Prigozhin is gone but the deadly power play in Russia remains
Other rivals are looking to replace the Wagner group, even as the dramatic death of its boss sends a sobering message to those thinking of disrupting the present system.
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A portrait of the late chief of Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is displayed at a makeshift memorial in Moscow on Aug 27.
PHOTO: AFP
In 1773, Yemelyan Pugachev, a Russian military officer, mounted a rebellion against his country’s monarch, Empress Catherine the Great. Despite initial popular support, it failed. Pugachev was captured, brought to Moscow to be exhibited in a cage in the centre of the Russian capital and then cut to pieces with an axe, one limb at a time, before thousands of onlookers.
Exactly 250 years since the start of the Pugachev uprising, another rebel against the ruler of the day came to a similar spectacular end, not at the sharp end of an axe but blown to bits as a result of a mysterious jet explosion.
