The leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has died in a plane crash in Russia, months after leading an aborted coup attempt against Putin

 

The site of the crash in Russia. Fox News/Reuters. 

The leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has died along with nine other people in a plane crash in Russia. Fox News. Russia has claimed that Prigozhin was both on the plane and that he died in the crash. Prigozhin famously led 25,000 of his mercenaries on a march to Moscow but the situation was diffused and charges against him were dropped despite the failure of his coup attempt. Prigozhin was active in Africa where Wagner is often employed by local governments. It is unclear what he was doing back in Russia and some officials are skeptical that Prigozhin is really dead. 

My Comment:

If Prigozhin is really dead then I seriously suspect that this is not an accident and it would confirm that his coup attempt against Putin was indeed real and not maskirovka. I never quite fully understood the situation surrounding the coup attempt and Prigozhin himself was a bit of a mysterious figure. If this really was the end for him then I am guessing this was an assassination. 

If it was an assassination nobody should be surprised, the real question is why it took this long. Perhaps Putin's offer of amnesty to Prigozhin was legitimate and he violated it in some way, probably by returning to Russia. Doing so probably infuriated Putin as I would bet a condition of his deal was that he was not to return to Russia under any circumstances. Indeed, no news source I have read has said why Prigozhin was in Russia when he was supposed to be in Belarus or Africa. 

It's possible that it wasn't the Russians that did this though. Prigozhin had a lot of enemies outside of Russia, including the CIA. I doubt any of them were more mad at him than Russia was but it would make sense for the CIA to do this as it would increase tensions between Putin and any Prigozhin loyalists still in Wagner. Still, it seems pretty far fetched but I thought I should mention the possibility. 

Some people are saying that this too was a maskirovka mission to mislead the west into thinking Prigozhin is dead. That is extremely unlikely to me as why would you kill 10 people just to get Prigozhin off the radar of the west, including some who were truly innocent, like the crew of the plane? It makes little sense for Putin to fake the death of a man he is at odds with. Prigozhin himself could have faked his death but if that was the case Russia probably would have seen through the deception fairly quickly. 

I guess I could point out that this could indeed be an accident but that seems about as likely as Jeffrey Epstein actually killing himself. Given the fact that the man launched a coup attack against Russia and Putin has killed threats to his rule before I don't think anyone would seriously consider this an accident even if that's indeed what it is. It's just too big of a coincidence. 

Some people are wondering what Wagner will do in the aftermath of this with the NAFO types somehow convinced that Wagner will march on Moscow again and overthrow Putin in the name of their former dead boss. That seems like wishcasting to me, I doubt that the Wagner troops would do much. Most of them were not onboard with the coup attempt in the first place and the ones that were aren't going to be a big enough force to take on Putin. 

As for Prigozhin himself, I have to say that the guy struck me as a fool. He was always a strange person with a strange history, how many chefs end up creating a PMC and going off to Africa to play warlord? But picking a fight with Putin? It never made any sense to me and he always struck me as a man who didn't know when to shut up. Had he simply fought the war in Ukraine and kept his mouth shut and not tried his insane coup he would still be alive today.