2023-08-25 13:44:00
President Putin’s spokesman said accusations that the Kremlin was behind Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death were “an absolute lie”.
By HR with L AFP
Published on 08/25/2023 at 1:44 p.m.
Subscriber-only audio playback
The disappearance of Evgueni Prigojine in still murky circumstances leaves room for doubt. Could the Kremlin be behind the death of the leader of the paramilitary group Wagner? If the hypothesis does not seem so improbable, in view of the rebellion of Wagner against Putin at the end of June, it is swept away out of hand by the Russian authorities.
“It’s an absolute lie, we have to address this issue of [crash] based on facts, ”said Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president’s spokesman when asked about insinuations by Western leaders that the Kremlin had ordered the assassination of Mr. Prigojine. “Currently, around the air disaster and the tragic deaths of passengers, in particular Evgueni Prigojine, there is a lot of speculation and we know well in what direction we speculate in the West”, he also said.
Praised by Putin
According to him, the investigation is taking its course, noting that Vladimir Putin had indicated himself on Thursday to “wait for the results”. The Russian president, who considered Yevgueni Prigojine a traitor since the armed rebellion of Wagner on June 23 and 24, saluted Thursday evening, after 24 hours of silence, the memory of a “talented” man who nevertheless committed “serious mistakes in his life. For the moment, the death of the head of Wagner remains presumed, because genetic expertise to formally identify the bodies of the victims is still in progress.
READ ALSOPrigojine plane crash: “It’s characteristic of a surface-to-air missile”The investigators said nothing about the tracks examined, evoking neither the thesis of the accident nor that of a bomb, a surface-to-air missile or a pilot error. The private jet carrying Prigojine and his close guard crashed late Wednesday afternoon northwest of Moscow, immediately raising suspicions of an orchestrated assassination at the pinnacle of Russian power. In Washington, Paris, Berlin or kyiv, senior officials have implied that their suspicions go directly to the Kremlin.
READ ALSOPrigojine plane crash: Russia, a regime that devours its children
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday he “cannot imagine” that his ally Vladimir Putin gave the order to kill Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of Wagner whom he considered a traitor, presumed dead after his plane crashed on Wednesday .
“I know Putin,” Lukashenko was quoted as saying by state news agency Belta. “He is a thoughtful, very calm man (…) So I cannot imagine that it was Putin who did that,” he argued.
#Kremlin #denies #responsibility