So that’s how Evguéni Prigojine’s story would have ended: with a video, shot on a cell phone, as usual. But this one is not filmed by the boss of Wagner to vociferate yet another diatribe against the Minister of Defense, Sergei Choïgou. It is the work of curious people, capturing the images of a small plane falling into a spin, somewhere in the Tver region, north of Moscow. He leaves behind a plume of smoke. One of its wings is missing. After a few seconds, it crashes. Yevgeny Prigojine is presumed dead – Russian authorities said he was on board, but his body has not yet been positively identified.
The Russian Civil Aviation Bureau has announced the opening of an investigation. But, by all accounts, the case is settled: Vladimir Putin has finally got rid of his rebellious lieutenant. “It seems that Putin punished the rebel, as he had promised the evening of his revolt”, writes political scientist Dmitri Kolezev. “Evgeny Prigojine died due to acts of traitor to Russia”, post for his part the Telegram channel Gray Zone, run by an officer of the Wagner group and very critical of the Kremlin.
Prigozhin was a dead man on borrowed time
Exactly two months ago, the outcome of the Wagner Group’s failed uprising stunned observers. Yevgeny Prigojine, whom Vladimir Putin, the previous evening, had publicly called a “traitor”, who had turned his weapons against the Russian state, occupied the city of Rostov, taken a general and the Deputy Minister of Defense prisoner, and whose troops were marching on Moscow, was simply going into exile in Belarus. The criminal investigation opened a few hours earlier was closed without explanation. Prigozhin, whom everyone considered to be no more than a dead man on borrowed time, managed to make an agreement with Vladimir Putin and kept his life safe. The admission of weakness was monumental for the Russian leader, and risked giving ideas to other mutineers. The Russian elite have just received a terrible warning.
Especially since, since his Belarusian exile, the boss of Wagner is far from being forgotten. He multiplies more or less discreet appearances in Russia, meets Putin in Moscow to settle the future of his private military company, even indulges in the luxury of appearing – in unauthenticated photographs – in the corridors of the Russia-Africa summit organized at the end of July. Its media and military empire is diminished but not destroyed. He comments on the coup d’etat in Niger, shows himself in combat gear in an African country and declares himself “ready to work to make Russia grow on all continents”. Obviously, he has not given up playing a role in Russian political life.
Wagner’s boss was on the passenger list of a plane that crashed in Russia on Wednesday August 23.
© / AFP
Did Prigozhin, by his behavior, violate the terms of his agreement with Putin? “A lively Prigozhin, full of ideas and energy, was clearly a walking problem for the regime, the embodiment of Putin’s political humiliation, writes on X (ex-Twitter) political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya. He had not forgiven him. He only needed him for a while after his mutiny, to gently dismantle Wagner in Russia and send him to Belarus under another command.”
There was still no official reaction, Wednesday evening August 23, to the news. But commentators close to the Kremlin tried, from the first moments after the crash, to accuse the Ukrainian secret services… without convincing many people.