- A military expert says Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin “may want to steer clear” of windows.
- Two Russian tycoons linked to critical comments on the war have fallen out of windows in the last year.
- Wechsler added that Prigozhin should remember: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
A US military expert said Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted rebellion on Saturday could very well end in his death.
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“As for Prigozhin, he will need to reflect on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous admonition, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him,'” said William F. Wechsler, senior director of the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. “Indeed, for the time being, he may want to steer clear of any upper-floor windows, as in recent years Putin’s adversaries tend to be especially clumsy around them.”
Prigozhin led his mercenary group in an uprising on Saturday, only to call it off after coming close to Moscow. The rebellion came to an abrupt end after Prigozhin struck an agreement with the Kremlin.
As part of the deal, Prigozhin and his troops will not be prosecuted for the uprising, per the Associated Press. Instead, Prigozhin will be exiled to Belarus while the troops that did not participate in the uprising would be offered Russian Defense Ministry contracts.
Wechsler’s comments were part of a series of expert analyses published by the Atlantic Council on Saturday. He had previously served as a defense official during the Obama administration, where he worked on policies with an “emphasis on counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, information operations, and other sensitive operations.”
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously been suspected of assassinating his rivals. Two critics of Putin’s war in Ukraine have died in the last year after falling from building windows.
In December, Russian tycoon Pavel Antov died after falling out of a hotel window in India. Antov had criticized the invasion of Ukraine on his WhatsApp account in June before claiming that someone else had sent the message, per BBC.
Russian energy oligarch Ravil Maganov died after falling out of a window at a Moscow hospital in September. Maganov’s death came almost six months after his energy company, Lukoil, issued a statement expressing “deepest concerns” about the war in Ukraine.
“Prigozhin is undoubtedly aware of the fate that has befallen Putin’s adversaries, in Russia and abroad. He came to an agreement because Putin has long been his patron, not his adversary — the Russian military elite is his adversary,” Wechsler told Insider.
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“In the end, Putin and Prigozhin avoided the kind of conflict that would have risked each or both of them losing everything, but the resulting agreement has diminished them both. Neither is fundamentally secure in their positions today,” he added.
