Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
Irritating or challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin is a dangerous game that often ends with a crash and a thud — or a neat suicide in a dacha when a mess isn’t warranted.
And since the invasion of Ukraine, the tempo of mysterious deaths of prominent Russians has sped up, with at least seven Russian oligarchs dying in odd circumstances and a bevy of officials meeting untimely deaths.
So, when will Yevgeny Prigozhin, the murderous and foul-mouthed leader of the Wagner paramilitary group, inexplicably tumble through a window or keel over after sipping a nice cup of Da Hong Pao?
Did he finally cross a line with his obscenity-strewn rant last week about the “grandfather,” widely interpreted in Russia to be Putin? Russians have surely piled out of windows for much less.
In a video posted online, Prigozhin suggested Putin remained convinced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would end with a glorious victory for Moscow. “If he turns out to be right, God bless everyone. But what should the country do … if it turns out that this grandfather is a complete asshole?” he asked.
He later claimed he wasn’t referring to Russia’s czar, but the comments struck observers as marking a departure for Prigozhin. Much like his ally, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, the paramilitary boss has been careful to avoid any direct censure of Putin in his frequent flashes of anger and disapproval with Russia’s generals and their military tactics, while calling for escalation and use of low-yield nukes. But while Kadyrov has quietened down in recent weeks, Prigozhin hasn’t.
When the two amplified each other’s complaints about the top military brass last year, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had mildly noted to reporters in Moscow that “the heads of regions have the right to express their point of view.” Though he later cautioned that while “critical points of view are currently within the framework of the law … the line is very, very fine.” Kadyrov appeared to take the hint.
But Prigozhin hasn’t missed a beat, continuing to feud with the top brass, and last week, he appeared to take the short step from attacking Russia’s generals and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, for disastrous defeats and setbacks, to seemingly criticizing the man who appointed them.
Prigozhin’s ties with the Russian leader go back, well before Putin became president. The two became chums in St. Petersburg in the 1990s, when Putin was a rising political star and chief aide to Anatoly Sobchak — the city’s first post-Soviet mayor and onetime Boris Yeltsin rival. Prigozhin had his hands in many pies at the time — and quite a few people’s pockets — co-owning many businesses across a variety of sectors, including construction, marketing and gambling.
And some reporters who have followed Prigozhin stretching back decades reckon that gambling may have been what initially brought the pair together, as Putin was chairman of the supervisory board for gambling when Prigozhin wanted to open the city’s first casinos. But whatever the circumstances of their first encounter, the relationship has proven useful for both.
Prigozhin’s benefited from lucrative government catering contracts, feeding school children and government workers and supplying meals to the Russian military. And, in turn, he’s been useful in the Kremlin’s information war, his Internet Research Agency trolls churning out disinformation and trying to influence elections overseas — including the 2016 presidential race in the United States, as well as political events across Europe and Africa. Meanwhile, his Wagner Group has been utilized as a tool of Russian foreign policy, supplying troops for unsavory operations not only in Ukraine but in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — in many cases providing autocrats military assistance to defeat insurgencies. Interventions which, as far as the Kremlin’s concerned, have had the benefit of plausible deniability.
Some Russian opposition leaders suspect Putin’s been happy to have Prigozhin and other ultranationalists calling for ever-more extreme action to keep Western leaders nervous — the unsaid subtext being, be careful what you wish for, a Russia without Putin could mean a Russia of Prigozhin. After all, Leonid Volkov, chief of staff to jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, described Prigozhin as “the most dangerous criminal in Putin’s entourage.”
But others, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, suspect Prigozhin’s playing a double game and is “getting ready for life for after Putin,” positioning himself for what happens afterward. And does labeling Russia’s leader an “asshole” — if not a complete one — make his ambitions even clearer, risking a close encounter at speed with a sidewalk? Only time will tell.
For now, “Russian media’s pro-Wagner coverage has not subsided,” noted investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan. They think Prigozhin still has the support of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service — though likely not of its FSB intelligence agency — writing that his “repeated attacks on the military’s two top leaders seem so out of line,” only Putin’s personal support would seem to explain it.
According to them, “Putin has resorted to increasingly unorthodox methods to rein in the generals. But even more important has been the role of Wagner as a counterbalancing force to the military.”
Maybe so, but if another ultranationalist ally ends up being blown up — like Vladlen Tatarsky, who met his untimely death in a café once, and possibly still, owned by Prigozhin and run by his former son-in-law — it might indicate the clock is ticking on Prigozhin.
Earlier this week, former Russian state journalist Marina Ovsyannikova, who made headlines for protesting the war, ridiculed Putin, saying he “doesn’t have enough Novichok” to do away with his critics.
But surely there will be a vial available for Prigozhin … when the time comes.