Prigozhin's Death Caps a Terrible Year for Putin's Nationalist Base

The sudden—though not entirely unexpected—demise of Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has left many pro-war Russians raging at the defense ministry, the Russian government and even Vladimir Putin himself.

This prominent faction, widely seen as Putin's electoral base, has become increasingly outspoken and critical of what it perceives as Russia's lack of commitment and aggression in the Ukraine conflict.

But now this group of hardliners, already sanctioned or arrested abroad, is also increasingly being targeted by the very regime that it has loyally stood behind during Putin's near quarter-of-a-century reign. More than a dozen of the war's most ardent supporters have been demoted, jailed or killed in the past year.

While it is still unclear what exactly caused the 62-year-old mercenary chief's private jet to crash in Russia's Tver Oblast on Tuesday, with a Russian surface-to-air missile strike, on-board explosion and "careless handling of munitions" among the theories being floated, many are convinced that Putin was behind it one way or another.

Prigozhin's body hasn't been officially identified yet, but the Russian president, who was pictured standing in front of an orchestra moments after news of Prigozhin's death emerged, has already delivered his goodbyes to the man also known as "Putin's chef."

"I've known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 1990s. He was a man with no easy fate. He made some serious mistakes in his life, but he also achieved the needed results—both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause," Putin said during a televised speech on Thursday.

Prigozhin, once a close ally and supporter of Putin, more recently fell out of favor with the Kremlin after he accused Russia's military of attacking his troops, and then launched a brief but memorable mutiny in late June.

While the mercenary troops stopped short of trying to take the Kremlin and eventually returned to their camps, and Prigozhin himself appeared to have made a deal with Putin that would see him exiled to neighboring Belarus, Russia watchers were skeptical that he would escape retribution—especially after Putin accused the coup leaders of "treason."

"Everyone knows what they do with 'traitors' and Putin hasn't done that," Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev told the Financial Times earlier in August. "He wants to see him dead. He can't do that yet. In six months Prigozhin will either be dead or there will be a second coup. I'm agnostic between the two but I can't see neither of these happening."

The Kremlin quickly rejected accusations of its involvement, with Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, calling the claim an "absolute lie" and urging the public to wait for the results of an official investigation into the crash.

Whether the Kremlin was involved or not, Prigozhin's demise caps a terrible few months for some of Russia's most prominent and influential "hawks," including former and current supporters of Putin.

While it was the mostly liberal Russian opposition that has for years has been subject to repression by the state, with hundreds of Putin and war critics, such as Alexei Navalny, jailed, exiled or killed over the years, in recent months it has been the right wing and nationalistic figures who have fared badly.

The Prigozhin jet crash happened just weeks after another prominent critic of Russia's defense ministry, former Russian military commander turned blogger Igor Girkin, was arrested on charges of "discrediting the military" and inciting "extremism."

New laws introduced shortly after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, which until recently were mostly been used to silence critics of the war, were applied against Girkin, also known as Strelkov, after the convicted war criminal's scathing rant against Putin and his top military chiefs.

"For 23 years, a nonentity was at the head of the country, who managed to 'pull the wool over the eyes' of a significant part of the population," the former commander wrote in a Telegram post on July 18, 2023, urging Russians not to re-elect the 'useless coward' in 2024.

Girkin has been a staunch Putin ally for years, seeking refuge back in Russia after an international arrest warrant for him was issued for the shooting down of the MH17 passenger jet over Ukraine in 2014.

But Girkin has grown increasingly disillusioned with Putin and Russia's military leadership in recent months, while also attacking Prigozhin. Despite the apparent animosity towards Wagner, the former commander in a recent Telegram post conceded that 'Russian military top brass' could have been behind the Prigozhin jet crash—although he stopped short of blaming Putin himself.

Girkin's allies have also come under scrutiny amid the fallout from his arrest. Among those is an ex-FSB officer Mikhail Polyakov, who says he was sacked from the military for criticizing Putin; and Girkin's show co-host, a decorated former colonel with Russia's military intelligence agency GRU Vladimir Kvachkov, who was fined.

Some of Russia's current military chiefs have also felt the Kremlin's wrath, with the Institute for the Study of War assessing that one of them was a: "Prime candidate for a scapegoat" as Putin cleaned house in the aftermath of the Wagner mutiny.

General Sergei Surovikin, the former commander of Russia's forces in Ukraine also known as "General Armageddon," vanished from the public arena shortly after the attempted coup. This month, RIA Novosti, the Russian state news outlet, confirmed that Surovikin—who was rumored to be under house arrest—has been fired as the head of the Russian air force.

His deputy, General Andrei Yudin, as well as the deputy head of military intelligence, Vladimir Alexeyev, have also been relieved of their positions and possibly even detained, according to some reports, including by the Wall Street Journal.

Ivan Popov, who was the 58th Combined Arms Army's major general, said he was removed from his post after criticizing the Russian ministry of defense, and later was redeployed to Syria, according to reports. Meanwhile Colonel General Gennady Zhidko, a top Russian Army commander who was dismissed as Moscow suffered setbacks in the Ukraine war, died last week, reportedly from natural causes.

Other deaths of prominent pro-war Russians, however, have been far from "natural." In addition to the neo-nazi co-founder of Wagner, Dmitry Utkin, and other Russian military veterans turned mercenaries, who died aboard Prigozhin's jet, pro-Putin media figures have also perished in mysterious circumstances.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a far-right nationalist blogger and Kremlin propagandist was killed when a bomb was detonated in a cafe in central St Petersburg in May 2023. Another prominent propagandist, Darya Dugina-the daughter of "Putin's philosopher," Alexander Dugin, was killed with a car bomb in September 2022.

Another car bomb nearly took the life of a Russian nationalist writer and political activist Zakhar Prilepin in June 2023, near Nizhny Novgorod. His driver was killed in the blast.

A mysterious group called the National Republican Army claimed responsibility for Tatarsky's murder, while Russia accused pro-Ukrainian saboteurs inside the country, who it claims were acting on the behest of Ukrainian intelligence.

Kyiv has denied its involvement in the specific cases, though military officials have on numerous occasions hinted that their operatives were active in Russia.

Samuel Ramani, the author of Putin's War on Ukraine and an associate fellow at the British Royal United Services Institute think tank, pointed to the unenviable fates of Russia's "ultra-nationalists and hardliners" in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"Ultra-nationalist activists have become targets of Kremlin repression, much like liberals and anti-war activists, and of Ukrainian cross-border operations," Ramani wrote. "A warning shot to anyone who criticizes the Russian defense ministry and to the remaining militant voices on Z Telegram."

Newsweek reached out to the Russian defense ministry for comment.