The Russian warlord and businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin looked “doomed” after his failed mutiny and told his mother he expected to die in the days before his private plane crash.
Prigozhin, the founder of the notorious Wagner mercenary group, died when his business jet went down in the summer of 2023, two months after his fighters briefly seized control of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and advanced towards Moscow in a short-lived rebellion against Russia’s military leadership.
“When I last saw him, he looked doomed,” said Violetta Prigozhina, 85, in an interview with the Russian outlet Fontanka, recalling the last meeting she had with her son one week before the deadly crash.
Asked if he foresaw his death, she replied: “Of course.”
Prigozhina, in the first interview by a close relative of the late Wagner leader, said the authorities had still not told her what happened to her son.
Western intelligence agencies believe Prigozhin was probably killed by an onboard explosion on Vladimir Putin’s orders as retribution for his mutiny.
Prigozhina, who runs a gallery exhibiting pro-war art, said she had tried to dissuade her son from marching on Moscow, warning that he overestimated the extent of his support.
“When we saw each other before the march, I told him: ‘Zhenya, only people on the internet will support you. No one will go with you. People aren’t like that now. No one will come out to the square.’”
Prigozhina said her son replied: “No, they will support me.”
Prigozhin’s short-lived rebellion, launched with several hundred of his most loyal fighters, was preceded by weeks of escalating tension with Russia’s defence ministry and top commanders, whom he accused of corruption.
At the time, Wagner played a key role in Russia’s offensive against Ukraine, with Prigozhin’s fighters often deployed as shock troops in frontal assaults during battles in eastern Ukraine.
While no major political figures backed Prigozhin’s rebellion, polls suggested that at its height, his blunt, anti-establishment rhetoric resonated widely and won him significant support among Russians.
When Wagner troops seized control of key military sites in Rostov-on-Don, Prigozhin was greeted warmly by locals.
But he called off the march about 120 miles (193km) outside Moscow after a series of phone calls with senior Russian officials and the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, who acted as an intermediary.
During the advance, Wagner fighters shot down a Ka-52 attack helicopter, killing its crew, and destroyed an Il-18 military aircraft.
“In the end he just turned around – that was it,” said Prigozhina.
“He had no intention of overthrowing Putin, absolutely not. He only wanted to get through to the military leadership,” she added, claiming her son halted the march to avoid further bloodshed among regular Russian troops.
“He told me he couldn’t shoot young guys during his march,” Prigozhina said.
After Prigozhin’s death, Russian authorities swiftly moved to seize his sprawling business empire, which extended far beyond mercenary operations to encompass online “bot farms”, mining ventures in Africa and a vast catering business – the source of his nickname “Putin’s chef”.
Yevgeny Prigozhin serves the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, at his restaurant in 2011. Photograph: AP
His Wagner forces, which operated primarily across Africa and have been accused of mass atrocities, have since been absorbed into Russian state structures and continue to operate under the name Africa Corps.
Prigozhin’s 27-year-old son, Pavel, who fought with Wagner in Syria, has been largely sidelined in the power struggle that followed his father’s death.
In September 2024, Prigozhina won an unexpected victory in an EU court, which ordered her removal from the European sanctions list and instructed the Council of the European Union to pay her legal costs.
She and her grandson had been placed under sanctions as part of a wider move against the Prigozhin family, which for years played an active role in Yevgeny Prigozhin’s network of businesses.
In the interview with Fontanka, Prigozhina complained that despite being taken off the sanctions list, she was recently denied a visa to travel to Hamburg, Germany, to visit a clinic.
“Instead, I am preparing many exhibitions now,” she said, adding that one of the main works currently on display in her St Petersburg gallery shows a portrait of her son in Ukraine.