Violetta Prigozhina, 85, says she warned her son not to defy Putin’s authority before he was killed in a plane crash

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.