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Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham OPINION 10 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 30 AUGUST 2023 TWO months after challenging Vladimir Putin's leadership in an apparent but abortive "mutiny", Yevgeny Prigozhin – the former owner of the mercenary pri- vate military company Wagner Group – has joined a long list of prominent Russians to die in mysterious circumstances. Prigozhin's private jet apparent- ly crashed on a routine flight from Moscow to St Petersburg just af- ter 3pm local time. Confirmation of Prigozhin's likely demise came in the form of announcements by Russia's authorities and a Tele- gram channel linked to the Wag- ner group. Conveniently, there was also video footage of the plane falling out of the sky and burning on the ground. With him on the aircraft was Dmitry Utkin, widely considered to be his second in command at the Wagner Group. Other pas- sengers are reported to have included Valery Chekalov, the head of Wagner security, Yevge- ny Makaryan, who has been de- scribed as Prigozhin's bodyguard and other Wagner Group person- nel. While it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure how, why and on whose orders Prigozhin might have been killed, it is far less diffi- cult to imagine that he finally paid the price for his march on Mos- cow at the head of a column of his Wagner Group troops at the end of June 2023. The deaths of oth- er top Wagner personnel in the crash spell the likely end of the group in its current form. At the time, Prigozhin went to great lengths to paint his mu- tiny as directed against the top brass in the Russian ministry of defence and not as a direct challenge to the Russian pres- ident, Vladimir Putin. Yet the brief episode exposed cracks in the regime. Unopposed by lo- cal and regional security forc- es, Prigozhin's troops were able to take Rostov-on-Don and the headquarters of Russia's southern military district and command centre of the war in Ukraine. They also marched to within 200km (125 miles) of the Russian capital, again mostly unopposed. Following a deal brokered by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin called off his rebellion, agreeing to relocate his men and himself to Belarus and Wagner's overseas bases – mostly in Africa. Despite some concerns over an increasing Wagner pres- ence closer to Nato members Poland and Lithuania, little of the agreed relocation seems to have happened. Prigozhin him- self appears to have enjoyed significant freedom of move- ment in Russia in the weeks af- ter his abortive mutiny, includ- ing making an appearance on the sidelines of the Russia-Af- rica summit at the end of July. Putin's purges Though abrupt, his death is not unexpected. Under Putin, a former KGB operative himself, Russia has carried out several high-profile assassinations and assassination attempts, includ- ing in the UK and Germany, to go after alleged traitors and Pu- tin critics. Many opposition figures in Russia have either died mys- teriously or been assassinated. The list includes figures such as Alexei Navalny (who survived novichok poisoning), former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, anti-corruption law- yer Sergei Magnitsky, and jour- nalist Anna Politkovskaya. Meanwhile, some regime crit- ics may have thought them- selves to be beyond his reach in the UK or other countries, have also been disposed of. These include oligarch and for- mer friend turned critic, Boris Berezovsky, and former spies Alexander Litvinenko and Ser- gei Skripal, who were both poi- soned (although Skripal sur- vived) have been targeted. Putin's message here has been clear for two decades: opposi- tion will not be tolerated and will probably have fatal conse- quences. Prigozhin's likely assassina- tion reaffirms this message spectacularly. But it is not the only step that Putin has taken to reassert control. On the day of Prigozhin's death, one of his presumptive allies in the mili- tary establishment, Sergei Su- rovikin – a former commander of Russian forces in Ukraine – was apparently dismissed as head of the Russian aerospace forces. This followed weeks of speculation following his dis- appearance after the Prigozhin mutiny. Other top military officials critical of Russia's conduct of the war in Ukraine, including the commander of the Russia 58th Combined Arms Army, Ivan Popov, were dismissed. Other officials, considered close to Prigozhin, including the deputy head of military in- telligence, Vladimir Alexeyev, are still unaccounted for. Outside the military, alleged critics of Putin's war in Ukraine have not been safe either. A series of mysterious deaths struck fear into Russian oli- garchs in the months after the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine began in Feb- ruary 2022. Since then, criti- cism from the Russian business elite has been muted. The apparent assassination of Prigozhin would therefore seem to be business as usu- al for Putin. It was foreshad- owed in the Russian president's speech on June 24, the morning after Prigozhin's mutiny be- gan, when he vowed to punish the "traitors", as he described them. Back to business as usual? Prigozhin's demise also draws a line under the apparent pow- er struggle within the Russian military. As the chief archi- tects of the war in Ukraine, the defence minister, Sergey Shoigu, and chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov, are the most obvious beneficiaries of Prigozhin's death and the wid- er purges of critics inside and outside the military. Putin, and his inner circle, clearly have prevailed on this occasion. This is not surprising, given how little direct and pub- lic support Prigozhin received over the course of his mutiny. In this sense, Putin's regime is still highly effective and has demonstrated its capacity to survive domestic challenges. But the underlying problem – a disastrous military campaign in Ukraine – has not gone away with the death of Prigozhin. Putin may have silenced one of the most outspoken critics of the conduct of the war, and have others arrested or mur- dered, like prominent pro-war bloggers Igor Girkin and Vlad- en Tatarsky. But many who share Prigozhin's misgivings without backing him public- ly will have survived Putin's clean-up operation. Putin can be sure that they will now be extra careful not to stand too close to high win- dows or accept cups of tea from anyone connected with Rus- sia's security services. But this may not be the only lesson they have learned from Prigozhin's demise – and that will likely worry the Kremlin and increase the paranoia of Putin and those around him. Wagner Group boss joins long list of those who challenged Vladimir Putin and paid the price Stefan Wolff Yevgeny Prigozhin and Vladimir Putin in 2013