How Yevgeny Prigozhin, Now Presumed Dead, Posed a Threat to Vladimir Putin’s Authority

August 28, 2023 update: Russian authorities said on August 27 they had confirmed Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death in an August 23 plane crash through genetic testing.

U.S. officials believe Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Russian mercenary Wagner Group, was “likely killed” in a plane crash north of Moscow on Wednesday, a Pentagon spokesperson said Thursday.

The crash was reported Wednesday by Russian authorities who said Prigozhin had been on the private plane’s passenger list, and that all 10 people onboard were killed. It happened exactly two months after Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mounted an armed rebellion that was described as the most serious threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority in years. Prigozhin and his troops ultimately stood down, but the mutiny raised new questions about the strength of Putin’s grip on power amid discontent around his troubled war on Ukraine.

In the July 2023 documentary Putin’s Crisis, filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team examined the long relationship between the Russian president and Prigozhin, a close associate of Putin’s for decades.

“What he was, was a hatchet man,” New Yorker journalist and author Susan Glasser said about Prigozhin in the documentary. “He was his loyalist who was willing to do the dirty jobs that Vladimir Putin needed, who made himself useful to the Kremlin in an astonishing variety of ways.”

Prigozhin was indicted in 2018 by the U.S. for his role in Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election and in recent years became known as the leader of Wagner, a mercenary group that has been accused of brutal atrocities in Africa, Syria and Ukraine. The documentary traced how Prigozhin and Putin’s relationship turned sour as Wagner Group forces fought in Ukraine and Prigozhin became increasingly critical of the Kremlin’s handling of the war effort.

In the documentary, Glasser called the mutiny “a breathtaking moment” and said, “This was the first time in more than 20 years of Vladimir Putin’s rule in which there was a serious challenge to the monopoly of power of the state.”

Putin’s critics have noted that there’s a high mortality rate for those who clash with the Kremlin. U.S. President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he was “not surprised” by reports of Prigozhin’s death, and that while he didn’t know for a fact what happened, “there’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind.”

The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the plane crash and said its circumstances are being investigated. Putin on Thursday expressed condolences for the 10 people killed in the plane crash. He alluded to his long relationship with Prigozhin, and, according to The New York Times, said the mercenary leader “made some serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved necessary results, for himself and, when I asked him about it, for our common cause.”

Watch Putin’s Crisis in full for more backstory on the two men’s relationship, and how Putin has dealt with challenges to his authority in the past.

For more on how Vladimir Putin has wielded power, explore years of FRONTLINE’s documentaries, interviews and other reporting involving the long-serving Russian president.