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Dubai: At the close of last month’s NATO summit in Eastern Europe, US President Joe Biden was asked about the dubious circumstances of notorious Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin after his failed mutiny on Moscow.

“If I were he, I would be careful what I ate. I would be keeping an eye on my menu,” Biden quipped.

Less than six weeks later, the Wagner mercenary boss is dead along with nine others, including his top henchman, after the plane they were travelling in crashed north of Moscow.

Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Credit: AP

World leaders have expressed resounding fatalism at the death of Prigozhin, with many insisting the probable role played by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the fiery plane crash.

Shortly after news of the death emerged Biden said he did not yet have the facts, but that he was “not surprised”.

“There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind. But I don’t know enough to know the answer,” Biden said while on holiday in Nevada.

As claims that the private jet was shot down by Russian air defences gathered pace, a key adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, claimed Putin had been “waiting for the moment” to strike after Prigozhin led the Wagner march on Moscow in June. Putin quickly denounced that coup attempt as treason, but seemingly allowed Prigozhin to go to Belarus.

“Prigozhin signed a special death warrant for himself the moment he believed in [Belarusian president] Lukashenko’s bizarre ‘guarantees’ and Putin’s equally absurd ‘word of honour’,” Podolyak wrote on social media.

Podolyak claimed the Prigozhin’s death two months after the coup attempt was “a signal from Putin to Russia’s elites ahead of the 2024 elections”.

“Beware! Disloyalty equals death,” Podolyak wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Other leaders across Europe reacted to the news in the hours after the crash, among them Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who also pointed to Putin in her remarks.

She told CNN: Putin will “eliminate opponents and that scares anyone who is thinking of expressing an opinion different than his”.

Speaking on state news channel TVP Info, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau claimed that people who threatened Putin’s power did not “die naturally”.

“We would have great trouble naming anyone who would intuitively think this was a coincidence. It so happens that political opponents whom Vladimir Putin considers a threat to his power do not die naturally,” he said.

Russia’s civil aviation authority confirmed the Wagner founder was on the flight that crashed while flying from Moscow to St Petersburg, along with his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin, Sergei Propustin, Yevgeny Makaryan, Alexander Totmin, Valery Chekalov and Nikolai Matuseyev.

All passengers on board are confirmed dead including three crew members Captain Alexei Levshin, co-pilot Rustam Karimov and flight attendant Kristina Raspopova.

Vladislav Davidzon, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, said the apparent killing of Prigozhin would send an unquestionable message to the Russian army.

“If you come for the king, do not miss – and even if you make a deal, do not expect to survive the next six months,” he said in remarks published by the council on Thursday.

Former US ambassador to Poland Daniel Fried, who is also an Atlantic Council fellow, said it was best to assume the crash was not an accident, but a “targeted hit”. He described it as “an act of slightly delayed revenge, something out of the Godfather series”.

Fried suggested the spectacle of Prigozhin’s initial lenient treatment was merely a way for Putin to gauge the degree of support the mercenary boss still enjoyed following the failed rebellion.

Last month CIA director William Burns told the Aspen Security Forum Putin was “someone who generally thinks that revenge is a dish best served cold”.

“So he’s going to try to settle the situation to the extent he can … In my experience, Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback,” he said.

with Reuters

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