His private jet “crashed.” I must say it’s a nice change from falling out of a window, though still a standard (those who have reason to believe powerful people want them dead should not fly in private planes.)
There were other people in the plane and they may not have “had it coming” (I don’t know) but Prigozhin was a piece of human garbage whose prison sentence was, for among things, choking awoman so he could rob her.
I won a bet with a friend on this, who thought that Prigozhin couldn’t be taken out without causing a clash with his troops.
This is classic: what Putin did was separate Prigozhin from his loyal troops so he wouldn’t have to fight them all, then take him out. The delay was to let those Wagner members who were still loyal to Prigozhin realize the loss. (The remains of Wagner will now mostly be integrated into the military.)
Prigozhin had to killed or put in prison. Putin could not allow him to be seen to prosper after he launched a coup attempt, however abortive that attempt was. Others might get the idea they could take a run at the king and if they failed, no big deal.
Remember that Prigozhin received no support from the Russian establishment: not one governor or senior official; no military support (hardly surprising after he alienated them by attacking a senior officer and constantly denigrating them.)
Prigozhin was a fool, he thought he was bigger and more popular than he was, and he paid the price.
Putin’s “weakness”, such as it is, comes from the simple fact that he is old and everyone knows nature will force him to leave at some point. He doesn’t have another twenty years at the top, and he has no obvious designated successor, so people are starting to jockey to replace him and for those who aren’t in the running, to pick sides, as you often can’t remain neutral. That said, his polling remains good, the military is loyal enough, and while there are some economic issues, they aren’t (yet, or perhaps ever) such as to cause him concern.
Remember the rebellion trifecta: an elite faction, the enforcer class unwilling to intervene, and a popular faction. Prigozhin tried to neutralize the enforcers by attacking while most of the pointy part of the military was at war, but he didn’t get any of it.
A palace coup remains possible, but at least for now, anything else is very unlikely.
“You come for the king, you best not miss.”
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profan
>>Remember that Prigozhin received no support from the Russian establishment: not one governor or senior official; no military support
Surovikin supposedly was sympathetic of Prigozhin
Failed Scholar
I understand the logic, but this really is a terrible look for Russia all around. Prigozhin should have been arrested and handled via the law. They really never left the mafia-state 1990s behind them.
mago
Smells like the CIA. Putin would use the court system if he wanted to go after Prigozhin.
StewartM
Prigozhin’s error was not emigrating to the US, where he could have staged a coup, incited violence, stolen top secret documents, and get polite inquires from the DOJ if they could pretty-please conduct a search only after prolonged discussions with his lawyers. Meanwhile, the majority of one political faction would make him ruler even if in prison, even though its leaders secretly detested him. Having his own personal army at his command might be a hazardous occupation for its members, but not for him.
Oh, and strangling one of the poors in order to rob her? Maybe punishable here by a fine on his corporation(s), the cost of which will be passed on to customers.
Maybe Russian justice is more equal than American? It’s certainly faster.
Soredemos
I figured it would have been longer though, a year or more, before he d faded from media coverage and then mysteriously died in a more plausibly deniable scenario like a mountain road car crash or something.
Also interesting is that Dmitry Utkin, the actual founder of Wagner, was apparently killed on the plane as well.
NR
Utkin, Wagner’s second in command, was also on the plane. Another garbage human being who won’t be missed.
Prigozhin was an idiot if he didn’t see this coming. He probably could have stayed alive longer if he’d gone to his African holdings and stayed there. But who knows.
Regardless, the message this sends to anyone thinking about doing the same is “don’t stop” and “don’t take the deal.”
Willy
I can always tell somebody who’s never gotten out much, or has lived an extremely sheltered life, or is “faith-based-addled” or is just plain ignorant of all the human goings on around them, when they cannot discern anything Dark Triad.
Negotiation is a favorite Dark Triad behavior. Not to work out anything mutually agreeable but to probe for any weaknesses which can be later used to destroy whoever pissed em off.
GrimJim
“When you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die. There is no middle ground.”
Geoffrey Dewan
Moral: If you shoot at the King, don’t miss.
someofparts
Taking out somebody by bringing down their private plane stuck me, at first blush, as so very … American. Practically a cottage industry in this hemisphere.
VietnamVet
The murder of Prigozhin and two top lieutenants shows the fate of all mercenaries. “Mercenaries … are useless and dangerous. And if a prince holds on to his state by means of mercenary armies, he will never be stable or secure… disunited, ambitious, undisciplined, [and] disloyal;…valiant among friends, among enemies cowardly” — Niccolò Machiavelli
The tragedy is that the mercenary based NATO and Russian Empires will both continue the slaughter of Ukrainian conscripts to increase corporate profits. The writing is on the wall. The global private-jet elite are so divorced from reality that the proxy world war will keep escalating making money for the corporate-state until the first use of tactical nuclear weapons. There is no way out. The future is clear, skedaddle away as fast as you can; if you can. Donald J Trump’s Texas mug shot is a glimpse of the future.
bruce wilder
In America, we assassinate the good guys.
GrimJim
“Taking out somebody by bringing down their private plane stuck me, at first blush, as so very … American. Practically a cottage industry in this hemisphere.”
My first thought when I heard of the crash was whether Putin had hired the same guys that killed Wellstone…
different clue
@VietnamVet . . . .
Skedaddle away? Skedaddle away where?
The best that even the best-off people reading this blog will be able to do is to go gray and “skedaddle in place”.
Feral Finster
“I understand the logic, but this really is a terrible look for Russia all around. Prigozhin should have been arrested and handled via the law.”
Exactly. Why not arrest the man on the tarmac.
bruce wilder
I understand the logic . . .
Doesn’t the evidence of the event indicate that you don’t understand the logic?
If “the law” as established was sufficient to prevail, there would not have been a mutiny or even a private military company like Wagner to begin with. Private mercenary companies are clearly illegal under Russian law and Wagner existed under a mysterious special dispensation from a weak Ministry of Defense.
Russia really has not moved that far from the “mafia-state”. Reporting on the political culture of Russia in the West is of very poor quality, overwhelmed by Russophobic propaganda, but the reality remains that local and regional government and major business enterprise has not evolved all that far from “the mafia-state”. Putin cobbled together a motley crew for the Special Military Operation, like a Westeros House calling in its bannermen or a Don Corleone calling in past favors.
It is lovely to think that the Russian judicial system might become strong enough to handle a Prigo, and maybe this is actually a step in that direction. In the game of power, it sets a precedent that will prevent anyone from believing in a gentle deal with Putin. And, Putin has made a speech expressing himself in terms that I think make clear that he knows Prigo had an admiring following, which he is bound to respect.
That Putin did not want a prolonged legal contest or dispute to create a misimpression is not surprising.
GrimJim
“I understand the logic, but this really is a terrible look for Russia all around. Prigozhin should have been arrested and handled via the law. They really never left the mafia-state 1990s behind them.”
Realize, we are in one of the worst timelines… They call this one “Mafia World,” because the end game to this global civilization is a series of kleptocratic kakistocracies… In other words, Mafia states.
When Trump wins next year, the whole global house if cards falls… Quickly. Nationalist reactionary strong men rise to rule amongst the shattered, ruined nation states.
Putin will seem like a freaking saint when Trump starts going after his enemies. And then his followers will follow suit, all the way down…
Assassinations like Wellstone and Prigozhin will be the least of the moral outrages.
mago
Exactly FF.
Why operate crass and obvious?
One doesn’t survive at power’s pinnacle by executing ham fisted maneuvers such as blasting a supposed adversary’s plane out of the sky.
One goes suave.
Again, this smell like the twisted Ivy League boys and girls idea of a big league play.
Their allowances should have been cut off in childhood.
someofparts
Well, here is another take on the crash that I find persuasive.
https://www.indianpunchline.com/whos-afraid-of-prigozhin-and-wagner/
“Prigozhin was a dead man walking for staging such an idiotic act, after his security cover was withdrawn by the state. Imagine ex-president Barack Obama without secret service protection after the murder of Osama bin Laden — or Mike Pompeo and Trump walking around without security after murdering Soleimani.”
bruce wilder
Again, I don’t see that the evidence supports your surmise.
Putin has survived at the pinnacle of power for more than 20 years. And, he’s made deals with several devils along the way. Ramzan Akhmatovich Kadyrov, for example, was another of that motley crew manning the SMO and he was and is way scarier than Prigo.
Also, plane crashes are eminently deniable, brief and to the point. All we have left is conjecture as to the principal perpetrators and, of course, the result. (I certainly don’t know the “players”. People, who say things like “nothing happens in Russia without Putin’s say-so” certainly don’t know Russia; they say that because they don’t recognize anyone else’s name. It is quite possible that someone did the boss a welcome favor while taking personal revenge.) I would say that Putin’s eulogy for Prigo confirmed in my mind that it was done with his approval and to avenge the insult of the mutiny, whether that approval came before or after the event.