“When you strike at a king, you must kill him”

A few days ago the world watched in amazement as Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the infamous paramilitary Wagner Group, turned his ambition from defeating Ukraine to challenging the Russian army and—although he continues to deny it—Vladimir Putin himself. Wagner’s fighters seized some Russian territory and rapidly advanced towards Moscow, before abruptly halting, accepting a deal negotiated by Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko, and standing down.

Details are still in short supply, but it’s hard to imagine that this brief insurrection won’t have consequences for the war on Ukraine, for Russia’s relations with its few allies, and—most importantly—on Putin’s future.

Yevgenia Albats, Distinguished Journalist in Residence at NYU’s Jordan Center in forced exile from Russia, thinks that Prigozhin is a “dead man walking.” Maybe Putin, too?

Do you think this is the beginning of the end for the Russian dictator?

"When you strike at a king, you must kill him” ― is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson