Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus said the plane crash that killed Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin this week was likely an assassination by Russian President Vladimir Putin and proved Russia is a “mafia state.”
“I think that Putin saw that his image — at the very least, if not the reality — was that he was seen as weakened by this. He was obviously directly challenged by someone he created,” Petraeus said in a NewsNation interview Friday.
Prigozhin, a longtime Putin ally who led the Wagner mercenary group that fought for Russia in Ukraine, attempted a short-lived mutiny against Russian military leadership in June.
“He had challenged Putin directly, and although there was a finesse, there was a way out for him arranged by President Lukashenko of Belarus, it was pretty clear, I think, to most observers that he needed to avoid open windows, umbrellas on sunny days and, and ultimately, of course, a plane that presumably had an explosive in it,” Petraeus continued.
The Kremlin has denied allegations Prigozhin was killed by the government.
Putin also fired the general responsible for overseeing air forces in the Ukraine war this week, who was believed to be a Prigozhin ally.
“Putin has resolved this problem, he’s shown who’s in charge,” Petraeus said. “And we see again, that this is not a normal Russian Federation. This is again, a mafia state.”
In his first remarks after Prigozhin’s death, Putin said Thursday that the mercenary leader had contributed greatly to Russia but had “made mistakes.”
“He made serious mistakes in his life,” Putin said in an address. But he added that Prigozhin, “achieved the necessary results in his life, both for himself and when I asked him to do so for the common goal.”
The Wagner Group has extensive operations in Africa and the Middle East, including a presence in Niger after a military takeover of the country’s government.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has slowed in recent months as Ukraine continues to receive material support from Western allies. Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive has not delivered on its promises, allies say, but Petraeus said that doesn’t mean the war is headed in the wrong direction.
“It is premature to judge that the counteroffensive has already failed, or that it is going to fail. It’s just an open question. War is an uncertain endeavor, no plan survives contact with the enemy and we saw that already,” Petraeus said.
“The Ukrainians were not able to do what they had hoped they would do, which was a combined arms offensive to blast right through the minefields. They took tough losses, including some Western fighting systems. And so they’ve adapted, and they now are engaged in really much more of a setting of the conditions for an eventual breakthrough, if they can achieve it,” he continued.