The assassination of Yevgeny Prigozhin was planned and directed by the head of Russia's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, The Wall Street Journal reported this morning.
Reminder: On August 23 of this year, a private plane taking off from Moscow to St. Petersburg exploded with the head of the Wagner force, the commander of the force and other senior members of the Russian mercenary army. About 160 kilometers northwest of Moscow, the plane disappeared from radar. Soon after, residents of Tver Oblast watched the plane plunge from the sky, leaving behind a trail of black smoke. After extinguishing his remains on the ground, it became clear that none of the seven passengers and three crew members had survived.
Now, based on Western intelligence and conversations with a former Russian intelligence officer, the Wall Street Journal reports that the assassination was carried out by planting a bomb under the plane's wing. Shortly after the assassination, independent Russian journalists reported that the flight attendant on the private jet said in the last phone call that takeoff was delayed. It is unclear whether there is a connection between the delay and the planting of the IED.
Putin and Patrushev Shaking Hands, 2019. Both are KGB graduates, Photo: AP
According to the Wall Street Journal, the man behind the assassination was Patrushev, one of the closest people to the Russian president and a KGB graduate. According to the report, Patrushev began warning Putin about Prigozhin and his ambitions back in the summer of 2022, but Putin did not heed his warnings because of Wagner's successes on the battlefield. These were the first months after the Russian plan to "capture Kiev within three days" turned out to be a resounding failure, and the Russian ruler needed Wagner to save the day.
Everything changed in October 2022. Prigozhin, whose units of his private army were also equipped with tanks and artillery, complained of a shortage of shells. In October last year, he called Putin and rudely presented the situation on the front: because of the shortage of shells, his units suffer many losses. At the time of the conversation, Patrushev was next to Putin and told him afterwards that Prigozhin had become dangerous and no longer respected the Kremlin.
On subsequent occasions, Putin no longer answered calls from Prigozhin, nor did he respond to his growing confrontation with the Russian Defense Ministry and General Staff, even when the confrontation became public, ugly and violent. For example, Prigozhin cursed Minister Shoygi and Chief of Staff Gerasimov in recordings, and his fighters fired at their pictures.
On June 22 and the day after the conflict turned into an open rebellion at the Ministry of Defense: Prigozhin announced that units of the Russian army had fired on his men and announced a march to Moscow to restore justice. Within hours, one of his convoys captured the Russian war headquarters in Rostov, while the other convoy headed north, towards Moscow. Along the way, Wagner's men met no ground resistance and took over military bases deep inside Russia. Russian helicopters sent to stop the convoys were intercepted by the Wagner force. Only about 200 kilometers from Moscow, the convoys will be halted and the uprising will end abruptly.
Putin was not seen during the first nearly 12 hours of the uprising, and only the next morning appeared on television with a nervous speech, in which he did not name Prigozhin but did refer to a man with exaggerated ambitions who had stuck a knife in the back of the nation. Given Putin's tendency not to name his bitter enemies and his past statements that one sentence is for traitors, Prigozhin should have understood the message.
Meanwhile, as Wagner's convoy raced toward Moscow, Patrushev presided over the event. He called senior Wagner officers to pressure them to persuade his boss to stop the rebellion. When that didn't help, he looked for intermediaries. At first he approached the President of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, but he refused. Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko agreed.
About a month after the cessation of the uprising and Wagner's departure for Belarus, Patrushev began planning the assassination. When the plan was ready, Putin approved it — although at the time he met with Prigozhin and several dozen of Wagner's field commanders in the Kremlin and discussed the future. Prigozhin, who supposedly went into exile, roamed freely in Russia among his assets and even visited the headquarters of the Russian Shin Bet in St. Petersburg, where they returned the equipment confiscated from his home during the uprising.
On August 23, as his private Embraer plane awaited takeoff from Sheremetyevo Airport and Prigozhin and his partners went through security, a bomb was planted under the wing. Half an hour after takeoff, it exploded, and the plane plunged to his death.
Like Putin, Patrushev, 72, is a KGB graduate and, like him, laments the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Like Putin, he does not keep up with the news independently but reads from folders prepared for him by the security apparatuses. His son, Dmitry, is a former banker who was recently appointed agriculture minister – a testament to Patrushev's great power. Dmitry is also marked as one of Putin's potential successors in the future.
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