2023-08-26 00:30:40
The Russian team investigating the crash of the plane in which Wagner militia chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was traveling said Friday that it had already found the bodies of the ten people on board, as well as the black boxes from the flight.
“In the early stages of the investigation, we found the bodies of the 10 victims (seven passengers and three crew members) at the place where the plane crashed,” northwest of Moscow, the Investigative Committee announced on social media.
Read here: The list of victims of the plane crash in Russia and the mourning for Prigozhin
They also found “black boxes” that record all flight operations and dialogues between pilots, he added.
“We are doing molecular DNA analysis to identify” the corpses, he added.
The Russian air transport agency Rossaviatsia confirmed that Prigozhin was aboard the Brazilian-made Embraer Legacy private jet, which was flying between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Read on: Putin highlighted Wagner boss’ ‘contribution’, vowed to investigate his death
Also among the alleged victims is Prigozhin’s right-hand man, Dmitri Utkin, a former officer in a special military intelligence unit and Wagner’s operational commander.
Western governments and opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin have hinted that the Kremlin was behind the probable death. Also sympathizers of Prigozhin, who in June led a mutiny against the Russian regular army, raised that possibility. The private plane crashed exactly two months after the aborted riot.
In the United States, France, Germany and Ukraine, several officials raised suspicions about the Kremlin.
Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko said Friday that he could not “imagine” that his ally Putin would order Prigozhin to be killed. “I know Putin. He is a sensible man, very calm, ”he declared.
You can also read: “Everyone knows who is related to this”: President of Ukraine after the death of Yevgeni Prigozhin
In the United States, the Pentagon assured that it did not have “any information that suggests that a surface-to-air missile” caused the crash of the device, a hypothesis mentioned on Telegram by groups close to Wagner.
The Kremlin strongly denied those allegations and Putin on Thursday promised a “thorough” investigation into the case.
“This is an absolute lie, this issue must be addressed based on the facts,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said when questioned about suggestions that the Russian presidency was behind Prigozhin’s death.
Russian investigators have so far not mentioned any hypotheses about the causes of the accident.
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