A small private plane therefore crashed on Wednesday August 23, 2023 in the northwest of Moscow. Ten people on board, all died, according to Russian authorities. And among these passengers, Evgueni Prigojine, the boss of the Russian private militia Wagner, at the origin of a rebellion against the Russian general staff and the Minister of Defense, it was at the end of June. Cyrille Bret is a geopolitician, lecturer at Sciences Po Paris and co-author of the blog EurAsiaProspective.net.
RFI: Two months after the rebellion of Wagner, who had captured military sites and marched towards Moscow before finally giving up, is a possible involvement of the Kremlin in this death of Yevgueni Prigogine wrongly thought? ?
Cyrille Bret: Yes, it is hard to believe in a pure and simple accident, even if the possibility should not be ruled out. We immediately think of the clan war that is being waged and raging around the Russian president, and we also think of a purge that does not say its name, as I announced on June 24. Today we are reduced to conjectures, suppositions, suspicions.
We will never know what really happened, but we see three major scenarios stand out: pure and simple accident, which led to the end of Yevgueni Prigojine’s life. A clandestine action on the part of the enemies of Mr. Prigojine, that is to say a sabotage or an attack on the part of a clan of the armed forces. A clandestine operation directly sponsored by the Kremlin to get rid of the man who, exactly two months ago, challenged the leader.
And a fourth scenario, which is also not to be excluded, because it has already had occurrences, which is in fact a false disappearance. We don’t have Mr. Prigojine’s death certificate or autopsy, he may well have decided to disappear from the screens without dying.
It is not known if his body has been found at this time. No reaction for the moment from Vladimir Putin, what should we expect? A formal denial? A tribute ? Or radio silence ?
First of all, we have to see what the Russian press is doing this morning. Prigozhin is on the front page of all the major media in the form of an obituary, so it’s an official death certificate, although, you’re right to say, we don’t have the body. Next, the reaction from the Kremlin cannot be one of public homage, cannot be one of salvation since, as you recalled, exactly two months ago, it was accused of high- treason. It was through an inexplicable series of circumstances and internal Kremlin balancing acts that he managed to avoid punishment, even physical elimination at the time.
On the other hand, what is certain is that support for Prigojine, in particular, and for Wagner is already showing, in the streets of Moscow, on the Telegram channels. So Prigozhin’s memory is going to continue to be a force or an influence that the ruler of the Kremlin is going to have to reckon with.
The disappearance of Yevgueni Prigojine does not necessarily help Vladimir Putin?
In the short term, that obviously suits him, it allows him to simplify his organization chart, if I may say so, especially since he has just purged the second in command of the military operation in Ukraine. So it was a takeover that was predictable, that was announced.
But in the longer term, it deprives the master of the Kremlin of a lever of action, particularly in Ukraine, of course in Russia, to counterbalance the influence of the other clans around him, and more broadly, RFI has abundantly underlined, in Africa, since Wagner has become an almost official showcase of Russian action in Africa. So in the short term, it simplifies the deal, and in the longer term, it could actually announce a reconfiguration and therefore a temporary weakening of Putin’s influence on these different policies.
To return to the June rebellion episode, an agreement had been reached to end it. It involved the departure of Evgueni Prigojine to Belarus, joined, if he wished, by his militia. However, Prigojine continued to appear: in Africa, in any case, he pretended to be there in a video; in Russia, during the Russia-Africa summit in Saint Petersburg. And this crash took place between Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, which means, a priori, that it was on Russian soil. Does this mean that Prigozhin was always in a posture of defiance vis-à-vis Moscow?
In any case, impunity, and that was what was hard to bear for those he had challenged, whether they were the chiefs of the armed forces, therefore Guerassimov and Surovikin, and the Minister of Defense Shoigu, and this omnipresence of Prigojine seemed almost like a challenge a few weeks before this attempted coup.
In any case, Yevgueni Prigojine had not chosen to keep a low profile, had cultivated one of the furrows which had been the most fertile for him and his business, which was the unofficial and military influence of Russia in Africa. And he had continued in this posture of defiance, which would undoubtedly explain that his disappearance, if it is accidental, suits the Kremlin in the short term and in any case the armed forces in the short term, and this is what would explain if a hypothesis of sabotage, or quite simply of armed action against this device, is confirmed. It suits one of the clans in rivalry with Mr. Prigojine.
The agreement reached after the rebellion also provided that Wagner’s fighters could join the regular Russian army, is it likely that they will now that Prigozhin is dead? Is this the end of Wagner?
I was the first, I thought that this agreement would be applied, it was not applied, neither to Mr. Prigojine, nor to his assets, nor to his team, nor to Wagner’s irregulars, we will see what happens. pass. What is certain is that deprived of their two leaders, Prigozhin, the most publicized, and Utkin, the real founder of the Wagner militia, the Wagner troops will be, at least officially, deprived of their greatest support, and it is easier for the Russian servicemen to demand their integration into the ranks of the Russian army.
But again, the power system is obviously a struggle between clans, and the leader needs to put the different clans in competition, so it is quite possible that he keeps a tool, by having irregulars under a form or another: part of the Wagner contingent [serait] reinstated in the official, regular armed forces, [et] a [autre] party which could completely create another military society, with a goal which would be purely external, for example, African or Ukrainian.
The possible disappearance of Wagner, would not arrange the Russian army which relied all the same much on Wagner for its war in Ukraine? Is it a blow ?
To achieve military successes, it does not suit him. To maintain his prestige, it suits him, since the discrediting of the Russian armed forces in the invasion of Ukraine is obviously due to its failures, to its disorganization, but also due to the extreme media coverage that Mr. Prigojine, personally, did on his Telegram channel. And who talked a lot with his troops.
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