candles to the wagner center. do you my prigozhin might be seen as a martyr here? maybe an unlikely inspiration to dissenters? maybe not popular dissenters but among the elite, perhaps? i m not sure among the elite because they are scared of change. they would need a lot of convincing that some postwagner figure would be the right person to replace putin. i think among the public, putin s popularity is broad and very shallow. it was striking during the coup, the failed coup, how very quickly wagner was able to take over the important southern russian city. he was greeted in the streets as a hero. and i think russians will cheer for putin. as soon as anyone else comes along, they will cheer for them, instead. they are basically fed up with the stagnant economy, with the war and the other problems of the putin regime and with putin
this is cnn newsroom. recap of our top story. evgeni prigozhin, the founder of the wagner group, was presumed dead in a plane crash. the war lord was traveling from moscow to st. petersburg on a private jet. russian aviation officials say the aircraft plunged from the sky, killing all aboard. people left flowers and candles at tribute. nick paton walsh walks through the rise from personal chef to rebel, and his rapid fall from grace. reporter: he always lived in the shadows until the war in ukraine made him the most public russian critic of how the kremlin s war was fought. the possibility of evgeni prigozhin is dead is a shock wave to an already shaken system. putin s critics rarely survive as long as he did. and the talk in russia and ukraine, that putin might still have wanted to kill him, a sign
operations in the united states, trying to meddle in key elections. all damaging to putin s enemies. his wagner group expanded from 2014. cnn has tracked the mercenaries operating in the central african republic, sudan, libya, mozambique and more. with an army of tens of thousands and in ukraine, always savage, fighting hard. recruiting convicts from russian prisons to be used as cannon fodder on the front lines. executing alleged traitors apparently with a sledgehammer. it may not be known who died in this wreckage. transparent investigators would struggle to find the right dna. we ll have russia s investigators and media s word, the people whose boss prigozhin enraged. for more on prigozhin s legacy in africa, i want to turn
months ago, on putin s reputation for omnipotent doing things right. it s not just the war in ukraine. but prigozhin should never have been able to launch that mutiny in the first place. that s what you have military intelligence for. and having launched it and having failed, he should have been behind bars or dead at the end of the day, not running around grandstanding. i think it shows the fundamental weakness of the putin regime that it s gotten to this stage. i think we also are going to see several more shoes falling here, as the rows go on about the division of the spoils, who gets prigozhin s lucrative empire of dirty tricks, on mercenary operations in other countries and so on. there will be paranoia in the putin circle, about who may be
that pregroschen s short-lived mutiny failed as if he was on borrowed time, given putin s grim track record. yes, kim. either putin was on borrowed time or prigozhin was on borrowed time. didn t think that the planet was big enough place for both of them. putin hates traitors and he publicly called prigozhin a traitor. prigozhin had launched this mutiny. and before that, had insulted putin personally, using language that one couldn t use on cnn. and so, after the failure of the mutiny, this temporary fix, where prigozhin was allowed to go and live in the russian client state of belarus and seemed to resume his role in russian public life. that always had to be temporary. i thought it would be falling out of a window that would be his end, as it is a plane