Putin's Critics Agree He Ordered Prigozhin's Death

Nearly a week after Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash and the Kremlin began to reign in his paramilitary Wagner Group, longtime observers of the Kremlin who spoke to Newsmax were unanimous in their conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind his death.

The question now seems less whether he gave the order than how successful he will be in assuming control of the group Prigozhin led in a surprisingly strong "mutiny" earlier in the summer.

Wagner media sources, according to the Financial Times, "have sought in recent days to counter claims that their fighters were leaderless and were being absorbed into the regular armed forces."

"For me it's obvious," Laure Mandeville, former Moscow bureau chief of the French publication LeFigaro, told Newsmax. "Revenge after treason. It is an execution. Plainly put, it was designed by Putin to punish and discourage further rebellion. It is the manifestation of a Putinist system which is eating its own children and is using criminal methods in all its actions."

Mandeville, author of two books on Putin, predicted that "it will get worse."

"The system will get repressive and run out of options," Mandeville said. "For now, it has used war to cement a consensus. But how long can it last?"

Craig Copetas, former Wall Street Journal correspondent in Moscow, predicted the end for Prigozhin a feature shortly after the "mutiny."

Last week, Copetas told Newsmax that Putin, "like all Russian goons since Ivan the Terrible, keeps the people he intends to murder alive for a reason."

"Why he does that, how he picks and chooses, is a speculative question that only Putin can answer," he added.

"And please don't fully buy into the convenient comparison that Putin operates like a mob boss. Putin operates like a Russian tsar. Mob bosses aren't anointed by God. Tsars are anointed by God."

Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly a prisoner in Russia for ten years for defying Putin, added that he regretted the death of Prigozhin.

"He ordered me to death, but life seems to have decreed otherwise," he said. "Nevertheless, we are dealing with yet another extrajudicial massacre. If it were a normal state and not a scammer named after Putin, then one can be tried or amnestied for rebellion. But one cannot kill outside the trial, especially when a person is not hiding. But in a gang — this is the only way after all and who knows what he could say in court?"

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.