Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a brief armed rebellion against the Russian military earlier this year, was presumed dead on Wednesday after a plane crash north of Moscow that killed all 10 people on board.
The crash immediately raised suspicions since the fate of the founder of the Wagner private military company has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted the mutiny.
Speaking to News18 on Thursday, sources close to the Kremlin said that with Prigozhin death, the Wagner private army is “dismembered and beheaded”.
“We have very little information on what actually happened. There is one key thing you have to keep in mind which is that, since yesterday, the Wagner group is, in fact, dismembered. I would say beheaded. The top leadership is out. When you chop off a head of any structure, what happens to the structure?” the source said.
“In practical terms, it means that the Wagner group in its previous capacity has ceased to exist. It may see some reincarnation, but in different capacity. They will have to reinvent themselves.”
Asked who would benefit from Prigozhin assassination, the source said the mercenary leader had “an army of enemies”, including in the Russian Defence Ministry as well as in Ukraine.
“Prigozhin was one of the most controversial figures in present-day Russia who remained a mystery. It was an abnormal situation in which you have a private army which is challenging the regular army and security forces. It’s not normal. Which country would tolerate that?” the source said.
He, however, added that the Wagner group leader had many enemies and was also controlling enormous sums of money.
“Prigozhin was a guy who had an army of enemies. He was hated by Ukraine. He had enemies in Russia’s Defence Ministry. He had many enemies. He was also getting a lot of money from the state budget… billions of rubles. He was a controversial figure because he was also a hero of Russia.”
Prigozhin & Putin
Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s rule had long ties. Both were born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.
During the final years of the Soviet Union, Prigozhin was in prison — a decade by his own admission — although he never said for what crimes. Afterward, he owned a hot dog stand and then fancy restaurants that drew interest from Putin. In his first term, the Russian leader took then-French President Jacques Chirac to dine at one of them.
His catering businesses expanded significantly, and in 2010, Putin helped open Prigozhin’s factory, which was built on generous loans from a state bank. In Moscow alone, his company Concord won millions of dollars in contracts to provide meals to public schools. He also organized catering for Kremlin events and provided meals and utility services to the Russian military.
The Wagner Group
In 2014, Prigozhin co-founded the Wagner Group, even though private military companies are technically illegal in Russia. It came to play a central role in Putin’s projection of Russian influence in global trouble spots, first in Africa and then in Syria.
Wagner fighters reportedly provided security for African leaders or warlords in exchange for lucrative payments, often including a share of gold mines or other natural resources. US officials say Russia may have used Wagner’s work in Africa to support the war in Ukraine.
In 2017, opposition figure and corruption fighter Alexei Navalny accused Prigozhin’s companies of violating antitrust laws by bidding for $387 million in Defense Ministry contracts.
In December 2021, the European Union accused Wagner of “serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings,” and of carrying out “destabilizing activities” in the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
His troops captured Bakhmut in what was likely the bloodiest and longest battle of the Russia-Ukraine war. Prigozhin has said that 20,000 of his men died there, about half of them inmates recruited from Russia’s prisons.
THE REBELLION
As the war slogged on, Prigozhin dropped his public reticence and began releasing social media videos in which he lauded his troops and increasingly denounced Russia’s defense establishment for alleged mismanagement of the war and denying weapons and ammunition to his forces.
He abruptly escalated his scathing criticism in June by calling for an armed uprising to oust Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
On June 23, his forces left Ukraine and seized the military headquarters in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. He ordered them to roll toward Moscow, saying it was “not a military coup, but a march of justice” to unseat Shoigu.
He called off the action less than 24 hours later in a deal struck by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.
TIES WITH PUTIN POST-MUTINY
In a televised address, Putin had vowed to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime protege. He called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason".
But under the deal allowing Prigozhin and his forces to go free, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said Putin’s “highest goal” in the deal with the Wagner chief was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results".
After Prigozhin’s rebellion fizzled and he decamped to Belarus, Putin said the Kremlin “fully funds” Wagner. He added that authorities would investigate whether Prigozhin might have diverted any of the 80 billion rubles ($936 million) in state funds he allegedly received in 2023 for delivering food to the Russian army.
With agency inputs