PRIGOJIN WAGNER. Did Yevgeny Prigojine die in a plane crash? According to Russian news agencies, Wagner’s boss was on the passenger list for a flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
[Updated August 23, 2023 at 8:31 p.m.] Nearly two months after an aborted rebellion against the Moscow regime, Yevgeny Prigozhin is said to have died in the crash of a plane which was to join Moscow and Saint Petersburg on Wednesday August 23. Indeed, according to the Russian agencies which quoted the air transport agency Rossaviatsia, the boss of the Wagner militia was on the passenger list of the plane.
According to the emergency services, all the passengers of the aircraft, three crew members and seven passengers, died. At the moment, eight bodies have been found according to Russian news agencies. The Russian Emergencies Ministry said the search was continuing around the crash site, near the village of Kujenkino, northwest of Moscow. An investigation has been opened for “violations of air transport security”.
For its part, it is another version that the Wagner group gave on Telegram. The paramilitary militia claimed that a second plane would have turned around and could carry Yevgeny Prigozhin: “Despite the fact that many channels write that Prigozhin is dead, he was able to fly in another plane”. Officially in exile in Belarus after his rebellion, Yevgeny Prigojine appeared in an undated video on Monday in which he could be seen in a desert landscape, dressed in camouflage.
Who is Yevgeny Prigojine, the man who thought Vladimir Putin faltered? A former delinquent, sentenced to twelve years in prison for “robbery” and “fraud” in the 1980s, he quickly became close to Vladimir Putin after his release. He gets his nickname “Putin’s cook” for having previously worked in the restaurant industry and for being the man of the Russian president’s dirty deeds. He met Vladimir Putin in 2001, when the latter would have chosen his restaurant in Saint Petersburg for his meeting with French President Jacques Chirac. From then on, the two men are referred to as relatives and Prigozhin, who has become an influential oligarch, is gradually transformed into a man in the shadows who will carry out the most shameful tasks in the Kremlin.
He is now known for being the head of the Wagner group, which he created in 2014. Although he preferred to remain in the shadows for a long time, Prigojine claims all his actions since the start of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022, and has become very active on Telegram where Wagner broadcasts his propaganda non-stop. The secret private army thus quickly became official and its leader inaugurated the opening of an office in Saint Petersburg, a few months after the start of the conflict.
This new media visibility, combined with the difficulties of the Russian army on the Ukrainian front, could be a sign of its desire to distance itself from Vladimir Putin. “As long as he is simply perceived as an executor of Vladimir Putin, the fate of the latter will also be his,” explained before June 24 Jeff Hawn, specialist in security issues in Russia and external consultant for an American research center in geopolitics, to France 24. A defeat of Putin in Ukraine would therefore be associated with him and his recent conflicts with the Russian general staff, until the escalation of June 24, were also signs of a certain distancing then that some saw him as a possible strongman of a future Russia without Putin.
In this context of the beginning of the conflict against Moscow, the head of Wagner was careful not to attack Vladimir Putin directly. His accusations were focused on the chiefs of staff and the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu against whom he had already multiplied criticism in recent weeks.
“There is no Russian state, no political chain of command. Who will obey? If Prigozhin is still alive and free in 24 hours there will be a new reality in Russia”, noted Friday evening the former champion of the chess world and democratic opponent Gary Kasparov on his Twitter account. 24 hours is finally what it took for Evgueni Prigojine to make the decision to change course and leave Russia, as confirmed by the Kremlin on Saturday evening. Vladimir Putin has lost a former ally who has become very troublesome…
