OPINION — No one should lament the passing of Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin. According to Russian officials, Prigozhin was a passenger on an Embraer Legacy 600 aircraft which crashed in the Tver region of Russia while en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s hometown.
Prigozhin ran the Wagner Private Military Organization, which, in effect, is an overtly military organized crime group sponsored by the Government of Russia. Wagner is responsible for atrocities in Ukraine, Syria, Mali, Sudan, and likely other geographies. It has been designated a terrorist organization by several countries and organizations, including France, Ukraine and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Cry no tears for Prigozhin or the other leaders of Wagner who perished in the crash. Certainly, they were “honest” men in the context of Putin’s Russia.
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