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This was published 1 year ago
Forget guns or poisoned tea, Putin decided Prigozhin warranted something more spectacular
Vladimir Putin continues to evolve into his persona as a vaudeville villain. His reign of death, fear and comically feigned innocence has convulsed Russia once more.
The warlord who led a failed mutiny against Putin two months ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has now met an untimely death in a plane crash.
Russian President Vladimir Putin.Credit: Reuters
It was “the least surprising news of the year,” says Peter Tesch, a former Australian ambassador to Moscow, who’d predicted that Putin would murder Prigozhin for his combined affronts of betrayal and humiliation.
But Tesch got the detail wrong. He’d foreseen death coming to Prigozhin in a cup of tea. Since moving on from his earlier preference of shooting his challengers, Putin has favoured poisoning them.
Russia’s president evidently decided that Prigozhin’s blatant threat to his regime demanded something more spectacular. It’s a measure of how badly the Wagner mercenary leader had damaged Putin.
“Putin and the regime that he oversees were wounded enough that a very public example needed to be made,” explains Vladislav Davidzon of the Eurasia Centre at the Atlantic Council.
It’s no coincidence that, just hours before Prigozhin’s aircraft was destroyed, Putin struck at one of his own top generals, sacking the chief of Russia’s air force, Sergei Surovikin, the man nicknamed General Armageddon for his brutal tactics leading Putin’s earlier war in Syria.
“Here’s this man, Surovikin, identified by many as Russia’s most capable general, he has all the traits except loyalty,” observes Kyle Wilson, Russian-speaking former Australian diplomat and intelligence analyst. Surovikin has been seen as close to Prigozhin.
“Putin says, ‘My authority needs to be demonstrated – Surovikin has to go and Prigozhin has to be killed’.” In Putin’s neo-feudal Russia, says Wilson, everything is forgivable except disloyalty.
But if the luridly spectacular airborne murder of Putin’s former ally and offsider is all about demonstrating Putin’s strength, one analyst poses this puzzle: “In the end, if Vladimir Putin is so powerful, why didn’t he arrest Prigozhin?” asks Pavel Luzin from the US think tank Centre for European Policy Analysis.
Instead of going through the farce of pretending it was merely an accident, why didn’t Putin move against Prigozhin openly, demonstrating his authority by arresting and trying him? Was he nervous about the reaction he’d meet from the Russian public or Prigozhin’s allies? Perhaps it’s a sign that Putin is not entirely confident that his writ would carry.
Tesch suggested another explanation – that Putin wanted to demonstrate that “I alone decide” rather than delegating authority to a court.
Putin’s future will be decided by three factors, according to Wilson. First will be the fate of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Second will be how the Russian people feel about their standard of living, which is worsening for most as the war grinds on.
Third, he says, will be the Trump factor. If Trump returns to the White House at next year’s US election, he’d be expected to curtail US support, and, therefore, NATO support, for Ukraine. This could only improve Russia’s odds of success.
In the meantime, Putin is restricted in leaving Russia because of the warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court for war crimes; he didn’t travel to a summit in South Africa this week because its government couldn’t guarantee his liberty.
And he remains on the defensive at home, wielding death and fear to hold power while pretending he’s not, trapped by his benighted war, in a prison of his own making.
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