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MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin accused the Wall Street Journal on Friday of publishing fabrications after the publication of an investigation by the American daily according to which the death of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin last August was orchestrated by the secretary of the Council of security of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Patrushev.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a small explosive device was placed under a wing of the private plane which crashed on August 23 north of Moscow, killing the founder of the security company and nine other people, two months to the day after the mutiny of Wagner’s mercenaries against the Russian military command.
Asked about this article, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said he had not read it and did not want to comment on it, before adding: “Recently unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal has really liked to produce station novels.”
Last October, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the destruction of the plane was caused by the explosion of grenades on board, rejecting the theory of a missile strike, relayed in particular by American intelligence.
Nikolai Patrushev, who is 72 years old, headed the Federal Security Service (FSB, successor to the Soviet KGB). A follower of a hard line, he is considered one of Vladimir Putin’s closest and most influential advisors.
The two men met in the 1970s while working together for the KGB in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.
(Moscow Office, written by Mark Trevelyan, Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French version)
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