The Death of Prigozhin.

Yesterday, a private jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg carrying Wagner PMC leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and several of his henchmen plummeted to earth outside of the village of Kuzenhiino in Russia’s Tver region. According to a report by the AP, an early assessment by the U.S. intelligence community suggests that the plane crash was caused by an explosive device on board the plane. Despite this, a report in the New York Times suggests that it is too early to know for sure what happened; Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicates that it will be challenging to gain a complete picture of what happened due to the reliability of any information released by the Russian government. It is assumed that President Putin was behind the crash, more likely as retaliation for Prigozhin’s aborted coup attempt in June. It was only a matter of time before Prigozhin would meet an untimely demise; one doesn’t attempt a coup against Putin and usually lives to tell the tale. In the last few hours, an article by The Guardian reports that Putin has acknowledged Prigozhin’s death by saying he was a “talented businessman” but made some “serious mistakes.”

Another fascinating aspect of this incident is who else was onboard the plane with Prigozhin. According to an article by The Washington Post, Dmitry Utkin, who was Prigozhin’s second in command, also died. According to various reports, Wagner was so named because of Utkin’s love of the German composer Richard Wagner, a favorite of Hitler. Also on board were several other high-ranking Wagner officials who maintained close ties to Prigozhin. We may never know how exactly this plane came down, but if I were Sergey Surovikin, a close friend of Prigozhin, I would make sure my passport was up to date.