A
plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary chief who led a
short-lived mutiny two months ago, crashed today in a sparsely populated
area northwest of Moscow. According to Russian media,
Prigozhin and at least one of his top commanders are dead. As is always
the case with breaking news, there is much we don’t know, but the sight
of Prigozhin’s jet falling out of the sky suggests that Russian
President Vladimir Putin has conducted a public execution of a man who
was once a trusted friend but later provided the greatest challenge that the Russian dictator has ever faced.
Here’s
what we do know. The aircraft was one of Prigozhin’s personal business
jets. The plane, a widely used Embraer Legacy 600, took off from Moscow
and likely was headed toward St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s base of
operations. It was flying at 28,000 feet before it plunged to earth, according to flight-tracking data. A second jet, also believed to belong to Prigozhin, then turned around and landed safely in Moscow, but Russia’s aviation ministry has confirmed that Prigozhin and the Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin were listed as passengers on the crashed jet.
This is functionally the end of the Wagner Group, which has been among the most effective
Russian fighting units in Ukraine. But killing Prigozhin and his
lieutenants makes sense, at least according to the Mafia logic that
governs Putin’s Kremlin. Prigozhin not only threatened Putin’s
authority; he humiliated him. During Prigozhin’s ragged rebellion, Putin was visibly furious, but he soon agreed to meet Prigozhin for a discussion in Moscow.
For a gangster boss like Putin, having to meet with the man who
betrayed him must have been intolerable: The Russian president has
reportedly ordered people killed for far less than marching on the capital.
If
the plane crash was an execution, however, plenty of questions remain.
Why now? And why in Russia? There are several indications that this was
not a random aviation accident, but a signature move by the Putin regime
to remind Russians, and especially Russia’s elites, that no one
survives opposing the Kremlin’s master.
The
timing issue may not be all that puzzling. (Why Prigozhin risked being
in Russia at all is a larger mystery, but he is, or was, legendarily
arrogant.) Although many in both Russia and the West expected Putin to
move against Prigozhin almost immediately after the Wagner rebellion
last June, his patience may reflect his insecurity. Prigozhin’s almost
effortless success in occupying the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, and
the ease with which he marched thousands of men to within some 200 miles
of the capital, must have enraged and terrified Putin. The Russian
president has probably spent weeks huddled with his most trusted
security and military subordinates trying to figure out exactly who knew
what about Prigozhin’s plans.
Rooting out a conspiracy takes time; so does planning a murder. The initial deal between the Kremlin and Prigozhin, brokered
by Belarusian President (and Putin crony) Aleksandr Lukashenko, allowed
Prigozhin and his men to leave Russia and take shelter in Belarus. But
because of that deal, Putin couldn’t kill Prigozhin in Belarus without
making a fool of Lukashenko. Likewise, although Prigozhin traveled in
dangerous areas—yesterday, he released a video of himself
in which he claimed to be in the Sahel—killing him far from home in a
place such as Africa might have left some doubt about how he died, or
whether he died at all.
Blowing up a plane flying out of Moscow two months to the day
after Prigozhin’s rebellion ended, however, sends an unambiguous
message. Unless a bomb was on board, only a military system could shoot
down a plane at 28,000 feet, and only a Russian military system would be
present so deep inside Russia. (The reported crash site is more than
100 miles northwest of Moscow.) The Russian Ministry of Defense—the
object of Prigozhin’s fury during his brief rebellion—would have to be
involved in an attack at that distance and altitude. If Putin wanted to
send a message that Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu was still
in favor and that Prigozhin had to pay for his insolence, this was a
clear way to do it.
Taking
down a business jet is also a message to Russia’s elites, who rely
heavily on private aviation to get around the country. If Putin is
willing to reach out and kill Prigozhin in broad daylight over Russia,
no one is safe. (Recall as well that Putin himself is reported to be jumpy about flying; he travels around Russia in a special train, much like Stalin did in his day.)
One
other event in particular suggests a link to Shoigu in this regard: The
same day that Prigozhin’s plane went down, two Russian outlets reported
that General Sergei Surovikin had been removed from his post as the
commander of Russian aerospace forces. Surovikin, nicknamed General
Armageddon, was one of the few competent Russian field commanders in
Ukraine, but like a series of other Russian generals, he was scapegoated
for Russia’s poor military performance and relieved of command. When
Prigozhin began his march, Surovikin made what looked very much like a
coerced appearance in a video, with a gun in his lap,
asking the mutineers to stand down. Rumors flew in Moscow that he knew
of Prigozhin’s plans and supported them; he was soon detained
(“resting,” according to a Russian official) and disappeared from public view.
If
Prigozhin’s plot was aimed at Shoigu with Surovikin’s connivance, then
destroying his jet in flight using aerospace assets that might have once
been under Surovikin’s command is like throwing a Defense Ministry
calling card on the burning bodies. Shoigu might be hated, and Surovikin
might have been respected, but—again, to put this in a Mafia context—no
one takes a shot at an underboss without permission.
As
Ian Fleming’s villain Goldfinger warned James Bond: Once is
happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action. It’s
possible that Prigozhin’s jet suffered a random mishap. It’s possible
that the mishap took place exactly two months to the day after
Prigozhin’s mutiny. It’s possible that the head of Russia’s air force
was relieved at the same time that all this took place. But that’s a
hell of a lot of coincidences, especially in a country where few things
of importance happen without direction from Red Square.
Prigozhin
has almost certainly been living on borrowed time since last June. But
if he is dead in today’s crash, Vladimir Putin has taken his revenge in
spectacular fashion. Still to be determined, however, is whether another
murder will be enough to quell the growing instability in the streets,
boardrooms, and barracks of Russia.
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