People lay carnations on a memorial as they pay tribute to Yevgeny Prigozhin in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on August 24.Vladimir Alexandrov/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group, died in a plane crash outside Moscow in August.
It was one of the most significant deaths in Russia’s year of fighting in Ukraine.
But the seeds of Prigozhin’s demise were planted long before in the Ukrainian town of Soledar.
All eyes turned to Russia on August 23 as the world watched to see if Yevgeny Prigozhin, the bombastic leader of Russia’s Wagner Group, was among the dead after a private Wagner plane crashed outside a Moscow airport.
Prigozhin’s assassination — which Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s close friend, Nikolai Patrushev, reportedly orchestrated — was among the year’s most significant moments in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Within days of the crash, investigators confirmed Prigozhin had been on the plane, cementing the shocking — yet entirely predictable — demise of the mercenary boss who briefly racked up a roster of short-lived military successes amid the Ukraine war before pushing his luck and piquing the ire of his onetime ally, Putin.
The crash itself reeked of retribution for the armed uprising Prigozhin had staged against Russia’s defense brass just two months earlier — a short-lived, quickly quashed mutiny that resulted in Prigozhin’s exile to Belarus.
Two months later, he was dead.
Business Insider looked back on Prigozhin’s spectacular fall with a top war analyst to understand how the cinematic saga began at the Ukrainian salt town of Soledar, just 10 miles from Bakhmut, in January 2023.
“Soledar was a big turning point in the relationship between Putin and Prigozhin and why the Russian Ministry of Defence got the upper hand in that relationship,” Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst and deputy team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, or ISW, told BI.
A Ukrainian artillery unit fires toward Russian positions on the outskirts of Bakhmut on December 30, 2022.SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP via Getty Images
Prigozhin strikes a bargain
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Putin erroneously believed the conflict would be over in two short days.
But by mid-May 2022, Russia was running out of reserves, a dilemma that created an opportunity for Prigozhin, who could provide much-needed manpower with his Wagner Group troops.
By spring 2022, Wagner forces were in the throes of war in Ukraine, fighting in Popasna, about 25 kilometers from Bakhmut. The group eventually claimed the city as a small Russian victory.
Seeking political power on the heels of his win, Prigozhin determined his Wagner forces could also take nearby Bakhmut, which would fulfill a key Russian directive and allow the country to expand control of the besieged region, Stepanenko said.
ISW assessed that in late spring or early summer, Prigozhin reportedly struck a deal with Putin, promising the capture of Bakhmut by New Year’s, Stepanenko said, citing the cultural significance of the holiday in Russia.
But Soledar stood between Wagner and Bakhmut. The small city was home to about 15,000 people before the war broke out and is the site of the famous Soledar salt mines, which once supplied more than 90% of Ukraine’s salt.
Even with his surplus of soldiers, Prigozhin would struggle to take Soledar by mid-January, let alone deliver the larger city of Bakhmut by the new year.
His grandiose efforts to mitigate his failures helped seal his fate.
A mural depicting mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group that reads: “Wagner Group — Russian knights.”AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic
Putin had built a two-decade regime on allowing rival factions in his government to feud so long as they never turned their animosity toward him. But by fall 2022, it was clear even Putin was growing frustrated with his defense officials’ slow progress in Ukraine.
The Russian president addressed the slow-going nature of the war by appointing Sergey Surovikin, a hardline Russian general — and Prigozhin’s political ally — as commander in chief of the Russian Aerospace Forces in October 2022.
The move emboldened Prigozhin, who saw the command change as the fruit of his efforts to discredit the Ministry of Defence and its top leaders.
Wagner troops doubled down on their efforts to break through Soledar in October, Stepanenko said, employing vicious human-wave attacks and a litany of atrocities in the small town.
“It looked like Wagner was desperate to win it,” Stepanenko said. “They didn’t care about what would happen to Ukrainian forces. They didn’t care what would happen to their own forces.”
“Putin really needed a victory and Prigozhin knew that,” she added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov in 2021.Kremlin Press Office / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Prigozhin spins Soledar’s significance
As fall turned to winter and the battle in Soledar raged on, it became clear that Prigozhin had little chance of delivering Bakhmut by January. But that didn’t stop Wagner forces from employing barbaric tactics to try and win the city. Facing certain failure in Bakhmut, the ever-industrious mercenary boss went to work setting himself up for success in Soledar.
Prigozhin started to paint Soledar as a glistening beacon in of itself, with its miles of cavernous salt mines that he said could be used to store weapons and ammunition.
“He was trying to weaponize the information space to convince the Kremlin that this was a bigger deal than it was,” Stepanenko said.
Prigozhin traveled to Soledar personally in the days before the city fell, documenting his time there in his signature Telegram videos and bringing Wagner-affiliated Russian military bloggers with him to witness Wagner’s daily advances, ISW said. He even claimed victory in Soledar before the Russian Defence Ministry officially announced the city’s capture.
After the city officially fell on January 12, Prigozhin staged a triumphant victory speech in what he said were the sparkling salt caves of Soledar.
But Soledar wasn’t Bakhmut. And Putin wasn’t pleased. The president replaced Surovikin with Gerasimov as top commander on January 11, appointing the longstanding Prigozhin enemy to the top position.
“Putin was preparing for the fact that Prigozhin would not be able to accomplish his goal. He was starting to prepare to switch sides,” Stepanenko said.
“The Kremlin snub against Wagner forces likely angered Prigozhin a lot,” Stepanenko said. “I think that’s when he realized he might not have the same relationship with the Kremlin that he once had.”
It was a breaking point Prigozhin would never recover from. The following months would see the mercenary leader spiral even further into his vendetta against Shoigu and Gerasimov until he took up arms against them in a last-ditch effort to see his enemies replaced.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner private-mercenary group.Press service of “Concord”/Handout via REUTERS
Final days
Russia quickly moved on from Soledar, refocusing its efforts on Bakhmut where the battle would rage for another four months until the city fell in May. Wagner fighters represented the vast majority of Russian forces fighting for the city that spring and suffered significant losses throughout the battle.
As the months dragged on, Prigozhin became increasingly incensed over what he believed to be a targeted effort by the Russian Ministry of Defence to withhold ammunition from his Wagner forces and curtail the group’s recruiting practices amid the fight for Bakhmut.
The mercenary leader began posting manic Telegram videos in which he castigated Shoigu and Gerasimov in expletive-laden tirades, often using dead Wagner soldiers as set pieces. He even wielded his Wagner forces as blackmail, repeatedly threatening to pull his troops from the Bakhmut front lines.
When the city finally fell, Putin made sure to publicly congratulate the Wagner Group in the hopes of avoiding “a repetition of the backlash that followed their immediate failure to do so when Wagner captured Soledar,” ISW wrote at the time.
But the damage had been done.
Prigozhin quickly pulled his troops from Bakhmut before establishing defensive positions in the city, leaving the Russian Defence Ministry in a perilous position, Stepanenko said. Russian defense forces were subsequently forced to adapt on the spot, which allowed Ukrainian troops to make some gains in the area in the aftermath of its fall.
Seven months later, fighting rages on near Bakhmut as Ukraine and Russia continue to engage in positional fighting in the region, Stepanenko said.
The final blow for Prigozhin came in June when the Russian defense ministry announced all “volunteer formations” or PMCs would be forced to sign contracts directly with the government, a move widely seen as a targeted effort to take control of Wagner and strip Prigozhin of his power.
Less than two weeks later, Prigozhin staged his fated mutiny, a final, misguided attempt to curry Putin’s favor.
Prigozhin’s efforts to repackage his failure in Bakhmut as a victory in Soledar set the mercenary leader down a brazen path in the final eight months of his life, ending in a fiery crash outside a Moscow airfield and an easy political win for Putin.
“Prigozhin overestimated the importance of his loyalty to Putin’s regime,” Stepanenko said.
