Yevgeny Prigozhin: Wagner Group Boss Joins Long List of Those Who Challenged Vladimir Putin and Paid the Price

Putin’s Purges
Though abrupt, his death is not unexpected. Under Putin, a former KGB operative himself, Russia has carried out several high-profile assassinations and assassination attempts, including in the UK and Germany, to go after alleged traitors and Putin critics.

Many opposition figures in Russia have either died mysteriously or been assassinated. The list includes figures such as Alexei Navalny (who survived novichok poisoning), former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, and journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Meanwhile, some regime critics may have thought themselves to be beyond his reach in the UK or other countries, have also been disposed of. These include oligarch and former friend turned critic, Boris Berezovsky, and former spies Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal, who were both poisoned (although Skripal survived) have been targeted.

Putin’s message here has been clear for two decades: opposition will not be tolerated and will probably have fatal consequences.

Prigozhin’s likely assassination reaffirms this message spectacularly. But it is not the only step that Putin has taken to reassert control. On the day of Prigozhin’s death, one of his presumptive allies in the military establishment, Sergei Surovikin – a former commander of Russian forces in Ukraine – was apparently dismissed as head of the Russian aerospace forces. This followed weeks of speculation following his disappearance after the Prigozhin mutiny.

Other top military officials critical of Russia’s conduct of the war in Ukraine, including the commander of the Russia 58th Combined Arms Army, Ivan Popov, were dismissed. Other officials, considered close to Prigozhin, including the deputy head of military intelligence, Vladimir Alexeyev, are still unaccounted for.

Outside the military, alleged critics of Putin’s war in Ukraine have not been safe either. A series of mysterious deaths struck fear into Russian oligarchs in the months after the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine began in February 2022. Since then, criticism from the Russian business elite has been muted.

The apparent assassination of Prigozhin would therefore seem to be business as usual for Putin. It was foreshadowed in the Russian president’s speech on June 24, the morning after Prigozhin’s mutiny began, when he vowed to punish the “traitors”, as he described them.

Back to Business as Usual?
Prigozhin’s demise also draws a line under the apparent power struggle within the Russian military. As the chief architects of the war in Ukraine, the defense minister, Sergey Shoigu, and chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov, are the most obvious beneficiaries of Prigozhin’s death and the wider purges of critics inside and outside the military.

Putin, and his inner circle, clearly have prevailed on this occasion. This is not surprising, given how little direct and public support Prigozhin received over the course of his mutiny. In this sense, Putin’s regime is still highly effective and has demonstrated its capacity to survive domestic challenges.

But the underlying problem – a disastrous military campaign in Ukraine – has not gone away with the death of Prigozhin. Putin may have silenced one of the most outspoken critics of the conduct of the war, and have others arrested or murdered, like prominent pro-war bloggers Igor Girkin and Vladen Tatarsky. But many who share Prigozhin’s misgivings without backing him publicly will have survived Putin’s clean-up operation.

Putin can be sure that they will now be extra careful not to stand too close to high windows or accept cups of tea from anyone connected with Russia’s security services. But this may not be the only lesson they have learned from Prigozhin’s demise – and that will likely worry the Kremlin and increase the paranoia of Putin and those around him.

Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.