With Prigozhin’s death, there’s no sign Putin is losing control

For many years, Yevgeny Prigozhin was Luca Brasi to Vladimir Putin’s Don Corleone. Brasi, for those who may not recall the first of “The Godfather” movies, was the Don’s personal hit man with a reputation for unvarnished brutality. Prigozhin did Putin’s dirty work while creating plausible deniability for his boss, much as Brasi did for his. But whereas the fictional Brasi was murdered by the rival Tattaglia family, the very real Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putin’s longtime associate and the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, was most certainly eliminated on the orders of the Godfather of the Kremlin.

Prigozhin, together with his notorious chief of security Valeriy Chekalov, were both listed on the manifest of the doomed flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg, where the Wagner Group is headquartered, that killed 10 passengers. There are reports that the plane was shot down near the small village of Kuzhenkino in the Bologovsky District of Tver Oblast, northwest of Moscow.

Prigozhin may or may not actually have been on the plane, however. He, and perhaps Chekalov as well, may simply have been assassinated elsewhere. For convenience sake, a plane crash would have provided excellent cover for their elimination.

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death hardly comes as a surprise; the only issue was when it would occur. Shortly after the Wagner Group’s failed mutiny in June, President Joe Biden quipped that Prigozhin had better watch what he was eating. The remark surely shot home, since Prigozhin had once been Putin’s chef.

It perhaps it is no coincidence that, a few hours before Prigozhin’s death, the Kremlin announced that General Sergei Surovikin, viewed by many observers as a Prigozhin ally, had been fired as head of Russia’s Air Forces. Surovikin, whose nickname “General Armageddon” testified to the brutality that characterized his military operations, had not been seen since the short-lived Wagner mutiny, of which he was apparently fully aware. Ukrainian sources reported that he had been detained for “questioning” in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison.

For his part, Prigozhin had publicly and vociferously lobbied for the removal of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, a Putin intimate, and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, Surovikin’s immediate boss and successor as head of all Ukrainian operations. But both men remain in their positions, and there is no sign that Putin is about to replace them.

Only two days before his death, Prigozhin had posted his first video since the coup. Standing in desert camouflage and holding a rifle, he dropped heavy hints that the video was shot in Africa, where 6,000 Wagner Group mercenaries had resumed operations not long after the failed coup attempt. In the video, Prigozhin stated that “the temperature is 50+ [at least 122 degrees Fahrenheit] — everything as we like. The Wagner PMC makes Russia even greater on all continents and Africa — more free. Justice and happiness for the African people.”

He went on to say that the Wagner Group was recruiting fighters and that it would “fulfill the tasks that were set” and he even furnished a telephone number for those wishing to contact the group’s recruiters.

Putin has a reputation for acting upon the adage that revenge is best served cold. Nevertheless, the video may have been the immediate trigger that led to Prigozhin’s liquidation. The Wagner leader had asserted in late July that his group would pause recruitment efforts and focus on its African activities, as well as training and exercises in Belarus. In seeking new recruits, however, Prigozhin seemed to have reneged on his commitment, especially as it was not at all clear where those recruits might be deployed. That was not something that Putin was likely to tolerate.

Now that Prigozhin is gone, there remains some uncertainty as to whether the Russian military will completely absorb his forces, as had been anticipated in the coup’s immediate aftermath. Whether absorbed or not, the presence of the Wagner units in Belarus certainly supplements the Russian military presence there, and has intensified the security concerns of the country’s neighbors, NATO members Poland and Lithuania in particular. In this regard, it is noteworthy that on Tuesday the State Department urged American citizens to leave Belarus immediately.

The combination of Prigozhin’s death and Surovikin’s firing are certainly a message to Putin’s potential internal opponents that they should think twice before acting against him. Moreover, as long as Putin does remain in power, he is unlikely to bring a halt to what Russia continues to call its “special military operation” in Ukraine. It is therefore highly unfortunate that the Biden administration has not been able to control the flood of leaks criticizing Ukraine’s performance in its counteroffensive to retake territory it has lost to Russia. The source or sources of these leaks is unclear, but in the past such revelations have tended to come from senior officials.

The leaks seem to reflect an effort to convince Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to come to the negotiating table with Russia, thereby implicitly conceding the loss of some territory to Moscow. Unless the White House is itself behind these leaks — and it has denied that it is — the most meaningful way it can demonstrate its credibility is to continue to stand foursquare behind Zelensky’s refusal to negotiate; to maintain its vocal support for Ukraine’s ongoing fight for its freedom and independence; and to provide Kyiv the wherewithal to continue to do so.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.