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Prigozhin's death was quite an expected event, it is rather surprising that it happened now, two whole months after the failed coup. But I suspect his story is not over yet. Ignoring Yevgeny's personal qualities, he was not a stupid person, and therefore, even if he believed in the secret agreements that was made on June 24, Prigozhin necessarily kept or created an additional reason not to kill him, and soon we will find out about it. The reason may be some compromising material, military secrets, or, if he had confidence in the loyalty of his people, the threat of a second "march of justice" from the Wagner PMCs. The latter scenario is unlikely, further complicated by the death of Dmitry Utkin, but according to the rule of "interesting events" in Russia it may very well happen.
It is also interesting how exactly the "plane crash" occurred. Stories about bad pilots or incredibly successful Ukrainian terrorists may of course appear in the Russian media, but it is obvious to everyone who is responsible for the elimination of the mercenaries leader. From the point of view of constructing plausible deniability it would be much more correct to kill Prigozhin during his stay in Africa, recent one or in the future. There you can find hundreds of different convenient culprits with motivation and weapons: from the French to the Islamists. Instead, his plane "crashed" in the middle of European part of Russia, not so far from Moscow.
Plausible deniability is bad in one case - when you want to convey a message by your action. This is what the kremlins most likely planned. As many said at the end of the deflated coup: "if it turns out that you can occupy one city, march in columns on Moscow, and then if you fail you will not suffer any consequences, then there may be many who will want to try to do this themselves. No harm if you failed in the end." The message from the ruling clan concerns the second part - the consequences will be much more severe than mere exile to Belarus. The official version will still find a way to declare Prigozhin's death a "fatal accident", but the real message, barely fitting between the lines will be visible to everyone.
Will the death of the former chef become a last note in his life story or just the beginning of the third act? - we'll find out soon.
What confuses me are the unnecessary gangster methods. Prigozhin was on Russian territory and this time around, not even surrounded by a few thousand of his own soldiers. The Russian regime could have just seized him and Utkin, imprisoned them, and then sentenced them to death. Or, if that would be too bad for PR, then just imprison them indefinitely and maybe arrange to have them die a few years down the road. Or, if they had to be silenced quickly because in prison they would talk too much, just flat out have them shot by law enforcement and then claim that doing it this way saved lives which otherwise have been lost during the Prigozhin march on Moscow.
Any of these methods would lead to people trusting agreements made with the Russian regime less in the future, but blowing up the plane with only a thin degree of plausible deniability about who did it is going to lead to the exact same result.
Western regimes also sometimes surreptitiously kill people, like Iranian nuclear scientists. Some would say maybe Jeffrey Epstein. But they don't seem to revel in this sort of unnecessary, show-offy gangsterism about it. The Skripal case, if the Russian regime is indeed responsible for that one, is another example. Why use a chemical weapon? There are so many less dramatic ways to kill someone. I don't think that the gangster methods add any degree of additional intimidation factor. On the contrary, they just seem amateur compared to more professional approaches that could be equally effective in sending a message.
It's the visibility of it to send a message: you can't ever get away with it. There is nowhere you can run. Nobody will protect you (does anyone think there will be any serious consequences from the West apart from disapproving announcements?). You will never be safe anywhere, and you will never know how or when it will happen. We don't forget and we don't forgive.
Waiting until the guy steps on Russian territory so you can arrest him etc. doesn't send the same message - our power extends everywhere, we can do what we want, and nobody will or can stop us. Arrests and jail are mainstream political acts every regime can do and are bound by laws and all the expectations around how individuals have rights and the government cannot overstep its bounds; the gangster hit method is to show fuck the law, we are the law.
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There is also a psychological element in it. It means that supporters of the regime have to tell blatant lies. "No it was just an accident, we didn't do it". It trains them to say just whatever their masters want them to say.
It also discredits them with the dissatisfied. This is why Putin was so angry at Naryshkin's slight hesitance to invade Ukraine. They don't want anyone that can even appear to be a rallying point later on.
Everyone signs the death warrant. That way no one can later go to the mob and playact innocence.
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Yes, it seems like Putin's modus operandi with these killings is to assiduously maintain a layer of plausible deniability, but to deliberately keep it paper thin.
I can only think it's a power move: "Not only will I have you killed by the means of my choice, but afterwards, no one in Russia will even dare publicly accuse me of doing what everyone can plainly see I did."
The book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible gives a harrowing example of this being done on a legal level to random competitors of regime allies. I can't see how this isn't a regime tendency towards deliberate humiliation by forcing people to come face to face with brazen mendacity backed by total force, a la Senator Rourke
The only reason she got out of it iirc is her tormentors annoyed another regime grandee.
Then the detective came in. His name was Vaselkov, which sounds like the Russian word for “daisy.” He had a face like a bulldog.
“We are charging you with a particularly serious crime,” said Vaselkov.
“Which one?”
“Read this,” he said and handed her a folder of ninety pages or so. “And then sign that you have understood everything.”
Yana looked at Vaselkov. He stared into nowhere like an automaton. She opened the folder. Inside were photocopies of her company’s accounts and transactions. Bills for buying and selling. Page after page of them. Just their accounts and bills. What they did normally every day. She couldn’t understand. What was she being charged with?
“You have been trading in diethyl ether,” said Vaselkov.
Diethyl ether was a chemical cleaning agent. Yakovleva’s company had built its business around it, importing it from France and selling it on.
“Yes.”
“It’s an illegal narcotic substance. You are being charged with the distribution of illegal narcotics.”
Some misunderstanding, thought Yana, just some misunderstanding.
“But we have a license for it,” answered Yana, almost laughing. She was being charged with trading what she traded. Since when was a cleaning agent used in every factory a narcotic substance? It didn’t make any sense. She had been trading in diethyl ether for over a decade. It was like telling a chocolate bar factory that chocolate was illegal. Or a jeans factory that jeans were illegal. She looked at Vaselkov, but he just stared back dumbly.
She continued reading through the charges. The paperwork was just her everyday accounts; that’s what the men in masks must have been taking from the office. In the folder, page after page said the same thing: “bought 150 liters of diethyl ether, sold 100 liters of diethyl ether.” It was what she did every day. What was she being charged with?
“If you have familiarized yourself with the charges, please sign,” said Vaselkov.
She signed, but she didn’t understand. Everything was starting to spin. Her synapses couldn’t make sense of what was going on, a short circuit in logic. Chairs seemed lighter, walls flimsier. The world around us is made up of the association of words to things, and hers was buckling. She kept on trying to square the logic in her head but kept slipping and falling whenever she tried.
.... She was crying all the time by now. All the time. Couldn’t they see she wasn’t a criminal? Every cop she looked at, she tried to catch his eye. Couldn’t they see she didn’t belong here among all these criminals? Wasn’t it obvious? Maybe if they could just see she wasn’t meant to be here, it would change something? Everything?
But they just looked at her as if she were a parcel. In the morning she had been a businesswoman driving a Lexus in a frilly white dress. Now she was a parcel.
They put her in a dark cell. There were three bunks. She lay there for a while, stunned. When she turned to the wall, someone called through the door: “Turn around so we can see you.” The next day they would take her to court to decide on bail.
“The court will sort it out,” thought Yana. “The court will sort it out”: she had grown up with that phrase. Courts were places where things were sorted out. She assumed she would get bail. She had no convictions. She had done nothing wrong. Why wouldn’t she get bail?
They drove her to court in the back of a van. She hadn’t slept or eaten. Her hair was a mess.
At court they put her in a cage in the accused stand. The judge looked matronly, with her hair in a bun and glasses. She looked like a sensible person. She would sort it out.
“Well?” said the judge.
“I don’t understand the charges,” Yana began. She tried to sound authoritative, but as she spoke she started to cry again. She didn’t want to, it was just the absurdity of it all. The tears came from the effort to make sense of it. “I’m being charged with trading what I trade. It doesn’t make sense. . . . ” She was sobbing now.
“All right,” said the judge. “Prosecution?”
The prosecutor was another man in a polyester suit.
“Yakovleva is a highly dangerous criminal. She has been hiding from us. We had to hunt her down. She needs to be put under arrest until the trial.”
What had he just said? Hiding? Where? Where had she been hiding? At the gym? At work? What were they talking about? The prosecutor just smiled at her. The judge nodded and repeated what he had said word for word and said no bail was granted. She would await trial in prison. The next hearing would be in two months.
Everything was spinning again. The prosecutor walked up to Yana and whispered, “Bad girl, why did you hide from us?”
Black is white and white is black. There is no reality. Whatever they say is reality. Yana began to scream. The more Yana screamed, the more guilty she looked: she saw herself for a second, a redhead with red eyes screaming in a cage in a courtroom.
They took her back to Petrovka. They took her prints. Her hands were covered with ink. She cried out for some soap. Some soap! They laughed at her. Then someone threw some soap at her: a gnarly corner of industrial soap that was dirtier than her hands. Then they said, “When you’re done with the soap we need it back.”
They put her in another police van and drove toward the prison.
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I could sit here and list practical reasons why these so-called "gangster methods" are preferable to banana republic show-trials, but I want to emphasize something else. They're just cooler.
Ethical concerns aside, it's hard to overstate just how badass the polonium-210 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko was. Russian informant and known enemy of Vladimir Putin shows up at a London hospital with strange symptoms. Doctors can't figure out what's wrong. Radiation poisoning is suspected, but Geiger counter readings are negative. It takes military-grade equipment to detect radiation in his blood samples. Unlike almost all other radiation sources, samples of polonium-210 only emit alpha radiation. Alpha particles can't penatrate skin and can barely penetrate air. That's why the Geiger counter couldn't detect anything, but when emitted from inside the body, alpha radiation causes massive DNA damage. He never had a chance.
I don't think it's just a matter of "Putin wants to look cool", though. The problem with a big arrest and show trial is that snyone can do it, to anyone in a position to get arrested, which lets future enemies imagine they might be safe so long as they have an escape plan afterward. Litvinenko, and to a much lesser extent Prigozhin, demonstrate that Putin is willing and able to get more creative with murder than that.
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