The Last Days of Wagner’s Prigozhin

Yevgeny Prigozhin spent his final days planning for the future.

Last Friday, the warlord’s private jet touched down in the capital of Central African Republic, on a mission to salvage one of the first client states of his Wagner mercenary company. His African empire had come to include some 5,000 men deployed across the continent.

In the riverside presidential palace in Bangui, the capital, Prigozhin told President Faustin-Archange Touadera that his aborted June mutiny in Russia wouldn’t stop him from bringing new fighters and investments to his business partners in Central Africa, according to...