Why kill Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin? He was a threat to Putin's financial wealth.

If the Wagner Group’s ruthless mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was murdered last week, it ultimately had to do with money, not simply Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s mafia-style quest for revenge.

There's undoubtedly a strategy behind Putin's madness, and it's most likely driven by foreign policy and financial considerations. Wagner has been Putin’s favorite tool for maintaining deniability about his actions in other countries, evading sanctions and generating cash. He cannot simply throw that capability away.

It seems we’re witnessing a carefully planned change of leadership and the transfer of Wagner's control either into Putin's own hands or those of a favored oligarch.

Now, more than ever, the West must increase its pursuit of Wagner and its reincarnations across the globe, frustrate them, place deterrents against their imitators and seek justice against them.

Why would Putin eliminate Prigozhin? Money. It's not simply about controlling Wagner's lucrative contracts or grabbing Prigozhin’s ill-begotten wealth.

Putin threatened by legal confiscation of oligarchs' assets

The bigger picture centers on the greatest threat to Putin, which is the confiscation of Russian oligarchs’ assets around the world. If Putin loses access to those hundreds of billions of dollars – including Wagner’s – he loses power. Game over.

Legal and diplomatic moves to legally confiscate those assets are Putin’s nemesis. The battle is being fought through “lawfare” – the strategic use of legal proceedings to hinder or damage an opponent.

In this case, the target is the Russian war machine.

Russia's military: Putin won't wipe out Wagner Group. He needs mercenaries to fight wars.

Pro-Ukrainian lawfare is being deployed within international diplomacy (seeking ways to legally confiscate such assets), international forums and through payback4ukraine.org – a civil society lawfare program targeting $200 billion in Russian assets. The crucial theater in this war has moved from the battlefields to the courtrooms.

There is evidence that the Kremlin is recognizing this new reality.

Lawfare litigation targeted against Wagner totals potentially as much as $50 billion. Upon Wagner’s attempted coup d’état, Putin swiftly announced an intention to take it over, perhaps calculating – wrongly – that successors would not inherit the organization's legal liabilities.

The Kremlin has recently stepped up its own lawfare campaign to force wayward oligarchs to return money to Putin. A few days before the downing of the Wagner plane, the Kremlin brought a lawsuit against Andrey Melnichenko, who has been critical of the war, for such purposes.

This indicates the Russian leaders' grasp of the need for lawfare in their "special military operation" but also demonstrates their desperation and need for cash.

Ukraine uses lawfare to go after Russia's money

Ukraine meanwhile – through the P4U program, the Ministry of Justice and the prosecutor general – has been preparing lawfare campaigns for 18 months.

However, the civil society lawfare program within P4U – supported by the Kyiv government with the goal of confiscating Russian war machine assets for Ukrainian reparations – is yet to be implemented due to lack of resources.

When will Ukraine join NATO? Russian military fortifications may hold the answer.

While the Kremlin recognizes that what little money it has to spare must be pumped into lawfare litigation for its own survival, the rest of the world must see the need to fund Ukraine’s lawfare – particularly the P4U program – for not only Ukraine’s survival but also for the survival of the global rule of law.

Lawfare is now the crucial battlefront. Ukraine and its government are better prepared than Russia and the Kremlin, but they need international donor funding to implement it.

A fully financed lawfare program is the fast-track end to Putin and his war in Ukraine. Prigozhin’s demise merely underlines the point.

Jason McCue is head of payback4ukraine.org and senior partner of McCue Jury & Partners, which has instigated litigation in United Kingdom courts against the Wagner Group on behalf of Ukrainian victims.