Is it possible Putin didn't have him executed? I suppose so, albeit very unlikely.
Anyone who thinks Vlad is going to back down in Ukraine or allow his adversaries at home to threaten him is delusional.
Wagner Mercenary Chief Prigozhin Dies in Russia Plane Crash
The paramilitary group leader was on jet that went down northwest of Moscow
By Yaroslav Trofimov and Thomas Grove, WSJ
Updated Aug. 23, 2023 8:14 pm ET
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed Wednesday after a plane he was aboard crashed northwest of Moscow, according to Russian authorities. Prigozhin led a short-lived mutiny attempt against the Kremlin in June.
Shortly after 6 p.m. Moscow time on Wednesday, an Embraer jet carrying Wagner paramilitary group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a short-lived June uprising that challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority, abruptly disappeared from flight-tracking radar screens northwest of Moscow. Videos posted by bystanders showed the plane, missing a wing, spiraling to the ground.
About an hour later, Putin—who since the abortive mutiny has sought to project the strength of his grip on power—stepped up to a lectern in Kursk, about 500 miles away. He made no reference to the crash and instead launched into a speech glorifying Russia’s victory over the Nazis in World War II and lauding the men now fighting his war in neighboring Ukraine.
It was the end of the latest chapter, and likely the start of the next one, in Russia’s violent politics as the country’s losses in Ukraine mount, fueling deepening rifts in the upper ranks of the military and the governing elite. The war, unleashed by Putin in February 2022, is the deadliest conflict for the country since World War II and has already caused profound damage to Russia’s economy and social fabric.
Russian civil aviation authorities said Prigozhin and two other top Wagner commanders were killed when his plane went down. The government said it was investigating the cause of the crash. Social-media channels close to the Wagner group, which has fought from Ukraine to Africa, however, asserted that the plane had been destroyed by a Russian military antiaircraft missile.
If Prigozhin’s plane was indeed deliberately shot down, it would amount to a very public execution of a man who, after years as a dedicated and trusted ally of the Kremlin, turned into the most serious threat to Putin in the Russian president’s 23 years in power.
In the eye-for-an-eye politics in Putin’s Russia, loyalty is paramount.
Prigozhin’s death sends an unnerving signal to the country’s elite which, according to insiders and Western intelligence assessments, has grown increasingly unhappy with Putin, his handling of the mutiny earlier this summer and his overall handling of the war.
“Russia’s elite will see this as revenge exacted for rising up against the Kremlin, and it’s a move that makes it clear to everyone that Putin is still in control,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of Russian focused political consultancy R.Politik.
Prigozhin often publicly criticized Russia’s top brass for incompetence, reflecting a growing criticism from commanders on the ground in Ukraine. While Prigozhin had largely stayed quiet after his mutiny, reports of his appearances on social media across Russia gave fodder to detractors of the Kremlin’s war effort.
But a public elimination of Prigozhin could have consequences for Russia, even on the battlefield where he gained popularity in part by delivering expletive laden broadsides against Russia’s notoriously corrupt military commanders.
Wagner-linked social-media accounts called the former businessman a hero, while accusing those who stood behind his death of treason.
“The murder of Prigozhin will have catastrophic consequences. The people who have ordered it have no idea about the mood and the morale inside the army,” Russian military analyst and correspondent Roman Saponkov wrote on Telegram.
An adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine described the downed plane as a message to Russian elites against disloyalty to Putin.
Prigozhin caught the world’s attention when he launched a mutiny precisely two months ago, on June 23, taking over the southern city of Rostov and marching on Moscow as he demanded the ouster of Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov.
For months, he had accused defense ministry leadership of refusing to provide him with necessary ammunition for his Wagner forces’ drive on the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. His forces took the city this year, handing Moscow one of its only recent battlefield victories.
Prigozhin’s rebellion ended after a deal was struck between Putin and Prigozhin under which Wagner would move its operations to neighboring Belarus and its leaders would receive immunity. At the time, Wagner shot down several Russian military aircraft.
President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who helped broker the agreement, later said that Prigozhin had returned to his hometown of St. Petersburg. A video released this week featured Prigozhin, apparently in Africa, seeking new recruits for Wagner.
Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns, in remarks in Aspen last month, predicted that Putin, whose carefully calculated aura of strength was damaged by the Wagner uprising, would sooner or later exact revenge for the humiliation.
“Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback,” Burns said at the time. “If I were Prigozhin, I wouldn’t fire my food taster.”
Following his mutiny, Prigozhin mainly disappeared from public view, largely abandoning the role he had cultivated for himself as a chief detractor of the Kremlin top brass and Wagner’s best promoter. When he did reappear from time to time, either in a military tent, shown to be in his underwear, or meeting with delegates of a Russia-Africa summit, his doings were largely a mystery.
Prigozhin grew up on the same St. Petersburg streets as Putin and became close to him through his Concord catering agency, which the Kremlin called on regularly to deliver sumptuous feasts inside the Russian seat of power and at Putin’s various residences.
Those who knew Prigozhin said he was adept at making himself liked, a skill he put to use to gain the trust of the president and his inner circle, they said. In 2014, he came forward with an offer to manage a private military company, which operated in places like Ukraine and Syria in the Kremlin’s interests. Wagner also expanded into Africa, where Prigozhin used it primarily as a vehicle to make money in the diamond and gold trade while operating as personal protection forces for the Central African Republic’s government.
Prigozhin later went on to own an online propaganda operation, the Internet Research Agency, that interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to the FBI. A U.S. arrest warrant was issued for him in 2018.
Prigozhin’s status rose sharply with the start of the war. As he sought to boost his Wagner army, he was given permission to recruit from the country’s vast prison system and pushed his soldiers to advance in eastern Ukraine. Through brutal fighting, Wagner became infamous for its custom of executing deserters, often with a sledgehammer.
The Embraer jet owned by Prigozhin went off radar about 160 kilometers northwest of Moscow, according to a Wall Street Journal review of data from the flight-tracking service FlightRadar24. The plane was cruising at about 28,000 feet before it disappeared shortly after 6 p.m. Moscow time.
Greyzone, a popular Telegram channel close to Prigozhin, said his plane had been brought down by the Russian Defense Ministry’s air defense systems. Several other supporters of Wagner on Russian social media expressed their outrage, calling for abandoning their front line positions in Ukraine and focusing on injustices inside Russia.
Russia’s civil aviation authority said that Dmitry Utkin, Wagner’s top commander, was also aboard the crashed plane.
The Pentagon declined to comment about the crash and whether Prigozhin was on board, saying it was reviewing intelligence to make its own determination.
President Biden, asked about the Russian plane crash, said, “You may recall, when I was asked about this by you, I said ‘I’d be careful what I rode in.’ I don’t know for a fact what happened but I’m not surprised.”
Jack Gillum, Vivian Salama and Nancy A. Youssef in Wa
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