When a Jet Carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin—the billionaire oligarch, catering tycoon, mercenary chieftain, and recent mutineer—crashed in August, the only surprise was that the interval between his June mutiny and his death was so long. But the predictability of baroque violence in Russian court politics does not make it less shocking when it actually happens.
We know very little about what goes on within the tiny inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin. A Kremlin spokesperson has admitted the crash could have been the result of “deliberate wrongdoing,” and it is clear that so
