The Dramatic Death Of Yevgeny Prigozhin
It has been 48 hours since this surprise world-stage protagonist died unexpectedly. The upshot of Russia’s recent deep game. Yevgeny Prigozhin is the name. Arrowhead of the new wave of Russia’s influence in the world, especially in Africa, of the grand geopolitical artwork of President Vladimir Putin for a comeback to the juggernauts’ party.
Mr. Putin has extended deep condolences to the families of the ten persons on board the ill-fated light plane that took off from St.Petersburg and headed to Moscow but crashed in the vicinity of the destination. The flight carrying significant personalities reportedly caught fire, in the process one of the airfoils fell off, and the fuselage exploded upon the landfall. Prigozhin was dead, along with some leading members of his Wagner Group, WG.
The WG is Russia’s private mercenary military organization that has been in the thick of affairs in the last year or more for spearheading Russia’s expansionism via military cooperation. Things had turned dramatic when Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary forces turned the heat on the Kremlin, Russia’s seat of government, the superpower uncharacteristically looking like the theatre of a near civil war.
That ruffled some feathers and evoked hysteria around the world, particularly in the West whose tango with Russia ratcheted up in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin reached a deal with the Wagner boss to cool off the tensions and bring to an ‘amicable’ solution the rift sparked by the insurrection, thanks to the Belarus government’s intercession. Two months on, the man at the centre of the storm, Prigozhin dies in a plane crash in circumstances analysts describe as bizarre.
Putin’s critics suspect him to be the silent hand spinning the wheels. A claim not backed by evidence yet. However, Putin called Prigozhin a profound personality who made deep mistakes in life. Obviously, one of such ‘mistakes’ should be the attempted march on Moscow by forces loyal to Prigozhin that baffled Putin and his cohorts and shook the world.
Recent history is littered with clandestine attacks on Russian dissidents. All such incidents have been left open-ended with the Russian authorities denying responsibility and condemning the occurrences. Non-Russian investigators or even analysts, like in the case of Prigozhin’s plane crash, always contradicted the Russian view.
The assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov on 27 February 2015. He came under a hail of bullets whilst engaged in some sport in the capital. On 20 August 2020, another Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption crusader, Alexei Navalny fell into a coma after he was taken ill on a flight. Later, his condition was found to be an act of poisoning. In between the two cases was the 4 March 2018 poison attack on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who had been accused of ideological heresy and was domiciled in the United Kingdom. His daughter Yulia, was also poisoned.
The West alleged complicity of the Russian authorities in all incidents, saying they had identified the Novichok nerve agent, a Soviet-era poison agent as the chemical substance used in attacks on victims.
Due diligence by the Russian authorities found the alleged villains in the Nemtsov murder. One later retracted his confessions saying they were extracted under torture, and another suspect was said to have blown himself up whilst being trailed by the police.
Russia is ruled by the powerful oligarch led by Soviet-era KGB operative, Vladimir Putin who has been working to bring his country to the table for counting. His establishment denies all allegations whilst his critics would often like to establish why he is the leading suspect, saying Putin would like to crush every opposition. So, who is whitewashing evidence in the cases of Nemtsov, Navalny, the Skripals, and lately, Prigozhin?
Was Prigozhin’s flight sabotaged or it was just fate? That is the dilemma facing the middle-grounders.