Yesterday I was one of a half dozen Russia and international affairs experts who were interviewed in live broadcasts of WION Indian television as part of the station’s extensive coverage of the death in a plane crash of Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin. Many of those interviews have been posted on the internet. Mine is accessible here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xhkw9m2zvc
My point in writing is to call attention to the line of reasoning that guided the WION reportage on Prigozhin, namely the assumption that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the assassination of Prigozhin. This follows from the logic (?) expressed briefly by U.S. President Joe Biden when he was asked by reporters for his response to the demise of Prigozhin. Said Joe, “There is not much that goes on in Russia without the involvement of Vladimir Putin.” It also follows from the logic of the WION news presenter that all those who have crossed Putin have come to miserable ends.
In this assumption of Putin’s responsibility for the assassination, WION was entirely in line with the overwhelming majority of mainstream media outlets in the West. Tabloids in the U.K., in Germany and elsewhere have carried lurid front page headlines pinning the murder on Putin.
Meanwhile, Russian media have a very different story to tell. The investigation which Russian criminal justice authorities have opened in the case is being taken seriously. The expressions of condolences offered by Putin to the families of those who died on the plane are taken as sincere. And as I saw on the Vladimir Solovyov talk show two days ago, the accusatory finger is being directed at the West, meaning in fact the United States, which is assumed to have plotted the assassination and carried it out either directly or via proxies.
So who is right about the authors of the assassination?
The Roman principle of cui bono to guide investigators is not particularly helpful in the Prigozhin case. The man was a swashbuckling self-promoter who made enemies wherever he operated. He publicly denounced Russia’s army leadership and held it up to ridicule. His mutiny two months ago and march on Moscow was not a parade: it cost the lives of 13 Russian servicemen whose planes and helicopters Prigozhin’s troops shot down. Whatever the disposition of the Russian President, these facts would ensure the emergence of Russian patriots set on eliminating the Wagner chief on their own initiative and to settle their personal scores with him.
And what about the enemies Prigozhin made abroad? He amassed a vast fortune in the Wagner Group operations in Africa, where he displaced the French presence in Mali, to the chagrin of the old colonial masters in Paris, and now he was expected to profit from the eviction of the French from Niger, and the expulsion possibly of the Americans as well. Remember that the United States has invested half a billion dollars in military installations and training in Niger, which may now be overturned at any moment by the anti-colonial new masters of the country.
To these considerations, I add here what I said on air to the WION interview host in answer to his listing the many Opposition figures in Russia who have come to nasty ends, including of course the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the politician Boris Nemtsov, the former FSB operative Alexander Litvinenko and more. Firstly, it is simplistic to think that one man, Vladimir Putin, is in full control of everything happening in a country of 145 million inhabitants who have their own interests, grudges, ambitions, etc. Secondly, the list of “victims” of Putin’s imagined revenge for crossing him does not take into account the fate of the many highly visible and active Putin-haters whom he has not touched in any way, because of the word of honor he gave to Boris Yeltsin when he was named as successor not to do any harm to the Yeltsin entourage. By way of example, I can name Yeltsin’s widow Naina and the viciously anti-Putin Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, which she heads. Then there are the viciously anti-Putin daughter of former Petersburg mayor Sobchak and Sobchak’s widow, Lyudmila Narusova; both have been accused of criminal activities for which they should properly be serving prison terms, but neither has suffered in any way thanks to Putin’s protection. There are many other conspicuous wreckers, like the now self-exiled Anatoly Chubais, who were spared only thanks to Putin’s honoring his promises to his former boss. Why would Vladimir Putin now violate the pledge he gave to Belarus President Lukashenko not to touch Prigozhin when they concluded a peace deal to end the mutiny?
Then again, the list of “victims” of Putin’s alleged vengeful ways given by the WION host also demands to be challenged. I think in particular of the “victim,” oligarch Boris Berezovsky who was found hanged in his London mansion some years ago. The Western press pointed and points to Putin as ordering the “suicide.” However, it is far more likely that the crime was committed by MI6 since Berezovsky was known to be negotiating a safe return to Russia with the FSB when he was “suicided.”
I conclude with mention of one detail that has been carried by Western media without exploring what it means beyond the face value they give it: namely the fact that the only source so far for the explanation of how Prigozhin’s plane went down is…U.S. intelligence agencies in anonymous disclosures to the press. They tell us that the plane was not shot down by ground to air missiles and that very likely it was destroyed by a bomb on board or other sabotage. Curiously, no one has bothered to ask why the United States was so interested in the details of the assassination.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
Gilbert Doctorow 
Red herring. The last of the Ukrainians is near, there is a great loss and denouement as Nato, Kiev and US turn out to be huge frauds. Prigozhin (and other pinpricks like the odd drone attack on Moscow) are taking the publics eyes off the huge defeat and pretending this is all about Russia.
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Why would anyone in the RU government have chosen such a public method to eliminate a troublesome person, when there were enough other avenues to get rid of him, including legal means? Why would anyone in the RU government destroy their own assets, that were accompanying P. on this flight?
The same idiotic logic was used to point the finger at Russia in the Skripal case, the Litvinenko case, etc., were rather outlandish methods were used to complete a task when some much less obvious and complicated methods would have resulted in a quicker, more effective and less public elimination of the target.
Those acts scream actually: Look there, what the Russians are capable of. Why this noise, unless one wants to clearly steer the attention towards some actor who actually was not involved at all?
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1. Because it was intended to send an unmistakeable signal to other potential opponents of the regime 2. Because it was an effective way to decapitate the entire Wagner management in one go.
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By the same logic, if Prigozhin were killed by the West in such a dramatic way and in Russia, could it not be meant to send a message to members of the Russian government and others questioning Western dominance that even in their own countries they aren’t safe?
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Because it was an effective way to decapitate the entire Wagner management in one go.
Something devotedly wished for by France and the USA. Our host suggests that “cui bono” is not a good guide as he had too many enemies. I’d say that Dr. Doctorow is correct in the number of enemies but France and the USA have the greatest to gain by wiping the Wagner senior cadre and likely have the best resources and proxies to carry out such an attack.
From the Russian side, losing Russian (Wagnerian) influence in West Africa is not particularly good.
Besides, if any official body in Russia wanted Prigozhin dead or disappeared there are lots of less flamboyant ways to do it.
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Excellent points.
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Concerning the author’s final comment:
“U.S. intelligence agencies … tell us that the plane was not shot down by ground to air missiles and that very likely it was destroyed by a bomb on board or other sabotage. Curiously, no one has bothered to ask how U.S. intelligence would know this if it were not directly involved in plotting the assassination.”
U.S. intelligence agencies can include perceptive workers who know-a-bit about attacks on airplanes. Thus ex-CIA man Larry C. Johnson recently commented:
“It does appear that the plane was brought down by explosives that were planted in one or both of the wing[s], the wheel wells on the wings, because you can see when the plane was falling the fuselage was intact, but it didn’t have wings. There was a slight rotation which meant there was probably a portion of wing on one side. This was not a surface-to-air missile.”
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I would say on the direction of the known vectors, the hit was executed by one of Russia security services. If Kostyukov’s (GRU) or Bortnikov’s (FSB) men were not behind it then Putin has a problem. This is because it would mean that Western intelligence penetrated a sophisticated security of the Wagner PMC and perhaps obviously using resources inside the organization, which was set up by, and should be still under the watchful eye of the GRU.
To my mind, it is not useful to ask the “cui bono” question if we don’t know what the “bono” was. This was not a hit on Prigozhin alone, but also on the top officer of the Wagner military and the business mastermind of the group, Valery Chekalov (recently decorated by US sanctions). It looks very much like an action whose purpose was to decapitate Wagner in one fell swoop. We don’t know if Russia or the West benefited more from the catastrophic loss of of its organizing talent. We do know, however, that Wagner was being rapidly integrated into the structures of the MOD, and that there was a considerable pushback on this from the core actors in the group. It most probably went past late June. And there is another thing that the pro-Russian commentariat largely ignores. If Putin ordered the hit, or (more likely) gave its security people free hand to deal with the sore issue, it would not have been as the Western media obsesses about – i.e. for Putin’s presumed “thirst for revenge” – but because Wagner continued insubordination threatened the authority of Russia’s government in a way that could not have been tolerated any further.
Incidentally, none of the major pro-Russian commentators have raised the point of Prigozhin defying the “agreement” to an exile to Belarus. He was back in Russia within days, and continued wheeling-dealing in Africa, which – given the sensitivity of Russia’s foreign policy methods and objectives there – must have caused a bigger alarm in Kremlin than the putative African consternation at his tragic death.
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If President Putin really had forbidden Prigozhin to enter Russia again, Prigozhin couldn’t have done so.Appearances must be kept up, but in this case the Africa question is of such strategic importance that ruffled feathers don’t count anymore. If the story of the missing pilot is true, then a bomb could have been planted in Africa without the Wagner command suspecting anything.
I wouldn’t want to be that pilot because Wagner will be finding him, even if he’s given a new identity in the US or UK.
On the other hand, now may be the moment for Wagner to re-invent itself and acquire a less ambiguous position vis – à – vis the Russian army. I don’t expect them to disband now.
In the West, the narrative will not and cannot change, because President Putin is the evil one, the cold and cruel dictator who likes to shoot down civilian aircraft…I guess it is jealousy, we in Western Europe can but dream of such professional leaders as Russia nowadays has.
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US has 24 hour up in the sky AWACS plaines in Poland and Romania, monitoring missile and flights originated in Russia.
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Excellent analysis and comments.
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The smoking gun here was what Putin and then later Lukashenka did *not* say about the affair.
Putin’s “He was a man with a difficult fate and he made serious mistakes in life” speech on the incident was notable for the absence of 1) raising the issue that it was/could have been NATO/the SBU and 2) a express denial that the Kremlin dunnit (Peskov later performed his obligatory function in this regard). Lukashenka for his part said Prigozhin had not ask for and he had not provided him with “security guarantees”. He said he warned Prigozhin and Utkin of the consequences of their march for Justice. Again, a deafening lack of accusations that it was NATO or a denial that the Kremlin killed him. A warning of the consequences and no security guarantees for when he returned to Russia.. C’mon folks..
In this case Western media is right, but for the wrong reason.
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Regardless of a role somewhat rogue or even sponsored by Russia, of Wagner if Africa, the general goal of activity in W Africa seems to be the ouster of the French by anglosupremacists. This seems in possible line with fomented violent demonstrations in France, that overridden Australian-French submarine thing, and so on. The screws against a perhaps at least mildly self-asserting France cannot be turned
as on Germany with e.g. natural gas pipeline explosions, so…
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I agree with you.
The jihadists who operate in the Sahel, keeping things stirred up in a French-speaking region and openly fighting Wagner (ambushed a Wagner column in Mali on Wednesday), are the same kind of bought and paid for dinglebunnies operating in Syria that Russia fights on Syria’s behalf, while the US openly steals Syrian oil . Add that together with the Islamic jihadists that have twice struck to stop onshore construction of Total’s new offshore gas field in Mozambique (Total is France’s biggest oil and gas company) and one wonders — who pays for these people who appear out of nowhere to terrorize? Uncle Sam.
The US wants France out of Africa, is annoyed by the strong Chinese presence, and has no huge lever to get France on gas because of abundant nuclear electricity there plus some gas independence through Total. No wonder Niger’s uranium mine operation state-owned by the French government is ultimately threatened by the “coup” there. The bad actor behind all this is about as obvious as the nose on one’s face, really, if one bothers to look, but nobody much does. Macron may or may not have the brains to realize it. Germany has decided economic suicide is wonderful, but France is having a field day selling Rafale jet fighters to people who cannot afford the F35 Flying Pig. The Empire is not amused.
Pretty easy to sabotage a leased plane which was not Prigozhin’s “private” jet, but owned by this Stepanov character who usually piloted him but was supposedly on vacation in Kamchatka. He used outside contract maintenance facilities in Moscow to service his fleet of two. And immediately after the explosions and loss, there was pretty solid rumors that the jet had needed urgent maintenance prior to the Wagner flight to Petersburg which delayed departure. Draw your own conclusions.
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If Agatha Christie were writing a novel about how a wealthy man with a lot of very serious enemies and a flair for drama would arrange for his peaceful retirement, there would be only one way to do it — stage his own death in a very public way, and make it sufficiently believable that his enemies would cease looking for him.
It is possible that one of Prigozhin’s many enemies finally got to him — although it seems strange that the entire Wagner head team would be traveling on the same plane, which is a real breach of standard security practices. It is possible that the plane crash was a genuine accident — a simple case of bad maintenance due to the sanctions regime. And it is possible that Prigozhin and his team are now enjoying their retirement, supping margaritas on a beach somewhere.
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Christie did write The Labours of Hercules, which I believe involves injecting people with delayed reaction fatal result – sound familiar, inspiration for some of covidiana?
But when among and within struggling empires can anything be taken at simple face value?
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The US is deeply involved in a proxy war with Russia, so it would be a sign of gross incompetence if they were not interested in the details of an assassination of someone who staged a rebellion against Putin. The details might provide clues as to who did it. And they would want to keep track of the techniques used.
If the US did it they would still want to know if there was enough evidence for the Russians to figure who did it. And of course it would be important to fake interest in finding out the real culprit. And for that matter, not everyone in the US government would necessarily be in the loop.
So either way, real or faked US interest in the details of a prominent assassination in an enemy country is something one should take for granted.
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» Do we even know it was an assassination? «
—Prigozhin et al were being cavalier, breaking security protocol, all traveling together.
—Could they have had explosives on board, also in contravention of the rules?
Such explosives have been known before to ignite during flight, which is why it is proscribed.
People need to ask basic questions:
—Would Putin have timed this to occur in the middle of the BRICS summit, diverting the attention of the world?
—Would Putin have murdered Scripal so visibly on the eve of hosting the World Cup?
—Would a government intel agency (foreign or domestic) have elected to commit such a deed in Russia, risking discovery and repercussions with a nuclear state? Or would they have done so in Africa, much easier and less risk?
So the prime suspects are Wagner cavalier disregard, and otherwise private domestic aggrieved parties. The SBU may have seen this as a good PR victory as well, but only if it somehow redounds to the Bandera regime, which till now it has not.
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Hello Dr. Doctorow, thank you for your cogent analysis. It is evident about who did “not” kill Yevgeny Prigozhin. Mr. Prigozhin was probably murdered by the same people who planned the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. Keep up the great work. Shalom, Marc
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