Putin Destroys a Rival
By Mac William Bishop
August 26th, 2023
IT’S HARD TO imagine anyone was particularly surprised at the sudden demise on Wednesday of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the ultranationalist entrepreneur who founded the mercenary Wagner Group. An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin ever since the former KGB agent made the transition to local politics in post-Soviet-collapse Saint Petersburg in the 1990s, Prigozhin died when the business jet in which he was flying crashed in a field northwest of Moscow – only two months after a public falling out with his boss.
“I want to express my most sincere condolences to the families of all the victims. It’s always a tragedy,” Putin said in a televised speech the day after the crash. “I had known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the start of the nineties.”
“He was a man with a difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life.”
One of those serious mistakes was when Prigozhin challenged Putin’s rule in a mutiny on June 23.
