OK--- I'll briefly break my own self-imposed ban on quoting from articles, since WaPo articles are generally fairly inaccessible for those without paid subscriptions.
Haters feel free to report my post like such cowards as yourselves have done in the past.
Looks like the wolves are already circling, to the point that one might wonder that even if Putin didn't directly order the hit, he green lit other entrepreneurs eager to carve up Wagner's extremely vast and profitable global patronage empire.
“There are some competent people who would love to go in and graft his budgets, but there is no figure similar to Prigozhin, one that has an enormous stream of money, or similar working efficiency and enthusiasm,” said Denis Korotkov, a veteran Russian journalist who has reported on Wagner for the last decade.
Yet one high-ranking Wagner insider, Andrei Troshev, has emerged as a potential contender to step in and run what’s left of the group. A former lieutenant colonel in Russia’s ministry of internal affairs, Troshev is believed to have been the main liaison between Prigozhin and the Defense Ministry during the war in Ukraine. And he is one of the few public figures within Wagner who was not listed on the passenger manifest of the plane that went down northwest of Moscow on Wednesday.
Wagner-linked Telegram channels and military bloggers said in recent weeks that Troshev had been ousted from the group, alleging that he betrayed Prigozhin after the June rebellion and was eager to strike a deal with the Defense Ministry. Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s defense minister, has long fought to take control of the paramilitary force, and his feud with Prigozhin helped precipitate Wagner’s short-lived march on Moscow.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/25/wagner-group-successors-mercenary-companies/
