rapoport publicly condemned the Russia-Ukraine war on social media multiple times before he was found dead outside an apartment building in Washington DC, in August 2022.
In September 2022, Lukoil chairman Ravil Maganov died by falling out of the window of a Moscow hospital. His company had called for “the soonest termination of the armed conflict” in Ukraine.
In December 2022, Russian tycoon Pavel Antov reportedly fell from a hotel window in Rayagada, India, days after the politician and millionaire had criticised Putin’s war with Ukraine on WhatsApp following a missile attack in Kyiv.
Illustration / Rod Emmerson
Journalists, former political allies, and agents who try to contact American authorities have ended up shot, poisoned, or dead by blunt force.
Each of these unfortunate individuals may have died without direct instruction from Putin but they showed moral fortitude by opposing the President’s illegal, immoral, and inexcusable invasion of Ukraine. This is not the case with Prigozhin.
Putin must be the prime suspect in the downing of Prigozhin’s plane but not the only one. Ukraine has as much motive as any to want to thwart the rebuilding of the Wagner Group.
The shelling of the Ukraine city of Bakhmut in May 2022, followed by the main assault on August 1, primarily consisted of mercenaries from the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group. The battle of Bakhmut has been described as a “meat grinder” and a “vortex” for both the Ukrainian and Russian militaries with estimates of anywhere between 20,000 and 100,000 killed.
As well as arbitrary killings, including civilians, UN investigators report “numerous” cases of rape and sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated in the areas that came under Wagner and Russian control.
Since Wagner handed over to regular Russian troops, Ukraine has mounted sustained offensives in the region and would not want a reinvigorated mercenary force reintroduced. Could it then have arranged the assassination of Prigozhin? It seems unlikely, but drone strikes and other assaults have become more frequent on Russian soil in recent months.
Internal Russian politics can’t also be ruled out with certainty. Many critics have been put into exile or extinguished but there are rich and powerful forces who have been punished with international sanctions due to the dragged out Ukraine conflict.
Prigozhin would have also accumulated more enemies than most. His mercenaries forged their bloody reputations in Libya and Syria, further wresting untold political power and requisitioning mineral resources in the Central African Republic and Mali. The Wagner Group continues to plunder this part of the world to fund its operations in Ukraine.
An accidental firing on his jet might also be a possibility, but a long one. Few would have wagered on Prigozhin meeting an accidental death.
Putin’s finger is the most probable, and given his history, it’s likely to be a middle one to his opponents. His comments following the crash included the barbed remark that Prigozhin had “made serious mistakes in life”.
But the execution of the vainglorious leader who corporatised indiscriminate killing and rape is no loss at all.
It is to all our shame that the planet is host to men such as Yevgeny Prigozhin.
