The Journal. - The Plane Crash That Killed Yevgeny Prigozhin

Episode Date: August 24, 2023

Two months after leading a failed uprising in Russia, Wagner paramilitary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is dead. A plane that Prigozhin was traveling in crashed outside Moscow on Wednesday. The cause of the crash is still unknown. WSJ’s Yaroslav Trofimov reports on the demise of the mercenary boss who challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin. Further Reading:  - Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, Who Clashed With Russian Military, Dies  - The Last Days of Wagner’s Prigozhin  Further Listening:  - The Mutiny That Shook Putin’s Grip on Power  - ‘Putin’s Chef’ New Serving Up Gains for Russia in Ukraine  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yesterday, a private jet fell from the skies northwest of Moscow. The video footage that's been released by eyewitnesses on social media, the most striking one is a woman who's filming it, saying that she has heard two or three explosions. And then the plane, there, by then missing one wing, just tumbling out of the sky and crashing and exploding into a fireball. That's our colleague Yaroslav Trofimov.

He's our chief foreign affairs correspondent. Russia's civil aviation authority later said all 10 people on board were killed, three crew members and seven passengers, including Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin founded the notorious Russian mercenary force, the Wagner Group, and two months ago, he launched an armed insurrection, challenging the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Do we know for certain that Prigozhin is dead?

Well, nobody has seen the body yet in public, but people who have seen the body and spoke to the Russian media claim to have authenticated the remains as pre-Goshen. So it seems increasingly certain that he's in fact dead. And if he is in fact dead, what's the burning question you have? The most immediate one is whodunit, right? So what are the exact details of the downing of this jet?

But I think more importantly going forward is, will this backfire on Putin and the commanders of the Russian military if it's in fact them who have downed the aircraft, as many Wagner supporters believe? Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbaugh. It's Thursday, August 24th. Coming up on the show, what a deadly plane crash in Russia reveals about Putin's grip on power. We'll see you next time. Yodeling with them. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew.

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Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. What was your first thought when you heard that Prigozhin was killed? Well, my first thought was that this was not a complete surprise

because a lot of people were warning that Putin doesn't like to be betrayed and Putin will take revenge. After Prigozhin's attempted mutiny earlier this summer, Putin went on television to declare him a traitor. Before Putin accused Prigozhin of treason, they were close confidants. Prigozhin had run successful restaurants, and one of his loyal customers was Putin.

Can you give us a sense of what Prigozhin was like? Well, you know, he was certainly very unorthodox, even for the Russian political scene. Brash, loud, he swore a lot. He swore a lot. And, you know, he was a product of the Russian criminal underworld. Pergosian was 61. He was bald, barrel-chested, and missing the tip of a finger on his left hand,

an injury from his time in a Russian penal colony. In recruitment videos for his mercenaries, he appeared as a cult-like figure, often wearing combat fatigues flanked by his soldiers. Prigozhin grew up in the same sort of rough neighborhoods of St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad, as President Putin. He then ended up in prison, in Soviet prison camps for 10 years. And then at the end of communism, when he came back to St. Petersburg, Russia lived through a sort of gangland period. There were mafias everywhere, you know, slayings, shootings in

the street. And so in that world, he has managed to establish a prosperous business, a restaurant business, then a catering company, and then he became Putin's caterer and chef. Prigozhin went from being Putin's chef to taking on bigger and bigger jobs that ended up leading to the Wagner Group. The private military company often worked in the Kremlin's interests. It recruited soldiers from Russian prisons and operated in places like Syria,

some countries in Africa, and eventually Ukraine. The initial Russian offensive towards Kiev failed. And then Wagner was called in about a month into the invasion and was asked to help with the new push to take the Donbass.

And they proved in the battlefield to be the most competent formation. But as the war dragged on, Prigozhin grew frustrated. He vented publicly about how Russia's military was handling the conflict. And so last summer, when Ukraine launched its counteroffensive, it turned out that the Russian military was retreating everywhere,

and the only people moving ahead in the past year were Wagner and Bakhmut. And so there was a lot of jealousy and a lot of recrimination between Wagner and the Ministry of Defense, and Prigozhin was accusing the defense minister and the chief of general staff of failing to supply him enough ammunition. By the end of June, Prigozhin had had enough. He took over the city of Rostov-on-Don and led Wagner troops toward Moscow,

calling for the resignation of Russia's defense minister. During this insurrection, several Russian military aircraft were shot down, killing 13 Russian airmen. So the last time you were on our show, you were talking about this mutiny. Things had come to a head. How did it end up getting resolved?

Well, it obviously didn't get resolved because Prigozhin is dead. But at the time, the Belarusian leader, Lukashenko, had brokered a compromise with another details under which Prigozhin was meant to move himself and his men to Belarus and abort the mutiny. The deal was Prigozhin and Wagner moved to Belarus, and then they're absolved of this sin. Right. So the deal was that those members of Wagner who want to join the Russian military should do so. Those who don't, free to go to Belarus

and then maybe to Africa, and then everything is forgiven. What effect did this deal have on Putin? Well, I mean, it obviously showed his weakness. You know, in the morning of the uprising, he was ordering the Russian military to use all force and squash the rebellion. By the afternoon, when the military was not doing much and precocious men were approaching Moscow, he had to negotiate this compromise. This compromise, however, was seen as tenuous. And Russia watchers agreed that Prigozhin was living on borrowed time.

People all the way to William Burns, you know, the director of the CIA, have been raising this possibility just a few weeks ago. Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback. So I would be surprised if Prigozhin escapes further retribution for this. So just having Prigozhin alive all this time was by itself a sign of, a very daily reminder of Putin's humiliation. Prigozhin was supposed to go to Belarus and lay low. But that's not what happened.

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Bacardi, its trade dress and the bat device are trademarks of Bacardi and Company Limited. Rum 40% alcohol by volume. After the failed uprising, Pergosian continued to be a thorn in Putin's side. He didn't stay in Belarus. He went back to Russia. And he also tried to shore up his business around the world. Over the last week, he flew to countries in Africa. According to Wall Street Journal reporting, at one meeting, he received a gift.

Gold bars from Sudanese mines that his mercenaries helped secure. Where was Prigozhin last seen? Where was Prigozhin last seen? So Prigozhin was last seen in public in this video he released from apparently Mali, from somewhere in Africa earlier this week. It's a pretty short video. So it's Prigozhin standing in body armor with a Kalashnikov assault rifle in his hands and a floppy hat in the middle of what seemed like the Sahel in northwestern Africa. He was saying that it's really hot, 50 degrees centigrade,

but we are ready to uphold Russian interests. And then basically there was a pitch for recruitment, asking people to join Wagner and help in their fight. But people have seen him in Moscow yesterday, just before he boarded that flight to St. Petersburg. It wasn't long after that flight took off that video footage of Prigozhin's plane plummeting to the ground started appearing on social media.

The seven passengers on that flight were all Wagner officials, including the founder, Dmitry Utkin. Could it possibly have been an accident? No, not really. I mean, accidents of this sort don't really happen. I mean, it was not an accident in the sense that planes don't just disintegrate in the sky if there is a malfunction in the engine. It wasn't a plane that had some problem

and then lost control and crashed into the ground. It's a plane that blew up at a high altitude. Something that could only happen as a result of either an air defense missile striking it or a bomb on board the airplane. U.S. officials said today that preliminary assessments suggest that the crash was caused by a bomb on the aircraft

or some other form of sabotage. They called it an assassination plot. Also today, Putin made his first statement about the crash. He offered his condolences to the victim's families. And he called Prigozhin

a talented business leader who made some, quote, serious mistakes in his life. And based on your reporting, is there any evidence that Putin or the Kremlin were involved in this crash? were involved in this crash? Well, you know, it's really hard to say whether it was Putin directly ordering it, whether it was someone interpreting or misinterpreting Putin's wishes, or maybe it was the initiative of the defense minister and the chief general staff.

The order must have come up from very, very, very high in the Russian military structures. How are regular Russians reacting? Well, you know, it's really hard to say how they are reacting because it's not really in the news. While it's sort of front page headlines everywhere in the world, in Russian media, it's not ignored, but, you know, it's not leading the news. And, you know, there isn't really much of an outlet for the Russian to react. On social media, a lot of people who were supporting Wagner are disoriented, disheartened, angry. They were in a few cities, people were bringing flowers.

A pro-Wagner group social media channel posted a video. It shows a makeshift shrine to Brigozhin with a fighter in Wagner uniform kneeling before it and crying. And if this crash was an assassination, what message does it send to other Russians? Well, the message it sends to other Russians, on one hand, is don't try to cross us, don't try to go against the regime because we will not forgive and you will pay the price.

But on the other hand, you know, some of Wagner's supporters are getting a different message. And you could see it on social media. They're saying, well, the lesson learned is that if you start, don't stop. If you start, don't trust Putin and go to the very end. So we'll see which of these two messages will actually play out in the long run. So there could be a risk, actually, for Putin, that Prigozhin becomes a martyr and a call to arms.

Well, most definitely there is this risk. And also, let's not forget the fact that the war is going on. And the more setbacks Russia has in the battlefield, the more Prigozhin will seem like, you know, the prophet and the hero who was killed for telling the truth and trying to, you know, put Russia on a path to victory. What does this mean for the Wagner Group? Well, I think Wagner Group is gone as an independent political force or independent military force. Both the political leader and the person who funded it, and you know, the man who had all the bank accounts, Prigogin, is dead. And so is Dmitry Utkin, the military commander of it,

who created this group. So without these two, fighters and repressiles will probably now be absorbed into the regular Russian military, and others will just leave the battlefield altogether and do something else. What about its work around the world in Africa and other places? Well, it's clear that the Russian military, or at least the Russian military intelligence, will now try to assert direct control over these operations and the money flows. I mean, the brand is gone. You know, without Prekoshen, there is no Wagner.

What does this tell us about Putin's grip on power? Well, it certainly tells us he's nervous about threats. But then, you know, it remains to be seen what the consequences will be of this in the days to come. You know, will it backfire or will it actually help consolidate his regime? I think it's too early to say. The takeaway is that, you know, the war that Putin thought would be quick and victorious continues tearing Russia apart. You know, not just Russia, but it's security and military elite. So you now have Prigozhanets dead, Utkinets dead, who's dead.

So you do see these internal fissures growing and growing. And there is no end in sight to that because, you know, there is no end in sight to that because there's no end in sight to the war. That's all for today, Thursday, August 24th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Nicholas Barrio, Benoit Faucon, Thomas Grove, Drew Hinshaw, and Joe Parkinson.

Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.