2023-08-25 04:40:00
Vladimir Putin / Photo: AFP
Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed on Thursday to investigate the crash of a private plane that occurred on Wednesday in which the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, Yevgueni Prigozhin, who led an uprising against the Army in June, was allegedly killedwhile the Pentagon indicated that it sees no indication that the device has been shot down by a surface-to-air missile, given the speculation around this hypothesis.
The investigation “will be carried out in its entirety and to the end. There is no doubt here. We will see what the investigators say in the near future,” Putin said when meeting Denis Pushilin, head of the Kremlin-imposed authority in the Ukrainian province of Donetsk.
The Russian president also commented that the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexandr Bastrikin, informed him that the investigations began into what happened yesterday in the province of Tver, where a private plane with ten people on board crashed while traveling from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. with no survivors.
The founder and owner of the private military company was on the list of seven passengers on the private plane along with three crew members.
The emergency service said rescuers found 10 bodies at the crash site.and Russian media cited unnamed Wagner sources or social media accounts linked to the group as saying the 62-year-old Prigozhin had died.
Putin referred to the issue for the first time on Thursday in a speech broadcast on television, in which he also presented his “sincere condolences” to the relatives of the victims of the plane crash.
Prigozhin era “a man with a complicated destiny, who made serious mistakes in his life, but who obtained the results he wanted“said the president, in statements collected by the AFP agency.
The Russian president highlighted the “contribution” made by members of the Wagner group to his cause in Ukraine and said that initial information indicates that several members of this militia were on board the plane.
In any case, he clarified that technical and forensic analyzes are being carried out.
“As far as I know, he had just returned from Africa yesterday (Wednesday) and met several officials here,” he said of Wagner’s boss.
Media reports on the plane crash / Photo: AFP
The Pentagon said Thursday that there are no indications that the private plane in which Prigozhin was allegedly traveling was shot down by a surface-to-air missile and noted that “it is likely” that the head of the Wagner paramilitary group was killed.
The US Armed Forces do not have “any information that leads us to believe that it was a surface-to-air missile” that caused the plane to crash, said Pat Ryder, a spokesman for the Department of Defense, describing the journalistic versions as “inaccurate”. that pointed in that direction.
“Our initial assessment is that Prigozhin is likely dead.”, Ryder said before a press inquiry. “We will continue to assess the situation,” he added.
In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said today that his country had “nothing to do” with the alleged death of Prigozhin, whose mercenary company fought in Ukraine on Russia’s side in the war that began in February 2022.
“What is certain is that we have nothing to do with this situation. I think everyone understands who is involved with this,” Zelensky told a news conference, in a veiled reference to possible Kremlin responsibility.
At Wagner’s headquarters in the Russian city of St. Petersburg, his supporters erected a makeshift memorial on Thursday, lit lights that formed a large cross and piled flowers or insignia bearing the skull of the armed group’s logo before the building.
The Russian air transport authority, Rossaviatsia, said on Wednesday that Prigozhin was on board the plane, although it clarified that this was based on data provided by the airline, and later published the list of occupants, including the chief from Wagner.
The bodies have not been identified, so the authorities did not officially announce Prigozhin’s death.
Among the presumed deceased is also Dmitri Utkin, Prigozhin’s right-hand man. This former officer of the Russian military intelligence services served as Wagner’s operational commander.
Also on the list was Valeri Chekalov, who according to the Russian media was the group’s logistics manager.
Prigozhin and Wagner’s mercenaries took up arms against the Russian military leadership on June 24 after accusing the Defense Ministry and several generals of a bombing raid on their positions in Ukraine that killed numerous fighters.
From Ukraine, the mercenaries headed for Russia, seized a military base in a border region and began a march on Moscow, shooting down military helicopters and a reconnaissance plane.
Prigozhin during the June uprising / Photo: AFP
Russia deployed troops in Moscow to wait for them, but the march and insurrection ceased that same day at night under an agreement mediated by Belarus that included the departure of Prigozhin and his fighters to that neighboring country and an ally of Russia.
Despite the pact, which also included Wagner’s militiamen joining the Russian Army, Wagner’s chief continued to visit Russia.
During the armed uprising, Putin described it as “treason”.
Prigozhin later said that it was not directed against Putin, but against the Russian military leadership, which for months he had accused of incompetence and of being responsible for the failures suffered by the Russian Armed Forces in its invasion of Ukraine.
Following the political and economic changes experienced in Russia during the 1990s, Prigozhin became a strategist who went from spending almost nine years in prison to building a hotel empire and then to being the leader of Russia’s most important paramilitary group.
For years, the Kremlin and Prigozhin denied the existence of the militia, which carried out shadowy operations in areas of Russian influence.
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