Has Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s madcap mutineer, met his end?

Good morning.

It’s been 36 hours since Russia announced that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, had been killed in a plane crash. Also on board the private jet was top Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin.

Widely viewed as an assassination ordered by Vladimir Putin it is seen by many to be entirely predictable revenge for the Prigozhin-led mutiny that shook the president’s authority back in June. Confirming the death while not bothering to actually deny his involvement, Putin described his one-time confidant as “a talented businessman” who “made some serious mistakes” but “achieved the necessary results for himself but also for the greater good.”

There will be those who will not believe Prigozhin is really dead and is in fact being held in a Siberian gulag sporting one of his (famous) disguises. But western intelligence agencies seem convinced that the wig-wearing warlord was indeed on the private jet that fell from the sky, with US spooks saying it was brought down by an “intentional explosion”. Prigozhin seemed to know where he was heading, with cheery statements such as: “We’re all going to hell – but in hell we’ll be the best.”

Andrew Roth, the Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief, helps me understand what it all means in today’s newsletter.

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What happened?

The private plane showed no sign of problems until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, when it plummeted more than 8,000 feet from its cruising altitude of 28,000 feet. It crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region. Russia’s civil aviation agency said that Prigozhin and six top Wagner lieutenants were on board.

The cause of the crash was not immediately clear. According to Reuters, the Embraer executive jet model that Prigozhin was flying had only recorded one accident in more than 20 years’ service, and that was not related to mechanical failure. Prigozhin’s allies were quick to accuse the Russian defence ministry of assassinating him and Joe Biden, the US president, was among those pointing the finger at Putin, saying: “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.”

Andrew says his initial reaction was not shock but rather: what took so long? “One of the biggest surprises for most of us who cover Russia is: why was he still alive for two months after the coup? It was the biggest armed uprising since the fall of the Soviet Union and was extremely embarrassing for Putin.”

The curiosity for Andrew is why Prigozhin put himself in such a “vulnerable position” by flying over Russia after supposedly agreeing to move Wagner operations to Belarus.

Is Prigozhin definitely dead?

Andrew thinks so, but says “we should always leave open the possibility that there’s something going on behind the scenes. The last few years of news in Russia have been so crazy that anything is possible.” He recalls covering the press conference in 2018 concerning a Russian journalist who had supposedly been murdered, only for the reporter to turn up alive to take questions.

And it’s not the first time Prigozhin has been “killed” in a plane crash. Back in October 2019, Russian media reported that he may have been among the passengers on a plane that crashed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He soon emerged to insist that claims of his death had been exaggerated.

The picture is complicated by the fact that Prigozhin apparently often switched planes at the last minute for security reasons, and is believed to have body doubles – as well as those ridiculous disguises. Plus, says Andrew, “Prigozhin is a troll. He invented troll factories in St Petersburg. He loves to play with the media.”

How will this affect the war in Ukraine and beyond?

Not much, reckons Andrew. Prigozhin’s forces fought some of the fiercest battles over the last 18 months, but pulled back from the frontline after capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut in late May.

“Africa is the key,” says Andrew. “It might explain why Prigozhin was still alive this month. The question now is: can the Russian military and state take over Wagner’s operations? Because they are quite lucrative, and they’re also very important to spread Russian authority around the world.”

As mercenaries for hire, despots pay Wagner to fight, either in cold hard cash or in kind, whether in diamonds or gas.

What now for Putin and Wagner?

The Institute for the Study of War argued that Russian authorities likely moved to eliminate Prigozhin and his top associates as “the final step to eliminate Wagner as an independent organisation”.

Andrew thinks it will be very handy for Putin that the Wagner top brass are now dead: “You might be able to replace them and keep Wagner intact underneath, doing the same stuff in Africa, where they are in demand.”

For all that Prigozhin was an innovator, pioneering the idea of employing serving criminals as paid fighters, he is not a battlefield commander, says Andrew. “Russia has plenty of those. Beyond that, if they can command the loyalty of rank and file – if the mercenaries are willing to work for whoever takes it on – Wagner could carry on, perhaps under a different name.”

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