Eh, it’s debatable. He had already shipped Wagner off to Belarus and folded the Wagner troops into the Belarus military, so Wagner was pretty effectively de-fanged at that point. The only thing Putin gained by this was sending a message to anyone else that decided to stand up to him, although if anyone still didn’t understand that Putin tends to assassinate people who displease him they haven’t been paying attention since like 1980 when Putin was still actually KGB. This is very on brand for Putin, although it is a bit novel to apparently go with airplane “crash” rather than his usual standbys of poisoning, “falling” out of windows, or tripping down flights of stairs/elevator shafts and landing on bullets.
On the other hand, it does make Putin look scared and weak that he felt the need to assassinate someone who he had already effectively defeated, without needing to fire a shot at that. I still wonder how he pulled that off. He must have either had some seriously damning dirt on Prigozhin, or else made him one hell of a deal to get him to about face and march right out of Russia. Maybe Putin just straight up threatened to nuke him if he got any closer to Moscow and he decided not to try to call Putin’s bluff.
Eh, it’s debatable. He had already shipped Wagner off to Belarus and folded the Wagner troops into the Belarus military, so Wagner was pretty effectively de-fanged at that point. The only thing Putin gained by this was sending a message to anyone else that decided to stand up to him, although if anyone still didn’t understand that Putin tends to assassinate people who displease him they haven’t been paying attention since like 1980 when Putin was still actually KGB. This is very on brand for Putin, although it is a bit novel to apparently go with airplane “crash” rather than his usual standbys of poisoning, “falling” out of windows, or tripping down flights of stairs/elevator shafts and landing on bullets.
On the other hand, it does make Putin look scared and weak that he felt the need to assassinate someone who he had already effectively defeated, without needing to fire a shot at that. I still wonder how he pulled that off. He must have either had some seriously damning dirt on Prigozhin, or else made him one hell of a deal to get him to about face and march right out of Russia. Maybe Putin just straight up threatened to nuke him if he got any closer to Moscow and he decided not to try to call Putin’s bluff.