Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Was it merely revenge? A warning to others? Though his death is still to be officially confirmed, Yevgeny Prigozhin has likely met the fate of so many before him who have danced with Putin and lost his trust. But there may also be far more to the story, and no doubt more to be revealed. For its part, the Kremlin Friday denied that Vladimir Putin had ordered Prigozhin’s assassination—spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called such speculation “an absolute lie.”
If Prigozhin’s initial “March on Moscow” was indeed a hastily planned spasm of anger at the Russian military, why wasn’t it stopped immediately? Could there have been some intent by “the center” to let it play out enough to identify and sweep up others of dubious loyalty, or was it truly a counter-intelligence failure at the highest levels? And if so, will some others, who should have detected his preparations but failed to do so, quietly disappear?
Had Prigozhin sensed that his rising popularity had already made him a target? Was he manipulated by someone close to Putin to make his move—and then, before being eliminated, used to enable Russia to deploy more forces into Belarus and rope Belorussian dictator Lukashenko into greater support for Putin’s war?