Prigozhin: dead and buried?

Patriot, traitor, martyr … legacy of Prigozhin is still unwritten.

In a 2018 documentary, Vladimir Putin answers instantly when asked if there is anything he cannot forgive. “Betrayal,” he says with no hesitation.

Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a probable assassination last week on board his Embraer private jet, held a similar belief. One of his fighters’ tactics to punish deserters was to tape their heads to a block of concrete and then bludgeon them to death with a sledgehammer. The hammer became their symbol.

What will be Prigozhin’s legacy? The Wagner chief has built one of the world’s most recognisable private military companies, pioneered the use of troll farms and convicts in the military, and showed that it was possible to briefly defy the Russian president with his armed mutiny and “march of justice” on Moscow.

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