KGB public assassinations

         Was Yevgeny Prigozhin's very public death an assassination, when a plane carrying him exploded and fell from the sky?  In Murder, Inc., I wrote how the former Russian security service, the KGB, used public assassinations.  I pointed out on page 98 that typically the KGB's Department 13, which specialized in assassination and sabotage, would not want the assassination to be traced back to it.  However, "Sometimes, an intelligence service may want its adversary to know who was responsible in order to send a message.  In the book KGB, John Barron described the assassination of a journalist in Afghanistan during the Soviet war there: 'The assassination was deliberately crude.  Its intent was not only to eliminate an effective Soviet adversary but also to terrorize potential adversaries into silence.  The assassins also left behind discernible Soviet traces.  Witnesses testified that the men arrived in a Soviet jeep.'"