After Prigozhin’s Death, a High-Stakes Scramble for His Empire

African leaders allied with Russia had grown used to coping with Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the swaggering, profane mercenary chief who traveled the continent by personal jet, providing to prop up shaky regimes with weapons and propaganda in return for gold and diamonds.

But the Russian delegation that toured three African international locations final week was led by a really totally different determine, the starchy deputy protection minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov. Dressed in a khaki uniform and a “telnyashka” — the horizontally-striped undergarment of Russian armed forces — he signaled conformity and restraint, giving assurances wrapped in well mannered language.

“We will do our best to help you,” he stated at a news convention in Burkina Faso.

The distinction with the flamboyant Mr. Prigozhin couldn’t have been sharper, and it aligned with the message the Kremlin was delivering: After Mr. Prigozhin’s dying in a airplane crash final month, Russia’s operations in Africa have been coming beneath new administration.

It was a glimpse of a shadowy battle now enjoying out on three continents: the struggle for the profitable paramilitary and propaganda empire that enriched Mr. Prigozhin and served Russia’s navy and diplomatic ambitions — till the Wagner chief staged a failed mutiny towards the Kremlin in June.

Interviews with greater than a dozen present and former officers in Washington, Europe, Africa and Russia — in addition to 4 Russians who labored for Mr. Prigozhin — painting a tug of conflict over his belongings amongst main gamers in Russia’s energy construction, together with two totally different intelligence companies. Many of these interviewed spoke on situation of anonymity, to debate delicate diplomatic and intelligence points.

The struggle is sophisticated, these folks stated, by the lingering allegiance to Mr. Prigozhin in his personal military, the place some are bridling at being subsumed inside Russia’s protection ministry and as a substitute backing a switch of energy to Mr. Prigozhin’s son.

“Wagner is not just about the money — it’s a kind of religion,” stated Maksim Shugalei, a political marketing consultant for Mr. Prigozhin, including that he was proud to be a part of the mercenary pressure. “It’s unlikely that this structure will totally disappear. For me, this is impossible.”

The interviews additionally revealed extra about President Vladimir V. Putin’s marketing campaign to discredit Mr. Prigozhin after the insurrection, together with his declaration to a bunch of media figures that the Wagner chief was a profiteer who had made billions from “gold and bling.”

The accounts recommend that even in dying, Mr. Prigozhin stays a defining determine of Mr. Putin’s Russia — encapsulating the secrecy, infighting and contradictory ways of the Kremlin because it wages conflict towards Ukraine.

He was “a sign of dysfunction, a screaming thermometer,” stated Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst in Moscow who stated he knew Mr. Prigozhin. “If you take away the thermometer, it doesn’t change the situation.”

The scramble for Mr. Prigozhin’s belongings — which he assembled as he traded on his multifaceted skill to serve Mr. Putin in return for presidency contracts — has far-reaching implications. His paramilitary group was Russia’s simplest combating pressure in Ukraine within the final 12 months, and its dissipation raises questions on Russia’s skill to mount new offensives. His media group, full with an internet “troll farm,” was instrumental in undercutting democratic establishments around the globe.

Nowhere does Wagner’s operation now carry extra worth for Russia than in African international locations together with Libya and the Central African Republic, the place its mercenaries have gained belief and wealth by propping up strongmen and autocrats. Those efforts helped improve Russia’s affect on the continent whereas weakening Western powers like France and the United States.

Western officers briefed on confidential intelligence assessments say two Russian spy companies — the international intelligence service, the S.V.R., and the navy intelligence company, the G.R.U. — are vying to take over key points of Mr. Prigozhin’s operations. Two officers, from totally different governments, stated that the S.V.R. was prone to take up Wagner’s propaganda and on-line disinformation shops focusing on international international locations, whereas the Defense Ministry and the G.R.U. may absorb Wagner’s mercenary operation.

There have been indicators on Mr. Yevkurov’s swing by Africa that the navy intelligence department will play a key function in no matter occurs subsequent: the delegation included certainly one of Russia’s high spies, Gen. Andrei V. Averyanov, identified for having led an elite unit specializing in subversion, sabotage and assassination overseas.

Videos launched by Burkina Faso and Mali confirmed General Averyanov subsequent to Mr. Yevkurov as they courted the international locations’ leaders. Western officers see the overall as a number one candidate to supervise no less than among the former Wagner operations as a part of an evolving system that includes a number of personal navy firms.

The Kremlin declined to touch upon the way forward for Mr. Prigozhin’s empire.

“This is none of our business at all, and we are not dealing with it in any way,” stated Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman.

A Campaign to Discredit Prigozhin

By this spring, Mr. Prigozhin had morphed from a secretive oligarch enriched by authorities catering and building contracts to a populist warlord and politician. He recruited tens of hundreds of prisoners to swell Wagner’s ranks and harangued Russia’s navy management for alleged corruption and incompetence.

He was simply as busy making enemies within the Russian Defense Ministry behind the scenes. He held his personal prisoner-exchange negotiations with Ukraine’s navy intelligence company, separate from the common military, leveraging his private relationship with Mr. Putin to deliver Wagner fighters dwelling as a substitute of enlisted Russian service members, in keeping with a number of folks with information of the talks.

All the whereas, members of Russia’s ruling elite puzzled over why the Kremlin was permitting Mr. Prigozhin to assault the nation’s high brass so viciously and publicly. Two folks near the Kremlin stated that Mr. Putin appeared to have his personal imaginative and prescient of how you can handle the warlord, and his aides appeared powerless to affect it.

Then, on June 23, Mr. Prigozhin launched his mutiny, seizing the southern metropolis of Rostov-on-Don and marching on Moscow. Andrei Krasnobayev, the editor of 1 Prigozhin news web site, stated he didn’t see Mr. Prigozhin’s insurrection coming, regardless of the Wagner chief’s more and more vitriolic diatribes.

“Many colleagues call him a psychopath,” he stated, referring to different journalists. “I didn’t get that sense.”

When Mr. Prigozhin aborted his rebellion, accepting a take care of the Kremlin, it appeared his profession was completed, even when he was fortunate to have escaped along with his life. For the following a number of weeks, he receded into the background, his whereabouts a thriller.

A key query was what would occur to his mercenary fighters. As Kremlin officers mulled their future, they despatched a number of thousand to Belarus “to park them there,” in keeping with a Western official, offering time to kind out which senior officers have been complicit in Mr. Prigozhin’s insurrection and to bolster Moscow’s defenses towards any future assault.

As it deliberate the destiny of Wagner’s fighters, the Kremlin additionally launched into a multipronged effort to knock down Mr. Prigozhin’s fame as an anti-establishment truth-teller, portraying him as a self-centered entrepreneur motivated by greed.

On June 27, Mr. Putin held a closed-door assembly with senior Russian media figures on the Kremlin. According to an individual current, Mr. Putin claimed that Mr. Prigozhin had made $4 billion in Africa on “gold and bling.” Mr. Putin’s level, the particular person stated, gave the impression to be that Mr. Prigozhin had enriched himself and had no purpose to complain.

State tv started to tarnish Mr. Prigozhin’s picture; one outlet, as an illustration, confirmed a van full of packing containers of money and a lavish residence, full with a helicopter — all stated to belong to Mr. Prigozhin.

After working to discredit Mr. Prigozhin, the Kremlin tried to get the Russian public to overlook about him. On June 30, Mr. Prigozhin’s media conglomerate, the Patriot Media Group, introduced it was shutting down, days after its web sites have been blocked by Russia’s web censor.

Then, in keeping with a New York Times evaluation of Russian tv transcripts compiled by a nonprofit known as the GDELT Project, Mr. Prigozhin just about disappeared from the airwaves. On most days between July 13 and Aug. 22, his title was not talked about in any respect on any of the 4 main state-controlled channels.

But even because the Kremlin sought to attenuate him, Mr. Prigozhin nonetheless had one roll of the cube left — on the continent the place his pursuits nonetheless lay intact.

The Battle for Africa

The conflict in Ukraine made remarkably little distinction to Mr. Prigozhin’s sprawling pursuits in Africa. While some Wagner forces in Africa have been redeployed to Ukraine within the early weeks of the conflict, most stayed in place. But the failed mutiny in June positioned ‌Mr. Prigozhin’s African operations‌ beneath immense strain.

Through July and August, he traversed the continent at a frenzied tempo, searching for to guarantee his allies and shore up his enterprise pursuits, in keeping with Western officers and others monitoring his actions. He instructed Wagner troops in Belarus to arrange for a “new journey to Africa” — the place, French intelligence estimated, about 4,000 Wagner mercenaries have been already stationed.

American officers stated Mr. Prigozhin additionally sought to squeeze new earnings from his in depth African ventures, which have been lively in no less than a half-dozen international locations. Wagner’s operations bolstered tottering navy regimes, traded in diamonds, gold and lumber, unfold disinformation and even made schlock films to glorify their exploits.

(Even so, Mr. Putin’s declare that Mr. Prigozhin’s African operations had made him $4 billion appeared drastically exaggerated, the officers added.)

In the months main as much as his insurrection, Mr. Prigozhin had grown more and more daring. This spring he tried to tilt the stability in Sudan’s civil conflict by smuggling surface-to-air missiles to a infamous paramilitary group, Western and United Nations officers stated. In February, U.S. officers warned the president of Chad that Mr. Prigozhin was plotting to kill him.

Days after the mutiny, in late June, senior Wagner officers flew to japanese Libya to satisfy with the strongman Khalifa Hifter, whom that they had helped to assault Tripoli in 2019. Their message, in keeping with Mohamed Eljarh, a safety analyst who speaks usually to Mr. Hifter’s inside circle: regardless of the drama in Russia, it was enterprise as standard in Libya.

In reality, issues have been about to get extra worrisome. On June 30, a mysterious drone strike hit Wagner’s primary base in japanese Libya, elevating questions on Wagner’s vulnerability.

Then senior Kremlin officers started to make their very own journeys to Africa, providing the message that Russia was reshaping its enterprise there.

Leading the cost was Mr. Yevkurov, whose previous expertise as an airborne commander and a regional governor gave him navy and political bona fides. Mr. Prigozhin had publicly humiliated him through the mutiny, holding him hostage and berating him.

Now Mr. Yevkurov had a chance to take revenge. Traveling by Syria, one other main Wagner outpost, and a number of other African international locations, he sought to deliver Wagner forces extra firmly beneath Moscow’s management.

It was a high-wire act: The minister needed to persuade not solely African and Syrian leaders to change loyalties, but additionally Wagner veterans who have been devoted to Mr. Prigozhin and may chafe on the Defense Ministry’s inflexible command, specialists stated.

The competitors heated up. In late July, coordinated rallies in favor of Wagner erupted in Mali, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic. “Thank you Russia! Thank you Wagner!” some demonstrators cheered.

Just a few weeks later, Mr. Prigozhin flew again to Africa for a fast tour.

In Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic, he visited his fighters and met with President Faustin-Archange Touadéra at his riverside palace to debate new enterprise offers, a Western diplomat and a senior European navy official stated. A day later, he obtained a delegation from Sudan — the identical paramilitaries Wagner had provided with missiles — who offered Mr. Prigozhin with a crate of gold bars, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In Libya, his airplane made two stops, French officers stated. And he paused to movie a video tackle, his first for the reason that mutiny, that confirmed him in a desert — analysts stated it was in Mali — wearing camouflage and hoisting an assault rifle. Wagner was increasing in Africa, he stated.

But Mr. Yevkurov was additionally making contemporary rounds. On Aug. 22, a day after Mr. Prigozhin’s video was launched, the Russian minister arrived in Libya for his personal talks with Mr. Hifter. The relationship was being reset, he instructed the Libyan commander, in keeping with Mr. Eljarh, the analyst. Wagner fighters would keep on however Russian navy intelligence could be in cost.

Before leaving, Mr. Yevkurov offered Mr. Hifter with a pistol — a symbolically charged reward in a rustic the place the ousted Libyan dictator, Muammar el-Qaddafi, famously had a gold-plated pistol.

The following day, Mr. Prigozhin flew again to Moscow, the place he held conferences with Russian officers, Mr. Putin later stated in televised remarks. Then he boarded a flight to his dwelling, St. Petersburg, alongside along with his two high deputies: Dmitri V. Utkin, Wagner’s primary commander, and Valery Y. Chekalov, its logistics chief.

Nineteen minutes after takeoff the jet started to maneuver erratically earlier than plunging 30,000 ft in about one minute, crashing right into a discipline in a fireball.

The indisputable fact that the mercenary group’s three high leaders had boarded the identical flight surprised Mr. Shugalei, the political fixer for Mr. Prigozhin, who stated that the boys by no means traveled collectively to permit for an orderly succession after an assault.

“Three key people who never gathered together for certain reasons — because each could replace the other if it came to it — got on the same plane,” stated Mr. Shugalei, who reported on to Mr. Prigozhin, in keeping with the European Union’s choice to impose sanctions towards him. “To me, this is the main mystery.”

For Wagner, an Uncertain Future

To many Ukrainians, Russians, Syrians and Africans, Mr. Prigozhin introduced ache and struggling. His propaganda shops and troll farms harassed Russian journalists and opposition figures. His forces have been accused of ugly conflict crimes in Syria, massacres in a number of African international locations and torture of prisoners in Ukraine.

His mercenaries additionally didn’t stem Islamist violence in international locations the place they deployed, like Mali, the place on Thursday 49 civilians and 15 troopers have been killed in assaults, the federal government stated.

But Mr. Prigozhin additionally bred a loyal following, amongst them Mr. Shugalei, who spent greater than a 12 months in jail in Libya whereas Mr. Prigozhin campaigned for his eventual launch.

Interviewed for this text, Mr. Shugalei, who relies in St. Petersburg, rejected the concept that the Russian authorities may absolutely take over Wagner, or function as successfully as Wagner did, and described Mr. Prigozhin’s little-known son, Pavel, as a possible inheritor to his empire.

“I think he’s got to take on some of the problems,” he stated, referring to Pavel Prigozhin. “As far as I know, he’s prepared to.”

In Washington, officers following the tug of conflict over Mr. Prigozhin’s legacy say it’s too quickly to inform the way it will shake out.

Some agree that Pavel Prigozhin, who’s in his 20s, will certainly attempt to assert management over his father’s firm. The United States sanctioned him final 12 months and stated he controls three St. Petersburg actual property firms. Last 12 months, his father stated that his son had fought in Syria and “was and is constantly in hot spots as part of the Wagner P.M.C.” (personal navy firm), a declare that would not be verified.

He might be able to retain a few of his father’s home belongings, which the unbiased Russian news outlet Agentstvo just lately stated made about $800 million in 2022, on the present change fee. But he would wish the Kremlin’s imprimatur to proceed abroad, the place governments are shopping for Moscow’s geopolitical backing as a lot as native militia companies.

American officers now say there are a dozen personal firms that would additionally change into concerned in overseeing paramilitary operations. The main candidate, maybe, is P.M.C. Redut, which has shut ties to the miliary intelligence company and which one Wagner-linked Telegram account just lately slammed for not fulfilling “the original contract terms” that it promised its recruits.

There continues to be a robust market in Africa’s weakest international locations for Wagner’s central providing — regime safety. And the demise of Mr. Prigozhin has solely whetted the urge for food of some African international locations for a stronger relationship with the Kremlin — particularly these beforehand cautious of Wagner, like Burkina Faso.

When Mr. Yevkurov arrived there final week, he was greeted by Capt. Ibrahim Traoré, the nation’s 35-year-old chief, who seized energy in a navy coup final 12 months. One of a number of West African leaders to sever ties with the previous colonial energy, France, in recent times, Mr. Traoré had held a heat assembly with Mr. Putin at a Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg in July. “Russia is part of Africa’s family,” he stated then.

Mr. Yevkurov’s go to, with the spymaster General Averyanov by his aspect, solidified that relationship. Russia was open to strengthened cooperation “in all spheres,” the Burkina Faso presidency stated in an announcement. The following day, Mr. Yevkurov continued to Mali.

By then, Mr. Prigozhin had been buried in St. Petersburg’s Porokhovskoye Cemetery — a graveyard constructed for an 18th-century ammunition manufacturing facility. Riot police and nationwide guardsmen sealed off the location and introduced bomb-sniffing canines to Mr. Prigozhin’s grave.

The subsequent day got here one other video from Mr. Prigozhin, printed by a Wagner-linked Telegram account. It was apparently recorded throughout his final journey to Africa in August, a beforehand unreleased response to rumors that he was useless.

Addressing “those who like to talk about my liquidation,” he stated: “Everything’s fine.”

Valerie Hopkins, Elian Peltier, Paul Sonne, Ekaterina Bodyagina, Alina Lobzina, Oleg Matsnev and Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting.