PUTIN’S REVENGE
Prigozhin meets his maker: Payback time as Wagner Group’s leadership decapitated
It was what many felt was an accident waiting to happen. Two months after he seized a military base and led an abortive march on Moscow, killing 13 Russian Air Force members en route, Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin met his own fate in an air crash on Wednesday.
The Grey Zone Telegram channel, which is linked to the mercenary group, reported that “a hero of Russia and true patriot . . . died as a result of the actions of traitors to Russia”.
Julia Ioffe, a Russian-born American journalist who has closely followed his chequered career, says that when CIA Director Bill Burns was recently asked why Prigozhin was still alive, he said the mercenary leader was not out of the woods yet because, “Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback”.
On Wednesday, nine people reportedly died alongside him in the crash including the Wagner founder, Dimitry Utkin, who had named the organisation after his call sign, Wagner, who was also Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer, and other members of the high command.
Even in the very slim chance that it was poor piloting skills or a technical fault that caused the crash, the Wagner leadership has been effectively decapitated.
The company’s operations in Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine are likely to be absorbed into other agencies of the Russian state or closed down.
At the same time, there has been an apparent purge of Prigozhin’s allies in the military.
Prigozhin’s ally General Sergei Surovikin, the commander of the Russian aerospace forces, has been sacked.
However, Natasha Dukhan, senior investigator for The Sentry which did a major investigative report on Wagner Group titled “Architects of Terror”, warned that “the Kremlin’s strategy to bring the African continent further into its orbit of power and exploitation remains”.
Unimaginable brutality
Dukhan warned that the international community must not take its eyes off this entity that “utilises torture, mass rape, criminality and overwhelming terror for the purpose of domination”.
This frame grab taken from a video on the Telegram account of razgruzka_vagnera on 22 August 2023, shows the leader of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin as he addresses the camera at an undisclosed location. – The leader of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin said in a video published on 22 August 2023, that his group was making Africa “freer” and suggested he was on the continent. (Photo: Handout / Telegram / @ razgruzka_vagnera)
Prigozhin was the central pillar and the voice of the organisation. He built Wagner into a multi-purpose enterprise: part mercenary army, part Russian military intelligence front, part mining and business empire, and part propaganda, dirty tricks and cybercrime operation.
Wagner became known for its unimaginable brutality. It filmed, and released on social media, one of its own members being bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer.
The organisation participated in atrocities in the Central African Republic and Mali. In March 2022 Wagner, along with Malian government forces, slaughtered about 500 residents of the village of Moura, including children as young as five years old.
After the march on Moscow, Putin admitted what had long been denied – that Wagner was an arm of the Russian government and had received tens of billions of roubles in public money since its inception.
“From the Ministry of Defence, from the state budget, we fully financed this group,” Putin said.
Petty thief and killer
Prigozhin began his working life as a petty thief in the Soviet Union, burgling apartments in Leningrad. He was jailed for 12 years in 1981 for assaulting a woman and robbing her of her fur coat, earrings and boots.
He was released in 1990, at first setting up a hot dog stand and then opening several restaurants in St Petersburg which were hangouts for mobsters and oligarchs – and where presumably he first came to meet Putin and became known as Putin’s chef. Putin was to celebrate his birthday at Prigozhin’s boat restaurant.
He was like a Joe Pesci character out of the movie Goodfellas, the charm and the smiles disguising his true nature as a killer.
Through his connection with Putin, Prigozhin won lucrative catering contracts with the Russian army and the education department. By 2014, Wagner forces were engaged in assisting separatists in the war in Eastern Ukraine, before moving to fight alongside the Russian army in Syria.
Dirty tricks
It was as a propagandist and connoisseur of dirty tricks that Prigozhin must have endeared himself most to Putin.
Prigozhin set up the Internet Research Agency (IRA) which employed hundreds of bloggers and posters to swamp global social media with general hatred as well as pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
During the 2016 US election, his troll farm created thousands of fake social media accounts that reached millions of Americans, spreading disinformation about the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton, focusing on issues that divided the Democratic Party and helping elect Donald Trump.
Prigozhin and 13 others were indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller – and Prigozhin later bragged about his role in assisting Trump on behalf of the Russian state.
He soon moved on to Africa where the IRA launched social media disinformation campaigns in several countries including Sudan and Madagascar, and soon Wagner had boots on the ground in French-speaking West and Central Africa where the organisation had some of its greatest successes.
But under Prigozhin, the menace that Wagner posed was sometimes less than the reality on the ground.
African footprint
Wagner’s footprint in Africa remains limited to the Central African Republic, where it literally controls the government, and Mali, where it is assisting the military junta in fighting insurgents – not very successfully.
There are Wagner troops in Eastern Libya and gold mining operations in Sudan operating from areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces. They have offices in other countries but no apparent boots on the ground.
Prigozhin’s biggest impact came last year in Ukraine when he recruited tens of thousands of prisoners to join Wagner and bolster the flagging Russian war effort in Ukraine. An estimated 20,000 Wagner troops were reported killed in the battle for Bakhmut alone.
As his role within the Russian forces seemed to grow increasingly central, Prigozhin became more and more voluble, with frequent appearances on social media where he pitched himself as a man of the people.
As his ambition seemed to soar, he clashed with the military high command while recruiting his own loyalists in key positions. Leaked US intelligence documents claimed that he had made contact with Ukrainian forces and was offering them a separate deal.
Then came the 23 June 20023 march on Moscow and Putin’s warning that he would punish the traitor Prigozhin.
But nothing happened, even after Wagner shot down army planes and helicopters, killing 13 Russian servicemen.
For two months there has been an air of unreality as Prigozhin had gradually started to wind his way back on to social media. Early this week he claimed to be speaking from somewhere in Africa where he said he was working to make “Africa even more free”.
Little did he know those words would come shockingly true within days. Just not in the way he expected. DM
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I have never read a more biased piece of writing.
What on earth has the fact that Wagenr was Hitler’s favourite composer got to do with anything!?! That’s clearly an attempt to make subconscious comparisons and somehow make the reader think there’s a connection.
Biased in what way?
Yeah, according to Wiki, it was named after Utkin’s call sign, Wagner.
Naming the group makes a statement, and choosing the name of a non-Russian composer (the only famous Wagner) who is a favourite of a famous fascist doesn’t take a huge leap to come to this conclusion. A type of racist dog whistle, selected by a completely immoral genocidal murderer. Maybe he got it from Apocalypse Now, who knows?
Huh?
What other possible connection can you make between “Wagner” and Russia? And even if that comparison is faulty, what else about the report is so biased?
That really is a rather silly comment. SUBconscious comparisons?! I’d say it was a pretty overt comment, aimed at reinforcing the blatantly fascist nature of the Wagner group, its founder and Prigozhin.
Read deeper into the cult of hitler and other tyrants.
This is yet to be confirmed by Reuters and/or Bloomberg??
Did you bother looking before posting? Covered by every news outlet and agency worldwide
…or Putin …
The Wagner group is a next level monstrosity. An international company specialising in mercenary warfare and killing wherever it chooses.
What can be more undermining to democracy and world order?
America?
Especially America under Trump. Birds of a feather.
I see Trump still lives in your head….grow up and lets hear your views on demented biden’s marxist aims and destruction of America and his manifest disastrous presidency across all spheres of government and international affairs!!
Hmm. Something about a sword and living and dying?
And no doubt one for the perpetrator coming and going around.
Good riddance to bad rubbish! No tears for the Putin mini-me. If only some upset Wagnerite would eliminate the evil monster Putin as well, he would be doing the world a massive service and would be remembered and revered forever more! The diabolical Putin has the very same DNA flowing in his veins as the vile Stalin and Hitler. The former eliminated, besides millions upon millions of innocent citizens in the Great Famine and Great Terror, his own Generals and Marshalls plus anyone who was perceived as a threat (Trotsky among many others) – thanks also to the odious and neurotic communist system of denunciations. Fathers sold out their sons, vice versa etc. and anyone who had an axe to grind, be it jealousy, feeling insulted etc. Hitler did the same with the Ernest Rohm and the leaders of the Brownshirts and every one else neurotically perceived as a threat. This of course besides the Holocaust and millions of others who were murdered. Putin has the blood of hundreds of thousand innocent people (men, woman and children ) on his wicked hands. Chechnyians, Georgians, Syrians, Ukrainians etc. Many other nations to come if this Devil is not stopped! Anyone who dares to oppose or criticize him lands up dead, either through being poisoned, thrown from hospital windows or stairs or by an assassin’s bullet (FSB hitman) as has happened to countless journalists etc. And this is who our Cyril the spineless and hypocritical, and his putrid government support and grovel to!!
…And, even in more recent memory, the parallel to apartheid? Journalists being thrown out of windows or just disappearing, the youth shot and killed, detention without trial, jailing of opposition on trumped up treason charges…Russia is using exactly the same modus operandi that the ANC supposedly fought against. No conscience!
Great piece of writing in the conscious (actually also in the subconscious )
I’m surprised it took two months, putin waited for an opportunity that would include Prigozhin and other Wagner leaders.
Putin and his cronies took time in unwinding Prigozhin’s estate before his demise. Searching his residence, offices etc to make sure they could continue his very lucrative business.
This is a graphic example of Putin’s form of statesmanship. Rule by fear and intimidation by utilising monstrous psycopaths like Prigozhin to terrorize and kill citizens of other countries in order to subject them to Russian exploitation of their natural resources. If a hired killer steps out of line, shoot his plane down. And Putin is the man Ramaphosa supports and carries a torch for. A disgusting display of servility and arse kissing by our president and his International Relations minister Naledi Pandor. The ongoing destruction of our country will persist and accelerate unless this mob is voted out next year.
Yahya – let me assist you in understanding where Wagner comes from. The founder of the Wagner Group is Dmitry Utkin – a hardcore Russian ex GRU rightwing fanatic who idolizes Hitler, the Swatiska etc. Hitler’s most favoured composer was Wagner and in keeping with Utkin’s reverence for Hitler, he named his organization Wagner. Prigozhin only arrived later, after being released from prison as a lowlife hoodlum who raped, assaulted, stole etc. It is also ironic and in fact sickening and shows the hypocrisy and evil nature of Putin, that he funded Wagner with billions of dollars as his own private army and uses the excuse that the whole purpose his “special military operation” in Ukraine (in reality an illegal and full blown war of annihilation to wipe Ukraine out as a nation) is meant to neutralize the “Nazis” in Ukraine. All this whilst he has funded his very own fanatical Nazi at home to cause murder, destruction and mayhem. Also it is false and hypocritical of the diabolical Putin when he commemorates the Russian victory every year with old veterans over the Nazis.
In fact, stating that Wagner was Hitlers favourite composer is understating the connection. Wagner and his music were used very effectively to underpin and support Nazi ideology and propaganda in Germany.
Just a pity putin lost his standby flight ticket?….how these “people” sleep at night and go to church on Sundays!
Putins pretensions to being the tsar of a great power, but in reality his rotting empire runs as never before on lies, bribery and repression. And, as this killing shows, Russia’s ultimate authority is terror and the leadership of the ANC has forced South Africans against their will into being complicit.