Suddenly, Yevgeny Prigozhin is a phantom. Is he in Belarus or St Petersburg? In unconfirmed footage that makes him look like a Bond villain, he struts across a rooftop, shadowed by a muscled bodyguard, takes a seat in a helicopter, and vanishes into the skies of St Petersburg.
For nearly a decade, Prigozhin has sown scandal in Russia, creating a troll factory empire, leading Russia’s interference into foreign elections and bankrolling the Wagner mercenary group that fought in Ukraine and has propped up dictators in Africa.
In last weekend’s mutiny, he also called for upheaval, leading an armed rebellion that many fear could turn to score-settling or even looting in Moscow, including the upmarket homes of Moscow’s wealthy Rublyovka district.
“This call to go get those thieves in Rublyovka was revolutionary,” said Konstantin Remchukov, editor-in-chief of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, who saw Vladimir Putin last week at a closed-door meeting for top editors. “[The elite] truly fear Prigozhin as a possible alternative to Putin. There would be no guarantees, no protection, no rules to the game.”
Instead, it is Prigozhin’s empire that will now crumble, ending a decade of his schemes and tricks doing some of the Kremlin’s dirtiest work.
On Friday, Russia blocked the websites of the Ria Fan, Politics Today, Economy Today, Neva News and People’s News online media outlets, part of a constellation of sites that pushed out fake news in support of Prigozhin’s agenda.
The St Petersburg-based outlet Rotunda also reported that Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency, a troll factory where low-paid interns would try to sow anger and distrust by writing aggressive comments under news and social media posts, had also been closed down.
Prigozhin had for years denied that he was the founder of the organisation until earlier this year. “I’ve never just been the financier of the Internet Research Agency,” he said. “I invented it, I created it, I managed it for a long time. It was founded to protect the Russian information space from boorish aggressive propaganda of anti-Russian narrative from the west.”
In an extraordinary appearance, an editor from his Patriot media group defended the troll factory from its founding in 2009, saying that it “was strategically important to discredit the work of opposition journalists who were trying … to destroy our country”.
Many of Prigozhin’s tactics, from online social sabotage to recruiting convicts from prisons, have since been adopted by the Russian government. Numerous state corporations and even private businesspeople sponsor their own small mercenary groups now.
And his media presence, which was both grating and compelling, made him an overnight star as his conflict with the defence ministry heated up.
Long seen as plausibly deniable, he will now be simply ignored as the Russian government seeks to maintain his overseas mercenary empire and its influence in Africa while eliminating Prigozhin’s personal role.
“Until the war and Bakhmut, we would rarely write about Prigozhin – he was seen as an unclear character, not anti-government but best not to touch,” said a former editor at a Russian state news agency, citing contacts with colleagues. “Now it is as though he never existed.”
“[Editors] are saying: ‘Right, we’ve addressed [the mutiny] but now we are going to get back to normal, and Prigozhin will never be discussed, definitely not on TV.’”
Political insiders in Russia said the conflict could have been avoided if Putin had intervened sooner, recognising Prigozhin’s role in the war for Russia and seeking to satisfy his concerns.
“Putin could have sorted this a long time ago but he’s not sensitive with these things,” said one political insider who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He would have just needed to ask someone to say: ‘Please, go and meet with Prigozhin, call him in and say he’s amazing, we value him but please can he close his mouth because we don’t need this public fighting right now.’ But Prigozhin saw he could criticise the defence minister and get away with it, and then he raised and raised the temperature.”
For some wealthy Russians, Prigozhin is now synonymous with the chaos of a potential battle for power in Russia. The Kremlin and its supporters claim that the mutiny actually consolidated Putin’s power because it showed that without him there could be a civil war.
“When we saw the news on Saturday, we told our guards to just be ready to defend the place if needed,” one wealthy Rublyovka resident told the Observer. “Prigozhin is crazy – he is the worst and capable of anything. He always talks about Rublyovka and how much he hates it. He would probably come to us first.”
Prigozhin himself is supposedly in Belarus, although he has not been photographed there recently. But many have asked the question: how long can he survive?
“I’ve thought a few times about what I would write if he died,” said the former state news editor, when asked if they had prepared an obituary. “I can’t imagine that he will be alive for long.”
