The Kremlin on Friday rejected the versions that point to a possible involvement of Russian power in the death of the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgueni Prigozhin, whose plane crashed on Wednesday 300 kilometers north of Moscow. The incident occurred two months after the abortive rebellion led by Prigozhin against the high command of the Russian Army, and after Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of “traitors”.
On Western “speculations” that the Kremlin or Russian President Vladimir Putin could be behind the incident, his spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, asserted: “This is all a lie.”
There are many speculations but it is necessary to wait for the facts, he declared. “In addressing this problem it is necessary to rely solely on the facts. These are still few, because they have not yet been clarified in the investigations that are being carried out. Yesterday the president (Putin) said that he was waiting for the results of the investigation, which will end in the not too distant future,” Peskov stressed.
On the evening of August 23, Prigozhin was returning to St. Petersburg from Moscow after a trip to Africa, accompanied by commanders and managers of his mercenary army, including his right-hand man Dimitri Utkin.
The device, an Embraer Legacy, went down near the village of Kuzhenkino, in the Bologoye district, in the northwest of the Tver region. Neighbors filmed what happened and posted it on social networks. Several witnesses claimed to have heard explosions before the plane began to plunge to the ground.
US President Joe Biden said “there’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin isn’t behind.”
In the Ukraine they interpret the death of Prigozhin as a “warning” to the Russian elites. “It is obvious that Putin does not forgive anyone… The demonstrative removal of Prigozhin and Wagner’s command two months after the attempted coup is a signal from Putin to the Russian elites ahead of the 2024 elections. ‘Beware! Disloyalty is equal to death”, wrote on the social network X (former Twitter) Mikhailo Podoliak, adviser to President Volodimir Zelensky.
In a statement to CNN, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said that “if it’s true, Putin will eliminate his opponents and that scares anyone who thinks of expressing an opinion different from his.”
Different versions of what happened were discussed on Russian Telegram channels, including a bomb attack, a surface-to-air missile or a Ukrainian drone.
External intervention is one of the lines of investigation followed by the Instruction Committee, but it is not the priority and, according to the RBK newspaper, it is also studying the possibility of a pilot failure or that the plane had suffered a technical problem. .
Almost 24 hours after the event, Putin broke his silence on Thursday and offered his condolences to the families of the deceased. He praised Prigozhin, saying that he was “a talented businessman”, while also saying that he made “serious mistakes”.
