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Russia, explained.
A makeshift memorial in front of the "PMC Wagner Centre" in Saint Petersburg, early on 24 August (AFP via Getty Images)
It is important to remember that Putin personally and publicly gave the Wagner chief guarantees about his safety.
Prigozhin is dead, but Putin is still weakenedPrigozhin is dead, but Putin is still weakened
The reported death of Wagner Group chief Yevgenyi Prigozhin in a plane crash, along with the group’s co-founder Dmitry Utkin, comes as little surprise. If anything, it’s more surprising that Prigozhin had remained alive for so long after leading an armed revolt against the Russian military, condemned at the time by Russian President Vladimir Putin as an act of treason.
For many analysts Prigozhin’s death – which has happened exactly two months after his “march for justice” saw an armed Wagner column stop just short of Moscow – the natural order of Russian politics has finally reasserted itself.
Prigozhin was certainly no freedom fighter. He was a thug who rose from Putin’s caterer to his main foreign influence peddler, and only more recently as head of a military company that was at best semi-private. He revelled in brutality, praising the execution of Wagner deserters with sledgehammers, and promoting the tool as the group’s totem. And ultimately, he became rich and somewhat powerful in a system that rewards ruthlessness, coupled to unswerving fealty to its tsar.
That Prigozhin might well have succeeded had he chosen to push on to Moscow has not been missed by Putin critics.
Prigozhin’s inability to navigate the second part of Russian politics’ iron law, feuding publicly with the armed forces and eventually losing out when Putin came down on the side of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, has, it seems, eventually lead to his undoing.
If Wagner’s Telegram channel is correct in claiming his plane was brought down by an air defence missile – which Wagner forces had used against Russian helicopters during their drive to Moscow – then Prigozhin’s demise will echo a brutal poetry common in Russian politics. It is certainly consistent with the tendency of others who challenge Kremlin power structures to die in ways.
But the sticky end that Prigozhin seems to have eventually come to nonetheless leaves some important lingering questions.
Putin and Prigozhin at a food factory in 2010 (Russian government via Wikimedia commons)
As the recent Wagner episode demonstrated, there is no guarantee that a “private” military organisation will be more loyal to Putin than to the elites who create and fund them.
If there’s one clear takeaway from Prigozhin’s long-anticipated demise, it will be the conclusion that nobody is safe in Putin’s Russia. That fact alone suggests Prigozhin’s impact on Moscow’s political maelstrom will continue even after his death.
About the author
Matthew Sussex
Dr Matthew Sussex is Associate Professor (Adjunct) at the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University; a Fellow at the Institute for Regional Security (IFRS); Visiting Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU; and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Studies, ANU.
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