Assassination or not, Prigozhin's end was a fitting finale

Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, inset, was reportedly on a jet that crashed, above, in Russia Thursday, killing all 10 on board. Credit: AP/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Razgruzka_Vagnera telegram channel

The saga of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian tycoon and Vladimir Putin crony who ran a cyber-army of trolls as well as an actual army of mercenaries and led a part of that army on Moscow in an aborted rebellion two months ago, seems to have come to a fiery end. “Seems” is a hedge because Prigozhin was a hoaxer whose reported death easily lends itself to theories of staged disappearance.

Was this Putin’s delayed vengeance, or something else? How will it affect the situation in Russia and the war in Ukraine? And what does it tell us about Putin’s Russia?

The answer to the first question is: Yes, it was almost certainly Putin, whether the plane was shot down 185 miles north of Moscow by Russian anti-aircraft fire as initially reported or blown up with a bomb. The motive, say dissident Russian analysts, is not only revenge for betrayal and humiliation — during the mutiny, Putin hastily fled Moscow and looked visibly scared — but a strong message that rebels will be punished.

There are other theories — notably, that Ukrainian special agents did it. (Interestingly, Russian officials have not proposed this version, instead floating a disgruntled ex-employee as the culprit.) Given that Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group, which fought in Ukraine until May, was implicated in horrific crimes including executions of captured combatants, Ukrainians certainly had cause.

But the timing makes it doubtful. Prigozhin was clearly done on the Ukrainian front (he had shifted his activity to Africa, where Wagner had a long history). And even toward the end of his presence in Ukraine, his loud feud with the Russian military brass — and increasingly blunt criticism of the war itself — made many Ukrainians see him as a minor enemy who was also a welcome thorn in the main enemy’s side. There were even unconfirmed reports that he was cooperating with Ukrainian intelligence.

Yet Prigozhin’s assassination, blamed on Putin by a general consensus inside and outside Russia, may hurt him more than it helps. While letting a rebel walk free may have made Putin look weak, taking out an enemy in a mafia-style hit may not make him look much stronger. What’s more, Prigozhin, a decorated “Hero of Russia” for his role in Ukraine in 2022, had many fans in the armed forces and among civilian war hawks. Many believe his death will further undermine already flagging military morale and already weak support for the war.

In many ways, Prigozhin’s career is starkly emblematic of the extent to which public life in Russia under Putin had devolved into sociopathic farce. A onetime petty criminal turned shady business tycoon, he became the president’s pal, entrusted with dirty jobs such as interference in the U.S. elections in 2016 — for which he was under indictment in the U.S. — and military operations for which the Kremlin wanted plausible deniability. (The vehicle for those was the ostensibly private Wagner group — financed, as Putin later admitted, by the state.) He entered the limelight less than a year ago as a thuggish warlord who recruited criminals from penal colonies and had a defector executed with a sledgehammer. He became a political star as a war criminal who railed against the pointless war, a corrupt billionaire who railed against greedy elites.

Now, he appears to be dead in an act that expatriate Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulman aptly summed up as “a man with a sledgehammer was beaten by a man with a bigger sledgehammer.” If so, it is a fitting finale.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for the Bulwark, are her own.

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.