No one should be sentimental about Yevgeny Prigozhin.
He was a criminal and a ruthless killer – his favourite means of execution was crushing victims’ skulls with a sledgehammer.
If he has now been killed by the man who made him, in the gangster politics of Putin’s Russia, it is a suitably violent ending.
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His Wagner forces have massacred, raped and plundered their way across Africa.
And they have spearheaded Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which has been marked by similar atrocities.
Prigozhin was also called on by Putin to subvert American democracy with an army of trolls whose cyber meddling has helped polarise the US.
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There is a danger that Prigozhin is romanticised.
He was the only Russian who dared to stand up to the Putin regime – in what was the biggest threat to its rule.
But he was a nasty piece of work by any measure.
A perfect henchman to his gangster president who raised him up, used him and has now destroyed his own creature it seems after he turned against him.