Ukraine Russia War: The real reason US intel says Vladimir Putin killed Wagner boss Prigozhin

US intelligence sources have revealed Vladimir Putin didn’t kill Yevgeny Prigozhin for the march on Moscow, but because the mutiny leader took this ‘unforgivable’ step too far.

Vladimir Putin did not immediately have Yevgeny Prigozhin killed after the march on Moscow but instead assassinated the mutiny leader after his Wagner mercenaries threatened NATO’s borders, according to US intelligence sources.

Fearing the US and its NATO allies would be drawn directly into the war in Ukraine by Wagner intrusions into Poland airspace, the US believes Putin had the group’s leader and top commanders shot out of the sky for the “unforgivable” breach.

“That was it,” said a US intelligence officer familiar with the matter.

Prigozhin was among 10 passengers and crew who died in a fiery plane crash north of Moscow, just days after he reappeared from his post-mutiny exile.

Vladimir Putin killed Yevgeny Prigozhin because Wagner threatened NATO border countries and refused to leave Africa, according to intel sources. Picture: AFP

While Putin had banished remaining Wagner forces to Belarus in the aftermath of their rebellion, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Prigozhin was sidelined in an historically Russian way for his “troublesome” threats to NATO countries.

Hersh is a veteran war correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for revealing the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, and later went on to cover the Watergate scandal for The New York Times.

He was the first to report that the bombing of Russia’s Nord Stream underwater gas pipeline was ordered by US President Joe Biden and executed by the CIA, a claim the White House denies.

“By early August there were reports of border tensions as the remnant of the Wagner Group made a series of intrusions into the airspace of Poland, and troublesome threats at the borders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland,” Hersh wrote in his Substack newsletter.

“For Putin, triggering complaints from NATO countries was an unforgivable breach. “

On August 4, the US Department of Defence said there was an “incursion into Polish airspace by Belarusian aircraft”, sparking Poland’s Defence Minister to deploy troops to the border and threaten an armed response.

It came as about 100 Wagner mercenaries moved toward the Polish border, sparking fears that Wagner fighters were preparing for a “hybrid attack” like the one used to annex the Donbas and Crimea in Ukraine.

The plane crash that killed Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin. Picture: Supplied

“The helicopters are armed and ready for combat. There are some very experienced pilots with full flight authorisations, there are pilots here who used on-board armament and missiles in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Sokolowski said, according to TVP.

“If there is anything of concern, they will not hesitate to use armaments.”

Dmitri Alperovitch, a Russia expert and a co-founder and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington, D.C.-based geopolitics think tank, said that the assassination of Prigozhin “was business, not revenge”.

Alperovitch said the idea the killing was revenge for the aborted mutiny was inconsistent with the way Putin struck deals, and his actions in meeting with Prigozhin at the Kremlin a mere week after the armed revolt.

“The theory that Russia’s president was simply trying to lull Wagner’s leader into a sense of safety before ordering a bomb to be placed on his plane is also illogical. The Kremlin had numerous opportunities to order Prigozhin’s death during his freewheeling travels across Russia over the past two months,” Alperovitch wrote in Foreign Policy.

He said that it was Prigozhin’s continued moves with the Wagner group in Belarus and Africa, against Putin’s wishes, that ultimately led to his demise.

“The more likely explanation for why Putin ultimately ordered the assassination is that it was Prigozhin, not Putin, who had gone back on their June agreement mediated by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko,” he said.

“There was one part of his important business interests he was not willing to give up — his security and mining operations in Africa.”

Prigozhin emerged from his Belarusian exile in a video from Africa published on August 21. He was killed two days later.

Originally published as Ukraine Russia War: The real reason US intel says Vladimir Putin killed Wagner boss Prigozhin