When Falling out of a Window Is Just Too Subtle

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

 

Only two months ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s private Wagner Group militia, turned his army away from Ukraine’s battlefields and trained them on Russian targets. The Wagner Group executed a stunning advance into Russian territory, sacked the city of Rostov, and advanced north toward Moscow with the stated goal of forcing Vladimir Putin, at gunpoint, to execute some personnel changes in the Ministry of Defense.

 

The mutiny might have been the most successful armed revolt inside Russia since the Kronstadt uprising. It was certainly the most perilous threat to Putin’s leadership during his 20-year tenure as Russia’s undisputed leader — titular or otherwise. The rebellion was put down by a series of medieval concessions to the Wagner Group: the promise of a quasi-autonomous fiefdom in Belarus and all the spoils its mercenaries could extract from the battlefields of North Africa. The rebellion and its aftermath sent a message to other private military companies in Russia that all that stand between them and their wildest aspirations are 30,000 soldiers and the will to march on Moscow. Something had to be done. And on Wednesday, Putin reestablished the pecking order in Russia in rather spectacular fashion.

 

The chief of Russian mercenary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is believed to have been killed in a plane crash, Russian state media reported Wednesday. The aircraft, a business jet, crashed in the Tver region northwest of Moscow, with all 10 people onboard killed, according to Russian authorities.

 

Prigozhin’s death has not yet been independently confirmed, but Russian media’s eagerness to announce his demise is evidence enough of the Kremlin’s preference. Unconfirmed reports (supported by video evidence) show that Russian anti-aircraft fire was used to bring down the private jet. Still more unverified reports suggest that Prigozhin was joined on that plane by other senior members of Wagner’s leadership, including the infamous author of Wagner’s operational and tactical brutality, Dmitry Utkin.

 

You’d have to be pretty dense to pack the leadership of your vaguely regicidal private army into one airplane and fly it over territory controlled by the murderous autocrat you tried and failed to strong-arm. But given the trajectory of the Wagner mutiny, we can assume neither Prigozhin nor his deputies think too many moves ahead. And if reports that Putin engineered this outcome are verified, it sends an unmistakable signal to anyone in Russia who suffers delusions of grandeur similar to Prigozhin’s. Falling out of a window or tripping into an array of steak knives (or both) is a deniable way to dispense with undesirable elements. By contrast, using the power of the state to decapitate the Wagner Group is many things, but subtle isn’t one of them.