Prigozhin’s death in Russia; so many questions will likely go unanswered forever

Prigozhin’s death in Russia; so many questions will likely go unanswered forever

(Photo credit: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency  – The World Factbook, as of August 28, 2023).

The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, an eccentric Russian billionaire and self-styled warlord is likely only the latest in Mafia-like hits in the long career of Vladimir Putin.

Some will say that Putin has denied any role in the military-grade downing of Prigozhin’s jet August 23, 2023. That statement will have to be sufficient because there is no forum at which he will be judged or even tested. The case is closed.

On June 23rd, Prigozhin launched what at first appeared to be an attempted insurrection. His troops of the mercenary Wagner Group neared Moscow. He may have thought he had a chance at success had he continued (he would not have) but that became unimportant when he halted his forces.

In a bizarre move, one of the few allies of Putin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, apparently brokered a deal that would allow some Wagner Group fighters to go to Belarus and remain untouched by an angry Putin.

Prigozhin, likewise was offered a sort of asylum in Belarus.

He chose, for unknown reasons, to reenter Russia and was in fact in a jet that was downed while on a flight between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

It is not clear what caused the jet to plummet and crash, though there is a great deal of speculation.

An official sounding government office, the so-called “Russian Investigative Committee,” announced that “results of DNA testing” confirmed that Prigozhin’s body was among other Wagner leaders that were positively identified. 

Of course, the world will have to take their word for the findings because that will be all there is to this matter for the Russian government.

The killing of Prigozhin is in keeping with a tradition began by Joseph Stalin, perhaps the most brutal of Russian/Soviet leaders. Just prior to World War II, Stalin ordered the killing of hundreds of thousands of real and imagined internal enemies including leaders in the Soviet Red Army.

Several other senior government officials, business leaders, and others have died under mysterious circumstances including Marina Yankin, a senior finance director for the Russian military, who died after falling from a 16-story building February 15, 2023. Russian officials deemed it a suicide.

The same week, Maj. Gen. Vladimir Makarov, was said to have shot himself.  Putin had fired him a month before.

On April 18, 2022, Russian oligarch Vladisav Avayev, died in what officials said was a murder-suicide in which Avayev also killed his wife and daughter, in Moscow.

The next day, another Russian oligarch, Sergei Protosenya, was found hanged, along with his wife and daughter who were both stabbed to death, in Spain.

In fact, a collection of 30 other billionaires, oligarchs, business leaders, military generals, and even a scientist, died in 2022-2023 by stabbings, mysterious medical incidents, falls out of windows, undetermined deaths in jail etc… Some were outspoken against Putin or the war in Ukraine.

While the world may never know the true cause of their deaths, or who caused them, it is unusual that a group of people who were in such high positions died in such circumstances.

Prigozhin and his fellow Wagner Group leaders who died will likely never have their murders properly investigated. We may never know what brought down the aircraft that carried them.

Such is life in a brutal dictatorship.

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James Hutton is a former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and is a retired colonel in the U.S. Army. Follow him on Twitter @jehutton