Yevgeny Prigozhin’s assassination did not come as a surprise. Even before his private jet was blown up, most observers, though not apparently himself, assumed he was a marked man ever since his day-long mutiny on 23 June. The rebellion had been aborted after negotiations with the Kremlin; Belarus’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, apparently sealed the deal by offering Prigozhin’s Wagner Group mercenary soldiers safe haven.
Prigozhin had shown no contrition. There were no grovelling apologies. Instead of relocating expeditiously to Belarus and returning to the shadowy existence of his past, he acted as if he was still a player in the Russian system. He stepped back from his public arguments with the Ministry of Defence but otherwise he could serve the Russian state in his own way. Soon he was moving around his old haunts, sorting out his finances and business affairs in St Petersburg. In particular he was picking up on Wagner’s African ventures. In late July he was in St Petersburg hobnobbing with African leaders as they visited the city for a summit hosted by President Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin was last heard in a video posted on his Telegram channel on 22 August, the day before he died, reportedly in Mali explaining his intention to increase Wagner’s presence in Africa, and encouraging potential recruits to join the fight against “terrorists”.
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