Amidst all the remarkable events of last week, one stands out. It is that when Yevgeny Prigozhin’s jet exploded and plunged from the air, crashing northwest of Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin just happened to be remotely addressing the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg. 

We can be sure that this was not a coincidence, because we all know who was behind the killing. Even Prigozhin himself, back in April, spoke of being killed and specifically mentioned that Putin would make “the plane fall apart in the air”.

In an interview with The Financial Times in August, Christo Grozev, the founder of the whistle-blower organisation Bellingcat, predicted it too. “Putin went on TV and called Prigozhin a traitor. Everyone knows what they do with ‘traitors’ … within six months [Prigozhin] will be dead.” Even without formal confirmation from the wreckage, US officials are working on the assumption that the plane was brought down on the orders of Putin.

If indeed this was not a coincidence, then what was the message the Russian president wanted to convey to all those gathered in Johannesburg and watching around the world? As news of this brutal act of revenge spread to the Sandton restaurants and bars where delegates were gathering over expensive whiskies and steaks, what did he want them all to know?

First, he wanted the world to be reminded of who he is and that he is never going to change. As the author of Red Notice, Bill Browder, has warned for many years, Russia under Putin is simply a gangster state, with Putin the ultimate mobster boss. Like any mobster, he runs his rent extraction machine through mutually beneficial relationships with a coterie of subservient gangster warlords who depend on him more than he depends on them. 

Prigozhin was the most notorious of these lieutenants. All his power derived from being close to the boss. From this power he was allowed to build the Wagner mercenary empire across Africa and amass vast wealth. But in return for this, Putin demanded absolute loyalty. As soon as Prighozin broke this and betrayed Putin those months ago in his ill-fated march on Moscow, his days were numbered.

Indeed, by choosing this moment to enact revenge on his once-trusted consigliere, Putin removed his mask. He is no more than a gangster, albeit an unimaginably powerful one. His farcical televised “tribute” to the murdered Wagnerites could have been lifted straight from the pages of The Godfather. 

The second message was perhaps directed more specifically to those listening to his bizarre address at the summit. He wanted to remind them that they needed him just as much as Prigozhin did. He sells them weapons and cut-price oil and gas. He provides mercenaries when needed. More critically for some parties such as the ANC, he even funds them, as he has done through other loyalists such as Viktor Vekselberg. BRICS is simply a platform on which to expand the influence and scale of his extractive machinery and to provide a veneer of respectability on his shameful, bloody, vengeful empire.

Finally, Putin, in this extraordinary act of choreography, exposed what BRICS is all about. He was simply making the point that you are all no better than me. Let us stop the charade of any supposed economic benefits. Clearly, these are an illusion. South Africa’s trade deficit with China has increased since it joined BRICS in 2010. 

Rather, this grouping is simply a snub to the Western notion of a multilateral, rules-based, liberal order based on democracy. As Tim Cohen has written in Daily Maverick, “South Africa is now part of an organisation that essentially does not even vaguely have democracy as its guiding light.” Just as Putin murders wantonly, so do Saudi journalists end up chopped up in embassy basements in Istanbul, as does China imprison and torture more than a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang. 

As in the early 20th century when Europe divided itself along the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, which led to it tearing itself apart in the bloodiest war the world had ever seen, the world is now dividing itself into two groupings. 

One is led by the US, Nato and the West, and is comprised of democracies which, at least domestically, respect human rights and the rule of law. Members of the other group, with China at its centre, are largely autocracies that have scant respect for human rights and are desperate to unshackle themselves from the lecturing and posturing of the ageing, fading, complacent Old World. This is not to say the West is any better; in fact, it has been far more brazenly hypocritical. Rather, BRICS is a response to the duplicity of Guantanamo Bay, the abandonment of Gaddafi, the blatant and callous betrayal of the entire Afghan nation.

But let us be clear. Any mutterings from BRICS about the desire to uphold a multilateral world order, after last Wednesday, are false. How can any country be serious about a rules-based international order in an alliance with a man who murders a traitorous mercenary while addressing that very conference?

SA has chosen on which side of history it sees its future. Like Prigozhin, on this it will live or die. We can only hope it has fully considered its options. DM