Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was a "serious" threat to Vladimir Putin's reign in Russia, but he did it without support and ultimately failed, according to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
"Prigozhin clearly took a chance," Pompeo told Sunday's "The Cats Roundtable" on WABC Radio N.Y.
"If you're going to take on the king, don't do it with a Nerf bat. He did. And it failed.
"I wouldn't insure his life. He's not likely to find grace from Vladimir Putin again, whether that ends up with him drinking some bad tea or just permanently in exile, it's hard to know."
Prigozhin was never going to topple Putin without Russian defense support, but it is just as well for the West, Pompeo told host John Catsimatidis.
"Prigozhin's a thug – he's probably even more of a criminal than Vladimir Putin," Pompeo said. "This would not have been a victory for the West to see Prigozhin in charge."
While the West will never know the truth behind Prigozhin's doomed march on Moscow, Pompeo rejected speculation it was all a contrived "giant false flag operation."
"Prigozhin was serious," Pompeo said." I think he was trying to convince Vladimir Putin that he was the answer not the problem.
"I think Putin was being told by his senior military leaders — Gen. Gerasimov and Minister of Defense Shoigu — that Prigozhin was getting too big for his britches to use a colloquial term.
"And I think they were beginning to push back on and constrain him. He didn't like that."
Despite being exiled to Belarus – whether or not Putin will exact a toll on Prigozhin's march on Moscow – "Prigozhin's not some small bit player in this docu-drama," Pompeo said, noting the Wagner Group mercenaries fighting around the world in Africa and the Middle East.
"We should all be aware that Prigozhin was trying to figure out how to try to get leverage over them, maybe not to overthrow Putin – hard to know – but Putin will see this as something as a bridge too far," Pompeo continued, comparing it to how Chinese President Xi Jinping "went after the leaders of commercial enterprise that had gotten out too far and he felt threatened his power.
"I'm confident Putin began to think Prigozhin was threatening his, and he will clamp down on all of this," Pompeo continued. "No one individual will be given the scope and the power that the leader of the Wagner Group, Prigozhin, had been given.
"Putin's simply not going to permit that. There's too much risk to his continued tenure."
While the "false flag" theory should be thrown out of the conversation, Pompeo did admit "it's absolutely plausible" Prigozhin's march on Moscow was a Putin scheme – while executing the permanent removal of Wagner forces in Ukraine – to root on potential traitors in his Russian defense forces.
"I think Prigozhin was waiting to see if any of those generals would jump in with him as well," Pompeo said. "I think he was hopeful.
"It turns out he was marching to his own drummer."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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