What happened to him Yevgeny Prigozhin? The German press is trying to shed light on the background of the “accident”. Apocalypse images from the nuclear fronts, poor words.

Huge surprise in the first minutes shortly after the news of the plane crash with the leader of the infamous group Wagner on the passenger list. Until the almost immediate confirmation from the Kremlin that Yevgeny Prigozhin was among the dead, all online pages of German newspapers were extremely cautious in their assessments.

“Did Putin clear Prigozhin?” asks its columnist Spiegel immediately after confirmation. “The ‘traitor’, as he called him, is dead, an accident? Hard to imagine. Of course, so far there is no reliable and objective evidence for the causes of the crash and there probably never will be. But can it be considered a coincidence that his plane suddenly plummeted from the sky exactly two months after his mysterious mutiny against Russia’s leader?’ asks the columnist. “Who can believe that in a country where every now and then critics of the Kremlin die mysteriously? The Moscow Mafia’s methods of dealing with people who dare to rebel against Putin and challenge his rule are an open secret. That she would be spared by someone like Prigozhin, who openly challenged him in the midst of war, was inconceivable.”

“The Power of a Crash”

The columnist points out that group leader Wagner was no angel, and that Putin’s friends and opponents will interpret the death as an act of punishment, a “bloody warning that infidelity leads to death in Russia… But his death should do those who still believe in a negotiated solution to the war what should normally have been clear all along, that Putin doesn’t forgive, he doesn’t compromise, he doesn’t negotiate.”

And in the newspaper’s online comment Süddeutsche Zeitung with the title “the power of a crash” the columnist is convinced that no light will ever be shed. “Cases of death under dubious circumstances are quite common in Russia,” he points out. “Falls out of windows, supposed suicides that ultimately went unexplained. The crash of Prigozhin’s plane is of course an event with great impact. What no one should doubt is that those in the Russian elite flirting with the idea of ​​revolt have been given a warning. The consequences of resistance are incalculable.”

Other newspapers have chronicled the rise and fall of “Putin’s chef-turned-rebel” with photographs of his eventful life and his “mysterious” death. THE Badische Zeitung expresses the hypothesis that there were many who foresaw his death. “He committed the worst sacrilege that exists in Russia,” its columnist points out. “He publicly challenged the authority of the Russian president… For a long time Prigozhin belonged to those who became rich and powerful thanks to personal proximity to Putin. It is typical of the Putin system how the petty criminal from St. Petersburg became a wealthy businessman, mercenary and boss in his patron’s network. This worked well as long as Prigozhin was useful and did the dirty work … after the uprising he was forced into exile and deprived of power.’

But also the financial inspection Handelsblatt devotes an article in its online edition to the rise and fall of mercenary leader Wagner. “A life with and for the war” is its title. “As the leader of the most notorious private army, the Russian businessman was always aware of the danger of death,” the columnist points out. “Whether during his missions in Africa, or before them in the war in Ukraine, or exactly two months ago, when he instigated an uprising against Moscow’s military leadership and failed, it was clear to him that his life could quickly come to at the end of. But the Kremlin chief is known to punish betrayal, even from friends, with icy coldness.”