The message in Prigozhin’s death

The only surprise about Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s apparent death in an aircraft crash near Moscow is that he survived for the time he did after his abortive June mutiny over Vladimir Putin’s handling of the war in Ukraine. Mr Putin, as CIA director William Burns noted last month, is “the ultimate apostle of payback”. After the insurrection, which included what was for the Russian tyrant an acutely embarrassing attempted march on Moscow by Wagner forces, Mr Putin declared himself to be capable of forgiving some things, but “betrayal” was not among them.

Those who have had the temerity to criticise Mr Putin, a former KGB colonel who is an admirer of the dark arts of political murder expounded by Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s notorious secret police chief, have, of course, been turning up dead for most of the 23 years he has been in power in Moscow. Deaths such as those of Russian tycoon Pavel Antov, who fell from a hotel window in India in December after criticising the Ukraine invasion, and oil magnate Ravil Maganov, who did the same and fell from a hospital window in Moscow last September, reflect the interminable ruthlessness and intolerance of Mr Putin’s murderous regime and the way it deals with critics. So, too, do deaths such as that in 2013 of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who fled to Britain after he fell out with Mr Putin and was found dead at his Berkshire home, and the outrageous attempt made in 2018 to kill Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Britain using Novichok.

What led to Mr Prigozhin’s private Embraer jet exploding into a fireball on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg remains unclear. But there will be no surprise that a post linked to Mr Prigozhin’s Wagner forces on the Telegram messaging service claimed Russian surface-to-air missiles ringing Moscow destroyed the aircraft.

Mr Prigozhin was unquestionably a dreadful individual. He wanted more killing in Ukraine, not less. His forces were responsible for many of the most appalling human rights abuses and war crimes Russia has been committing in Ukraine. There is a message too for the West, however, in what appears to be Mr Prigozhin’s spectacularly choreographed assassination – that it must redouble its determination to do everything needed to ensure Mr Putin is defeated in his colonial onslaught against Ukraine, and an end brought to the appalling atrocities he is committing.