Russia has worked to destroy the mercenary Wagner Group since its head, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a rebellion against the Kremlin’s military leaders two months ago, a think tank concluded in an analysis Wednesday.
Prigozhin, his chief of security Valery Chekalov, and Wagner Group founder Dmitry Utkin were all listed among the 10 people aboard a plane that was apparently shot down Wednesday by Russian forces, leaving no survivors.
The crash was widely speculated to be an orchestrated assassination of Prigozhin and some of his chief allies, and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) concluded in an analysis that it was likely the “final step” in the Kremlin’s efforts to eliminate the Wagner Group after Prigozhin led its members on a march deep into Russia before agreeing to stand down.
“The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and the Kremlin have been destroying the Wagner private military company (PMC) and weakening Prigozhin’s authority since the rebellion — and the assassination of Wagner’s top leadership was likely the final step to eliminate Wagner as an independent organization,” the ISW wrote in its report.
The ISW documented several steps the Kremlin has reportedly taken since the short-lived rebellion by Prigozhin that resulted in his exile to Belarus. Leading up to the rebellion, Prigozhin had posted on social media attacking top officials in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government — though not Putin himself — and criticizing Russian claims about the war in Ukraine.
The ISW noted that Prigozhin’s “online persona has been largely silenced since the rebellion … which may have negatively impacted Wagner’s ability to recruit new personnel amidst the Kremlin’s defamation campaign against Prigozhin.”
“The Russian MoD and the Kremlin had effectively created conditions in which Prigozhin could no longer adequately support the Wagner contingent unless he was able to secure new funding and missions for Wagner personnel in the immediate term,” the ISW report continued. “Such conditions could have eventually led Wagner to slowly lose fighters and cause Prigozhin to lose his relevancy and influence.”