The warnings were there. Speculation about Yevgeny Prigozhin’s eventual fate began soon after his march on Russia two months ago.
The Wagner chief may have initially survived the aftermath of his failed insurrection, but many had expressed doubts over his future. Two months after the aborted mutiny, the mercenary leader’s plane fell out of the sky and he was subsequently confirmed to have died in the crash through genetic testing, Russian authorities said.
There is no concrete evidence that points to Kremlin involvement and, officially, the cause of the crash is unknown. Russian authorities have launched a criminal investigation.
What is known is that the bombastic mercenary boss – once one of the country’s most powerful oligarchs and a member of Putin’s trusted inner circle – has joined an ever-growing list of high-profile Russians who have fallen from the president’s good graces and died in mysterious circumstances.
Bill Browder, a Putin critic and the largest foreign investor in Russia before he was expelled from the country in 2005, said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Putin never forgives and never forgets.”
From accidental falls from windows to hangings, poisonings and health issues, the fates of some of those who dared to challenge the Kremlin are myriad.
Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov, a vocal Kremlin critic who was a deputy prime minister in the late 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin, was shot dead in February 2015 as he walked with his girlfriend in central Moscow.
A top official with the Republican Party of Russia/Party of People’s Freedom, a liberal opposition group, he had been arrested several times for speaking against Putin’s government.
After his death, opposition leader Ilya Yashin said his friend had been working on a report about Russian troops and their involvement in Ukraine.
In an interview with Newsweek magazine just hours before his death, Nemtsov said Russia was “drowning” under Putin’s leadership and was swiftly becoming a fascist state. “Due to the policy of Vladimir Putin, a country with unparalleled potential is sinking, an economy which accumulated untold currency reserves is collapsing,” he said.
Nemtsov’s death came two days before he was set to lead an opposition rally in the Russian capital. His killing took place within sight of the Kre