Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death is just the latest in Russia’s long, bloody tradition of settling scores

Photos: AP Images 

When news broke last week that Yegveny Prigozhin — former head of Wagner, a Russian mercenary group — had died in a strange air disaster outside Moscow, precisely no one was surprised.

From the moment that Vladimir Putin’s former protégé — an ex-convict who became a billionaire Kremlin insider — turned on his erstwhile boss in an abortive coup in June, it was clear that his days were numbered. Even though he apparently attempted to mend fences with Putin, and was recently seen in Africa with his mercenaries, he was living on borrowed time. The only question seemed to be whether the murder weapon would be some rare radioactive poison or a shove from a high window.

It was nothing as subtle as the above. In what was widely seen as a Mafia-style act of revenge, the private jet carrying Prigozhin and his Wagner deputy was brought down, either by bomb or missile — a shockingly ruthless and public act of vengeance. Reinforcing that impression, the Kremlin maintained an ominous silence around the incident for days, allowing the full impact of the killing to sink in for the benefit of Russian elites.

While Prigozhin’s death was officially attributed to an “air accident” — and accidents do happen — those who run afoul of a Russian leader are statistically predisposed to experiencing unfortunate outcomes. In just the last couple of years, more than 30 prominent figures with Kremlin ties have met their end under extraordinary circumstances.

And this is not a bug of Vladimir Putin’s increasingly autocratic rule. Instead, it’s an age-old feature of Russian behavior, reaching back before the Soviet era even to czarist times. It’s the modus operandi by which Russian rulers resolve their internal conflicts.

To truly comprehend the ferocity and — dare we admit — ingenuity behind the long evolution of Russian state assassinations, you have to look at the big picture. So here is a voyage into the history of Kremlin “crime and punishment.” It’s a tale rife with poisonings, explosive packages, sudden suicides, and unexplained falls that is often stranger than anything that Dostoevsky could have conceived.