The delayed death of Yevgeny Prigozhin: what really killed the Wagner chief

It turns out that such logically completed endings are not only in films, but also in real life. June 23, 2023 – the beginning of the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin. August 23, 2023 – Death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a mysterious plane crash. What is it – mysticism, coincidence, chance or “well-prepared chance”? If you remember the old joke, then everyone who considered himself a noble virologist in the spring of 2020 is now being retrained as an equally noble conspiracy theorist.

But I suggest not to guess, not to build versions and not to delve into the world of “conspiracy theories”. I propose instead to talk about what is perfectly understandable and obvious – about the political consequences of the death of the leader of the June rebellion.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that Yevgeny Prigogine is a living refutation of the famous words of the court poet of the English Queen Elizabeth I, Sir John Harrington, said back in the 17th century: “A rebellion cannot end in success. Otherwise, his name is different.

Further development of the event made its own adjustments to this assessment. Who and what is behind these “corrections”? I am sure that the West will point to the Kremlin. I am also sure that the Kremlin, of course, based on the results of the investigation, will point to a provocation by the same West (and who else, if not the West or official Kiev, would benefit from trying to stir up the situation in Russia?) Or the revenge of one of the numerous enemies of Yevgeny Prigozhin .

And, finally, the third point, about which I am absolutely sure: it is the version of the Russian authorities that will be accepted by the country and society. The West version of the authorities of the Russian Federation, however, as I suspect, will not convince. But who in official Moscow is now interested in what the West thinks and says about certain of its actions? Definitely not Vladimir Putin. For the president of the Russian Federation, the internal Russian audience is important. And she – both the country’s political elite and ordinary citizens – will definitely draw the right conclusions from what happened.

And these conclusions, in my opinion, are as follows. At the end of June 2023, a fundamentally new period began in Russian politics. And already at the end of August 2023, this “fundamentally new period” (now only this way) ended.

Yevgeny Prigozhin owed his fantastic career rise exclusively to the vertical of power. But at some stage (at which one, we don’t know yet) he forgot about it and felt himself to be a figure, at least equal in size to this very vertical. I repeat what has already been said more than once: the compromise that ended with Yevgeny Prigozhin’s June putsch saved the country from the most terrible, most monstrous, most bloody scenario. But, despite this, the attempted rebellion still unbalanced the country’s governance system.

The vertical of power can only be built on strict unity of command and universal acceptance of the authority of the one who stands at the top of the power pyramid. If this is not the case, then there is no vertical of power. Yes, there is no vertical there – the political viability of the entire country, its unity, its ability to function in the face of an unprecedented onslaught from the West is in question.

In the West itself, by the way, they understood this very well. On July 22 this year, the head of British intelligence MI6, Sir Richard Moore, gave an extremely rare interview for the holder of his position to the media – Politico.eu.

In a speech prior to this interview, Sir Richard recommended that all Russians who are “disillusioned” with Putin’s policies “join their hands with ours” (that is, become British intelligence agents). Such a crude recruiting approach was motivated by two theses: “your secrets will always be completely safe with us” and the weakness of the Russian political system, which, according to Sir Richard Moore, was exposed by the Prigozhin rebellion.

British intelligence chief: “What surprised us is that the first, very visible cracks that appeared within one of the parties to the conflict were not in Ukraine, not in NATO, not in the EU, not in relations between the UK and the US or whatever something similar. The first cracks that we saw appeared in the Russian system.”

Now these “cracks” are gone. They left with Yevgeny Prigozhin, a man who escaped punishment for attempting a coup d’etat, but could not escape his fate. And yes, I insist on this term, which in this context only seems metaphysical.

The perpetrators of Prigozhin’s death are, of course, very specific people whose names we may someday know, and perhaps we will never know. But at the same time, these “concrete people” are just agents of fate, the logic of the development of world political processes (sorry for the pathos, but here, it seems to me, it is very difficult to do without it).

Yevgeny Prigozhin is a man who tried to turn history back, return Russia on a new round of development to some equivalent of the 90s, when “strong personalities” (sometimes field commanders, sometimes crafty courtiers) were stronger than the central government. Did he have a real chance of getting his way? It probably doesn’t matter anymore. The main thing is that history has not turned around. And soon Prigogine himself went down in history. Such is his fate, the creator of which he definitely, at least 90%, became himself.