The suspected assassination of Yevgeny Prigozhin marks the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s purge, according to an American-born banker turned leading Kremlin critic.
Bill Browder, a Chicago-born financier, told DailyMail.com the Wagner chief’s apparent death in a plane crash doesn’t come as a surprise – and it will lead to ‘a lot of dead bodies piling up on both sides of the story’.
Pentagon officials have said it is ‘likely’ Prigozhin was killed, but they don’t think his plane was taken down by a surface-to-air missile, as had previously been reported.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said it would look at the investigation, and Putin expressed his condolences to the 62-year-old Wagner chief’s family, describing him as a ‘talented businessman’ – but also saying he ‘made mistakes’.
Western security forces believe the Embraer Legacy 600 jet was intercepted by Russia’s domestic security service, the FSB – a view shared by Browder, 59, who is blacklisted by the Kremlin as a ‘national security threat’.
Prigozhin’s suspected assassination marks the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s purge, according to American banker turned Kremlin nemesis Bill Browder (pictured).
Pentagon officials have said it is ‘likely’ Prigozhin was killed, but they don’t think his plane was taken down by a surface-to-air missile, as had previously been reported
Putin has sent his condolences to the Wagner chief’s family, releasing a statement hailing his former chef turned number one enemy as a ‘talented businessman’
‘Everybody was wondering why Prigozhin was still alive after the mutiny that he instigated 60 days ago,’ Browder told DailyMail.com, referring to the beginnings of the Wagner coup on June 24.
‘Every day that he was still alive created more mystery because it goes against everything that Putin has ever demonstrated before.
‘This assassination now goes back to the normal way we assume Putin will behave, which is to eliminate all forms of opposition.’
When asked whether the apparent slaying of the Russian military heavyweight is more likely to lead to consolidation of Putin’s power or prompt further discontent among Wagner elites, Browder had a gruesome forecast.
‘I predict that this is just the beginning of Putin’s purge of disloyal Wagnerites as well as people who are sympathetic to them in the Russian establishment,’ he said.
‘It never made any sense to me how Putin wouldn’t have conducted a purge when facing a coup.
‘Secondly, if you’re a member of the Wagner private military company and you believe that Putin is going to come and kill you, you may want to preempt him by killing him or people close to him.
‘So I imagine there’s going to be a lot of dead bodies piling up on both sides of the story as time goes on.’
Browder added that Putin also risks making Prigozhin a martyr in the eyes of many Russian people.
‘I do believe he was considered a folk hero in Russia and this will cement his reputation as that,’ he said.
‘Whether people act on that type of feeling is a different question.
‘But, he had some of the most dangerous people in the country – trained killers working for him.
‘They’re now afraid for their lives and I can imagine that those people will become a deadly dangerous force generally within a country that is unstable.’
Browder said that Prigozhin’s apparent death also means ‘a formidable military adversary for Ukraine has now been eliminated’ but his coup had forced Putin to move against him.
‘Putin was in a terrible place,’ Browder said, referring to the post-coup period.
‘He couldn’t have allowed this kind of disrespect to go unpunished.
‘But at the same time, Prigozhin was an extremely valuable part of his apparatus, so Putin has degraded his apparatus because he can’t handle the disrespect.’
Browder said he believes the only reason Prigozhin wasn’t killed earlier was due to his ancillary role in Russia’s Africa missions.
‘One of the theories that I have about why Prigozhin lasted for two months after the rebellion was because he was such a key man based on the 17 African countries which he ran private military and mercenary operations,’ he said.
Western security forces believe the Embraer Legacy 600 jet was shot down by Russia’s domestic security service, the FSB – a view shared by Browder, 59, who is blacklisted by the Kremlin as a ‘national security threat’
Browder said that Prigozhin’s apparent death also means ‘the formidable military adversary for Ukraine has now been eliminated’ but his coup had forced Putin to move against him
‘I would imagine that Putin has been looking very carefully at how they can replace him in all these places.
‘Russian influence in Africa has been exercised by the Wagner group so I imagine that to some extent Russia’s influence in Africa will now be diminished because of Prigozhin’s death.’
The fatal plane crash is thought to have killed 10 people, including Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin.
After 10 years of business deals in Moscow, Browder was blacklisted by the Russian government in 2005 as a ‘threat to national security’ as he began to probe the flow of money to corrupt bureaucrats in the Kremlin.
He spent the following decade exposing Russian officials for corruption and plundering many millions from Russian businesses.
Browder chronicled his battle against Russian corruption in books about his career titled Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice, and Freezing Order.
His Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who helped expose corruption on behalf of Browder’s fund Hermitage Capital, was jailed, beaten and died in custody in 2009.
Since then, Browder has traveled the world pressing governments to press legislation in his name, known as the Magnitsky Act, intending to punish the officials responsible for his death.
The law, which provides for sanctions against foreign individuals who have committed human rights abuses or been involved in significant corruption, was passed in the US in 2012.
Browder is also pushing for the release of Russian political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was jailed on treason charges during a process he described as a ‘show trial’ earlier this year.
Kara-Murza, 41, a close ally of murdered opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, was jailed for 25 years on treason charges on April 17 this year after surviving two poisonings which left him in a coma in both 2015 and 2017.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk