But it undermines the notion that Russia functions like a normal state
Mr Prigozhin’s Embraer business jet climbed to nearly 30,000 feet before suddenly falling in the Tver region near Moscow after less than 30 minutes in flight, according to public tracking data. All ten people on board were killed, and Mr Prigozhin was on the passenger list, according to Russia’s aviation agency and state media. Dmitry Utkin, a senior figure in Mr Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, and the commander of the column which marched on Moscow in June, was also listed as a passenger.
A senior source in Ukrainian intelligence said several figures in Russia were enraged enough to want Mr Prigozhin dead, including Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defence minister, a frequent target of Mr Prigozhin’s irate video messages over the summer. Nonetheless, an operation of this sort could not have gone ahead without authorisation from Vladimir Putin himself. “I don’t know for a fact what happened but I’m not surprised,” said Joe Biden, America’s president.
The impact on African countries, where Wagner was and remained active, is more uncertain. Mr Prigozhin had reportedly been in Africa, attempting to prevent the, Russia’s military intelligence agency, from pushing his forces out of the continent. Wagner is not the only mercenary firm on the continent, and African leaders in need of muscle will not much care whether Russian troops answer to Mr Prigozhin or another Kremlin functionary.
Yet these methods have also undermined the notion that Russia is a regular state, exposing Mr Putin’s regime as a mafia-like enterprise driven by personal whim and blood feuds. The very existence of Wagner—a private army that is formally banned by Russian criminal code—was a sign of Mr Putin’s mistrust in regular institutions of the state and his reliance on informal connections.
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