The alleged assassination of Yevgeny Prigozhin marks the beginning of the purge of Vladimir Putin, according to a US-born banker who became the leading critic of the Kremlin.
Bill Browder, a Chicago-born financier, told that the Wagner boss’s apparent death in a plane crash came as no surprise – and would result in “a lot of dead bodies piling up on both sides of the story”. .
Pentagon officials said it was “probable” that Prigozhin was killed, but do not believe his plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, as previously reported.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said it would look into the investigation and Putin sent his condolences to the family of the 62-year-old Wagner boss, describing him as a “talented businessman” but also saying he had “made mistakes”.
Western security forces believe the Embraer Legacy 600 jet was intercepted by Russia’s domestic intelligence agency FSB – a view shared by 59-year-old Browder, who is blacklisted by the Kremlin as a “national security threat”.
Prigozhin’s alleged assassination marks the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s purge, according to American banker and Kremlin nemesis Bill Browder (pictured).
Pentagon officials said it was “probable” that Prigozhin was killed, but do not believe his plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, as previously reported
Putin has offered his condolences to the family of the Wagner boss and released a statement praising his former chef-turned-enemy number one as a “talented businessman”.
“Everyone was wondering why Prigozhin was alive after the mutiny he instigated 60 days ago,” Browder told , referring to the beginnings of the June 24 Wagner coup.
Who is Bill Browder and how does he deal with Russia and Putin?
Bill Browder – who describes himself as “Putin’s number one enemy” – officially ran afoul of Russian authorities in 2005.
But his family is deeply rooted in the country’s history.
His grandfather was Earl Browder – the leader of the US Communist Party, who twice ran for President.
And his father, Felix, was a math prodigy and a graduate of MIT — but couldn’t find work during the McCarthy purges of the 1960s.
Bill Browder was born in Chicago in 1964 and made a career in fund investing.
He founded Hermitage Capital Management in Russia in 1996 when the country’s markets opened up to capitalist investment after the fall of communism.
He was once Russia’s largest foreign investor and made hundreds of millions of pounds from his funds.
But in 2005 he ran afoul of the Kremlin and was blacklisted in Russia, while many of his assets were confiscated.
He spent the following decade exposing corruption in Russian officials and looting tens of millions from Russian companies.
Browder documented his fight against Russian corruption in a book about his career entitled Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice.
And he’s traveled the world urging governments to pass the Magnitsky Law.
The law is named after Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was imprisoned, beaten and died in custody after exposing corruption.
She intends to punish the Russian officials responsible for his death.
It was passed in the US, but while some MPs support it, the UK has not passed it.
“Every day that he was alive created more and more of a mystery because it goes against everything Putin has ever shown before.”
“This assassination is now reverting to Putin’s normal course of action, which we assume eliminates all forms of opposition.”
When asked whether the apparent killing of the Russian military heavyweight would tend to consolidate Putin’s power or fuel further discontent among Wagner elites, Browder had a grim prognosis.
“I assume that this is just the beginning of Putin’s purge of disloyal Wagner supporters and those in the Russian establishment who sympathize with them,” he said.
“It never made sense to me why Putin wouldn’t have carried out a purge in the face of a coup.”
“Secondly, if you are a member of the private military company Wagner and you believe that Putin will come and kill you, you may want to forestall him by killing him or people close to him.”
“So I imagine there’s going to be a lot of corpses piling up on both sides of the story over time.”
Browder added that Putin also risks martyring Prigozhin in the eyes of many Russians.
“I believe that in Russia he was considered a folk hero and this will cement his reputation as such,” he said.
“Whether people respond to that kind of feeling is another question.”
“But he had some of the most dangerous people in the country working for him – trained killers.”
“They are now afraid for their lives and I can imagine these people becoming a deadly and dangerous force in an unstable country generally.”
Browder said that Prigozhin’s apparent death also meant that “a formidable military opponent of Ukraine has now been eliminated,” but his coup forced Putin to act against him.
“Putin was in a terrible position,” Browder said, referring to the post-coup era.
“He couldn’t have allowed that kind of disrespect to go unpunished.”
“But at the same time, Prigozhin was an extremely valuable part of his apparatus, so Putin demoted his apparatus because he can’t handle the disrespect.”
Browder said he believes the only reason Prigozhin wasn’t killed sooner is because of his supporting role in Russia’s Africa missions.
“One of my theories as to why Prigozhin held out two months after the uprising is that he was such an important man given the 17 African countries in which he conducted private military and mercenary operations,” he said.
Western security forces believe the Embraer Legacy 600 jet was shot down by Russia’s domestic intelligence agency 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 meant that “Ukraine’s formidable military adversary has now been eliminated,” but his coup forced Putin to act against him
“I would imagine that Putin thought very carefully about how to replace him in all these places.”
“Russian influence in Africa was exercised by the Wagner group, so I can imagine that due to Prigozhin’s death, Russian influence in Africa is now being diminished to some extent.”
Ten people are believed to have died in the deadly plane crash, including Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin.
After ten years of doing business in Moscow, Browder was blacklisted by the Russian government in 2005 as a “national security threat” when he began investigating the flow of money to corrupt Kremlin bureaucrats.
He spent the following decade exposing corruption in Russian officials and looting tens of millions from Russian companies.
Browder has documented his fight against Russian corruption in books about his career entitled 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 was helping to expose corruption on behalf of Browder’s Hermitage Capital fund, was arrested in 2009, beaten and died in custody.
Since then, Browder has traveled the world urging governments to enforce a law on his behalf, known as the Magnitsky Law, designed to punish the officers responsible for his death.
The law, which sanctions foreigners who have committed human rights violations or engaged in significant corruption, was passed in the United States in 2012.
Browder is also pushing for the release of Russian political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was jailed on treason charges during what he described as a “show trial” earlier this year.
Kara-Murza, 41, a close ally of assassinated opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on April 17 this year for treason after surviving two episodes of poisoning that left him in a coma in 2015 and 2017.