Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is a marked man and after the mercenary fighter aborted his rebellion against Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday.
“I wouldn’t insure his life…Prigozhin clearly took a chance. If you’re going to take on the king, don’t do it with a Nerf bat. He did. It failed,” Pompeo said on WABC 770 AM radio’s “Cats Roundtable” show with host John Catsimatidis.
“And he is 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.”
Ukraine’s spy agency claims the Russian Federal Security Service has been tasked with assassinating the now-exiled leader of the mercenary group, although the plan may not be carried out immediately.
Prigozhin is exiled in Belarus.
But Pompeo repeatedly said that Prigozhin is a “thug”, no better than Putin.
“This would not have been a victory for the West to see Prigozhin in charge. A victory for the West looks like a successful effort by the Ukrainians to maintain as much territory as they possibly can,” he said.
He said he expects Putin to crack down on the Wagner Group mercenaries the way Chinese President Xi Jinping reined in Chinese businesses that got too far off the Communist Party reservation.
Putin’s military leaders Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov told him that Prigozhin was “getting too big for his britches,” Pompeo said.
“They were beginning to push back on [Prigozhin] and constrain him, and he didn’t like that. He had a global private mercenary operation in Libya, in Syria, in the Central African Republic. Prigozhin’s not some small bit player in this docudrama. Prigozhin was trying to figure out how to get leverage over them,” he said.
“Putin will see this as something that’s just a bridge too far. Much like Xi Jinping went after the leaders of commercial enterprises that had gotten out too far, and…threatened his power…Putin began to see Prigozhin was threatening his [power]. He will clamp down on all of this. No one individual will be given the scope and the power that the leader of the Wagner group Prigozhin had been given. Putin is simply not going to permit that. There’s too much risk to his continued tenure.”
Meanwhile, Pompeo said the US must help Taiwan prepare to defend itself against China now, and not wait for an invasion as the Biden administration did when Russia attacked Ukraine.
“The most important thing we can do is to demonstrate that the United States, when it draws a red line, it really means it. If we say, ‘Yup, we’re going to be there for the Taiwanese,’ we should do that now. We should do that today. Not after they’ve been attacked or invaded,” he said.
“Today is the day to begin to help the Taiwanese prepare to defend themselves. Much as we waited too long to help the Ukrainians get ready, we shouldn’t wait too long to help the Taiwanese do that… [That will] make Xi Jinping think once, twice, three times before he begins to undermine the stability of the Taiwanese island.”
