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Jul 21, 2023

Russia Officially Confirms Prigozhin’s Death

Russian investigators said genetic tests showed that the Wagner chief, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who led a brief mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership, was among the victims of a plane crash last

Russian investigators said genetic tests showed that the Wagner chief, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who led a brief mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership, was among the victims of a plane crash last week.

Russia officially confirms Prigozhin’s death.

Russia says Ukraine launched more drones at border regions.

Mourners gather for Wagner in Moscow, reflecting Prigozhin’s wider appeal among Russians.

Prigozhin leaves behind a family that has helped run his business empire.

Prigozhin spent some of his last days in Africa.

The Russian authorities have officially confirmed the death of the Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, with investigators saying on Sunday that genetic testing showed that the victims of a plane crash last week matched all the names on the jet’s manifest.

The announcement put an end to several days of speculation over the fate of the mercenary chief, who was presumed to have died in the plane crash on Wednesday, just two months after he launched a failed mutiny against Russia’s military leadership. U.S. and Western officials believe the crash was the result of an explosion on board and several have said they think that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may have had Mr. Prigozhin killed in retaliation for his mutiny — suggestions the Kremlin on Friday dismissed as an “absolute lie.”

Svetlana Petrenko, a spokeswoman for Russia’s investigative committee, said in a statement on Sunday that “the identities of all 10 victims have been established” and that “they correspond to the list stated in the flight manifest.”

Mr. Prigozhin and Wagner’s top field commander, Dmitri Utkin, were listed as passengers on the plane. Russian authorities had said they were awaiting the results of an investigation before confirming the identities of the 10 people on board.

In his first comments about the crash, Mr. Putin on Thursday spoke obliquely of Mr. Prigozhin’s death, referring to him in the past tense. “He made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved necessary results,” Mr. Putin said.

Mr. Prigozhin led the Wagner private military group, which has operated in Syria, Africa and Ukraine to advance the Kremlin’s interests — while gaining a reputation for military effectiveness and severe brutality. In Ukraine, the group shored up Russian forces and drew the Ukrainian military into a costly fight for the eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russia captured in May after a nearly yearlong battle.

To build out the private army, Mr. Prigozhin recruited thousands of ex-prisoners to join Wagner’s ranks. He also became increasingly critical of the Russian military leadership’s handling of the war in Ukraine, accusing them of corruption and incompetence.

In June, Mr. Prigozhin led a short-lived mutiny against the top military leadership.

The rebellion presented Mr. Putin with the most dramatic and public challenge to his two-decade rule, and speculation had been rife that the Russian president would not let such an affront go unpunished.

— Constant Méheut

Russia said Ukraine fired a string of drones over the weekend in an attempt to attack border regions and the capital, Moscow, in the latest strikes deep inside Russian borders.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday that its forces had intercepted Ukrainian drones overnight in the regions of Bryansk and Kursk, both of which border Ukraine. A drone crashed into an apartment building in Kursk but did not cause any injuries, the regional governor said on the Telegram messaging app.

The border region of Belgorod also was attacked by drones over the weekend, according to the Russian authorities. One person was killed in the village of Shchetinovka and another drone was intercepted by air defenses on Saturday, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said in Telegram posts.

The Russian claims had not been independently verified and Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment, as is their general custom on attacks inside Russia.

Such attacks have recently become a more regular occurrence in the 18-month-long war. Since July, Russian officials have reported more than two dozen drones have targeted the Moscow region alone.

Throughout the summer, the intensifying attacks — many of which have been carried out with Ukrainian-made drones — have hit buildings in central Moscow’s financial district and a supersonic bomber aircraft stationed south of St. Petersburg.

Though the scale of the destruction pales in comparison to the devastation wrought by Russia’s aerial attacks in Ukraine, the assaults have caused damage and disruption.

American officials have said the drone attacks are intended to demonstrate to the Ukrainian public that Kyiv can still strike back, even as its counteroffensive to reclaim Russian-occupied territory in the south and east of Ukraine moves slowly. Another objective, as top Ukrainian officials have said, is to bring the war home to the people of Russia.

But it remains unclear whether such long-distance strikes are having any effect on Russia’s battlefield operations. News reports this week, including from The New York Times, indicated that Ukrainian and American officials have had disagreements about tactics and strategy in the counteroffensive, especially on where to deploy troops.

Here’s what else is happening in the war:

Jet Collision: Three Ukrainian pilots died on Friday after two combat training aircraft collided in a region west of Kyiv, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Among the victims was Andriy Pilshchykov, better known by his call sign “Juice,” who had been a frequent voice in Western media advocating for the supply of F-16 fighter jets. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine paid tribute to Juice late Saturday, saying that he had “helped our country a lot.” He said an investigation was underway into what caused the crash and expressed condolences to the families and friends of the victims.

Attacks across Ukraine: Ukrainian officials said Russian shelling killed at least two people on Sunday. One woman was killed in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine and another died in the Kharkiv region of the northeast, the local military authorities said.

Ukraine’s Air Force also said that Russian forces launched a wave of missiles toward Kyiv and the surrounding area early on Sunday, with air defense systems intercepting four cruise missiles. But debris from downed missiles injured two people and damaged 10 houses in the Kyiv region, the local military administration said in a statement.

— Vivek Shankar and Constant Méheut

The tearful mourners gathered in Moscow to pay muted respect to the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, and nine other people killed in a suspicious plane crash last week.

Hundreds of people placed flowers, photographs, candles and flags — including some bearing the private military group’s skull design — at a small sidewalk memorial near Red Square in Moscow.

The gathering over the weekend reflected the broader appeal Mr. Prigozhin held for the Russian public as a result of his force’s fierce fighting in Ukraine, despite an acrimonious relationship with Russia’s military leadership and the backlash from his failed mutiny in June, when the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, initially accused him of treason.

The fate of Wagner, which Mr. Prigozhin built into a global force, remains uncertain, now that Russian authorities have officially declared Mr. Prigozhin dead, and with the Kremlin reportedly considering ways to bring the group more directly under control of the state.

Near the makeshift memorial, many wept openly, expressing shock over the death of a man they said they respected, and sadness at the loss of life. Almost all expressed their support for the invasion of Ukraine.

“This is a person the whole world feared,” said Alyona, 25. Like many who agreed to be interviewed, Alyona did not want to give her last name because of the political sensitivity surrounding Mr. Prigozhin, who frequently criticized how the war was conducted in the months leading up to his brief rebellion two months ago.

“That alone is worth respecting. He didn’t just make people fear him, he created a system that no one else had, did something that no one else had done,” she said, referring both to the creation of Wagner and the gumption to stand up to Moscow’s military establishment.

If Wagner were to disappear, she added, “it will be a big loss indeed.”

Volunteers handed out water, candies and snacks, a funeral tradition in the Russian Orthodox faith. On a low wall along the sidewalk, tea lights crowded among memorial candles and funeral wreaths. A long banner read “Being a soldier is to live forever!”

Some Wagner fighters who came to pay their respects described their loyalty to the mercenary group’s leader.

“I was mobilized,” said one soldier, who would give only his call sign, Prapor, and his age, 32. He showed Times journalists a Wagner dog tag emblazoned with the day the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut was captured in May.

“No one ever abandoned me; they helped me, they did everything that was necessary and provided me with everything that was needed,” said Prapor, who added that he had personally met Mr. Prigozhin.

Many could not believe that Mr. Prigozhin and his group’s top military commander, Dmitri Utkin — whose call sign was said to be the inspiration for the group’s name — had died.

“We didn’t believe it to the last moment,” said Kirill, 31, who wore a Wagner hat and said he had a relationship with the mercenary group but was not a soldier. He praised Mr. Prigozhin’s open, colloquial and often profanity-laced communication style.

“Wagner leaders were honest — they told us everything,” he sad. “They spoke to people informally, just as they communicated with the wider public.” He called Wagner’s capture of Bakhmut, which razed most of a city that was home to 70,000 people before the war, “a great success.”

Other mourners said they appreciated Mr. Prigozhin’s populist messages, which included criticism of the military establishment — particularly the defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu — and at times appeared to stretch to Mr. Putin himself.

“Evgeny Prigozhin won my respect for the simple fact that he went against this system, against Putin, Shoigu and began an active fight against our government,” said Sergei, a 23-year-old student. “But the fact that his mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine, I am against that.”

Sergei showed pictures on his phone of himself getting arrested during rallies for another populist who dared to challenge Mr. Putin: Aleksei A. Navalny, who survived a poisoning attempt and has been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison on charges that human rights groups say are political.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in the crash, which U.S. officials have said they believed was the result of an explosion on board, possibly in retaliation for the rebellion.

Sergei said he believed that the ten people had been ordered killed as revenge for the mutiny. And even though Russia’s Investigative Committee said genetic testing showed the remains from the crash site matched the names on the jet’s flight log, Sergei said he believed there was a chance that Mr. Prigozhin could still be alive.

Billboards across Moscow encourage people to sign military contracts, or proclaim the heroic deeds of fallen soldiers. But in a country where little is said about the casualties, the sidewalk memorial became a rare place for people to mourn publicly.

Elena, a 47-year-old lawyer originally from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, cried for about five minutes as she took in the photographs and mementos.

“Russia is protecting these people,” she said of Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territory, calling the deaths of the Wagner leadership a “tragedy.”

“I feel so sorry about these people,” she said. “I’ve been following the activities of Wagner Group leaders. I thought they were Russian patriots.”

Like most people at the site, she expressed respect for Mr. Prigozhin without trying to directly contrast him to Mr. Putin or his Ministry of Defense, and did not take any stance on the Wagner mutiny or how it was resolved. Nor was she willing to speculate about the cause of the plane crash.

The improvised memorial predates Mr. Prigozhin’s death but has grown rapidly in recent days. It was initially erected for the military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, who was killed in a bombing in St. Petersburg in April, and features photos of other prominent pro-war Russians, including Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, who was killed in a car bombing in August 2022.

But almost everyone seemed focused on the Wagner leader. Mr. Prigozhin, Alyona said, was unique in his generation in his ability and willingness to openly discuss the issues plaguing Russian society.

“In our history, there was only one Lenin, one Stalin and one Prigozhin,” she said. “If someone else like Lenin, Stalin, or Prigozhin appears, we will consider ourselves lucky.”

Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting from Washington.

— Valerie Hopkins Reporting from Moscow

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin’s brutal Wagner mercenary force was only part of a vast empire with business interests ranging from the catering industry in Russia to gold mining in Africa. And his family played a role, helping to run some of his business assets.

Mr. Prigozhin is survived by his mother, Violetta Prigozhina, his wife, Lyubov Prigozhina, and three children, Polina, Pavel and Veronika. All but Veronika, the youngest daughter, have been the subject of sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and Britain at the outset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“Prigozhin’s family facilitates the activities of his enterprise, which benefits from his favored status with Russia’s elite,” the U.S. Department of the Treasury said in a statement last year announcing sanctions against the mercenary chief, his wife and two of his children who “play various roles in Prigozhin’s business enterprise.”

Mr. Prigozhin and his mother set up a network of hot dog stands in the early 1990s, just as private enterprise was exploding across Russia. His business interests came to include a supermarket chain, casinos and construction. Although the full extent of Mr. Prigozhin’s wealth remains unknown, his catering business has clinched state contracts in Russia worth billions of dollars.

Mr. Prigozhin’s close ties to the Kremlin made him a key actor on behalf of Russian interests. In addition to the Wagner group, he financed the troll factory known as the Internet Research Agency, which was part of Russia’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 United States elections.

Several entities connected to Mr. Prigozhin have been subject to U.S. sanctions for several years as a result of those efforts.

This year, Mr. Prigozhin’s mother won an appeal against E.U. sanctions, after a court ruled that the measures were “based solely on their family relationship and is therefore not sufficient to justify her inclusion on the contested lists.” The court, however, noted that she owned shares in Concord Management and Consulting, a primary part of Mr. Prigozhin’s empire, until 2017.

A lawyer for Mr. Prigozhin’s mother, who opened an art gallery in St. Petersburg a year after she divested her shares of Concord Management, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Mr. Prigozhin’s wife is under sanctions from several Western nations as the owner of Agat LLC, a subsidiary of Concord Management and Consulting. The U.S. Department of the Treasury tied their son, Pavel, to three companies.

Mr. Prigozhin’s daughters were regular participants in equestrian competitions outside Russia until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, according to data from the International Federation for Equestrian Sports. Veronika took part in a competition in Spain just four days before Russian forces began their advance.

— Constant Méheut

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner private military company who died in a plane crash last week, spent some of his final days traveling to African countries where he had helped turn the mercenary group into one of Russia’s most powerful and recognizable assets on the continent.

In the span of a few years, Wagner became a security partner for some autocratic governments in Africa, upending power balances in already fragile regions and gaining its own political influence in the process. In return, Wagner’s African clients supplied it with cash, along with gold and diamond mining concessions. The group’s operatives also became involved in a variety of industries including timber, alcohol, logistics and entertainment.

Wagner’s forces helped strengthen embattled governments and warlords in countries including the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya and Sudan. But the mercenaries also left a long and well-documented trail of human rights abuses — including torture, rape, and summary executions — behind them.

On Aug. 19, five days before the plane crash that took his life, Mr. Prigozhin visited the Central African Republic. A top adviser to the country’s president said Mr. Prigozhin had met Wagner troops deployed there. A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss Mr. Prigozhin’s movements, said he had likely met with the president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra.

Analysts suspect that Mr. Prigozhin may have then gone on to Mali, where around 1,500 Wagner mercenaries allied with the country’s military regime have been deployed.

It was not immediately clear how Mr. Prigozhin’s death will affect the activities of Wagner and Russia more broadly in Africa. Experts say the fallout may take months to unfold and that the Kremlin might try to claim control of Wagner’s assets by folding them into new military companies​ affiliated with, or closely linked to, the Ministry of Defense​.

“We can expect changes in the chain of command, and changes in the ownership of the businesses that Wagner holds in the Central African Republic and elsewhere,” said Enrica Picco, the project director for central Africa at the International Crisis Group, an organization that researches conflicts.​ “The question is how they will do it and how long it will take.”

— Elian Peltier reporting from Dakar, Senegal

A cargo ship carrying steel from Odesa has become the second to travel through a temporary corridor set up by Ukraine’s government for civilian vessels, according to marine traffic data.

As of Monday morning, the Liberian-flagged cargo vessel, Primus, was off the coast of Bulgaria en route to Dakar, Senegal, after using a route set up following Russia’s decision to pull out of an agreement that guaranteed safe passage for Ukrainian grain exports.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said Sunday that the vessel was “loaded with steel for African consumers,” and had “successfully” navigated the temporary Black Sea corridor.

“We defend freedom of navigation with real deeds and the world benefits from stability,” he said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I thank everyone who made this possible, our port workers, our warriors and everyone who defends freedom.”

The temporary corridor, which hugs the coast from Ukraine to Turkey, was established to allow passage for civilian ships that have been docked in Ukrainian ports since before Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

Last summer, Russia agreed to allow Ukraine to restart shipments of grain from a trio of Black Sea ports, ending a blockade that had been in place for months. After repeated threats to pull out of the deal, Russia left the agreement in July, claiming that terms easing its own exports were not being honored. Moscow vowed to treat vessels arriving and departing from Ukraine as hostile and stepped up its targeting of Ukraine’s granaries and ports.

Ukrainian officials responded by laying out the new temporary corridor. It passes through a maze of maritime mines that have been deployed to protect Ukraine’s coast, allowing ships to then chart a course out of the Black Sea via the territorial waters of three NATO members: Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Earlier this month, the Joseph Schulte, a nearly 1,000-foot-long container ship, left Odesa in the first test of the new corridor. The company that owns the vessel said it held 2,000 containers of goods.

On Monday, the Kremlin’s spokesman insisted that the passage of the Primus through the temporary corridor had no bearing on the prospect of restarting the grain deal.

Such a development would be “directly dependent on the fulfillment of — not in words, but in actions — the promises and commitments that were put in front of the Russian side,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said.

Valeriya Safronova contributed reporting.

— Jesus Jiménez

As the Russian military reeled on the battlefield in Ukraine last autumn, a foul-mouthed ex-convict with a personal connection to President Vladimir V. Putin stepped out of the shadows to help.

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin for years had denied any connection to the Wagner mercenary group and operated discreetly on the margins of Russian power, trading in political skulduggery, cafeteria meals and lethal force.

Now, he was front and center, touting the Wagner brand in public and personally recruiting an army of convicts to aid a flailing Russian war operation starved for personnel.

The efforts that Mr. Prigozhin and a top Russian general seen as close to him, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, would undertake in the subsequent months would alter the course of the war.

Both men have since been taken out of action.

Mr. Prigozhin died in a plane crash on Wednesday, an incident that came two months after he launched a failed mutiny against the Russian military’s top brass, and which U.S. and Western officials believe was the result of an explosion on board. Several said they thought Mr. Putin ordered the plane destroyed, suggestions the Kremlin on Friday dismissed as an “absolute lie.”

General Surovikin, who U.S. officials have said had advance knowledge of the mutiny, hasn’t been seen in public since the brief revolt, and according to Russian state news media was formally dismissed from his post leading Russia’s aerospace forces this week.

But on the battlefield, Ukrainian forces are still grappling with their impact, including Mr. Prigozhin’s unorthodox recruitment of prison inmates to quickly bolster Russia’s badly depleted frontline forces.

— Paul Sonne

Dmitri Utkin, a longtime lieutenant to Yevgeny V. Prigozhin whose nom de guerre inspired the name of their private military outfit, Wagner, was also confirmed dead by the Russian authorities on Sunday.

Mr. Utkin, 53, was a passenger on the plane that was carrying nine other people, including Mr. Prigozhin, when it crashed as it was flying to St. Petersburg from Moscow on Wednesday.

Mr. Utkin, a veteran Russian military officer, was closely intertwined with Wagner from its emergence as a fairly modest fighting group a decade ago to its evolution into a brutal, armed-to-the-teeth force willing to do the Kremlin’s bidding from Africa to the Middle East to Ukraine.

But his exact role was a bit murky. Over the years, Mr. Utkin was at times referred to as the “founder” of Wagner, which first came to public attention during early forays against Ukraine ordered by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2014, a precursor to the full-scale invasion of 2022. Wagner mercenaries fought alongside pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region, commanded by Mr. Utkin.

Whether he was the group’s actual founder, though, became less and less certain over time. “While Dmitry Utkin has been widely presented as the front man and ‘principal’ for the Wagner PMC, there is ample data suggesting that his role was more of a field commander,” a report issued in 2020 by the investigative website Bellingcat said. Open-source data, the report said, strongly suggested that Mr. Utkin was “not in the driver’s seat of setting up this private army” but rather was a “hired gun.”

In many respects, though, his influence on the culture of Wagner appeared clear.

Mr. Utkin, a retired Russian Special Forces officer, was described as fascinated by Nazi history. The mercenary group’s name — and, before that, Mr. Utkin’s military call sign — was said to have been inspired by the composer Richard Wagner, a favorite of Hitler’s. Some of the group’s fighters seemed to share that ideology: Ancient Norse symbols favored by white supremacists have been photographed on Wagner equipment in Africa and the Middle East.

— Cassandra Vinograd

Ukraine Dispatch

Mykola Honchar lives in a crumbling stone house in what is left of a tiny hamlet of eastern Ukraine. The town was attacked by Russian forces in June of last year, as the Wagner mercenary forces were spearheading a renewed offensive.

Even before the Kremlin set Wagner loose to wreak havoc in Ukraine, the Russian campaign was notable for its brutality. But from the moment Wagner forces entered the war in April 2022, they earned a special reputation for bloodlust from civilians and soldiers alike.

To Mr. Honchar, the death of Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, responsible for so much carnage in the war, would be fitting — a violent end to a violent life.

“He has blood on his hands,” said Mr. Honchar, 58. “If there is a god, god will figure out what to do with him.”

— Marc Santora and Tyler Hicks Reporting from the village of Bohorodychne in eastern Ukraine

When President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia let the mercenary tycoon Yevgeny V. Prigozhin escape seemingly unscathed after launching a mutiny in June, critics around the world seized on the Russian leader’s apparent show of wartime weakness. Some even said the brief rebellion presaged the start of the post-Putin era.

Two months later, Mr. Prigozhin is dead in the mysterious crash of a private jet in a field between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Mr. Putin is securely in the Kremlin, publicly eulogizing Mr. Prigozhin as a talented person with a “complicated fate,” who made many mistakes in life. And the remaining Wagner group leadership is either dead or silent.

U.S. and other Western officials said their leading theory is that the plane was brought down by an explosion, and several, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they believed Mr. Putin ordered it destroyed.

In Mr. Putin’s Russia, fates can quickly change in a system where existential affronts to the leader are neither forgiven nor forgotten. For more than two decades, individuals who have posed threats to the Russian leader have regularly found themselves exiled, imprisoned or dead, swiftly stripped of their power.

— Paul Sonne