That is known: Exactly two months ago to the day, the Wagner group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, dared an armed uprising against Putin – and marched on Moscow. Prigozhin is said to have been killed in a plane crash in Russia. The Russian state news agency Tass, citing the Rozaviazia flight authority, reported that Prigozhin was on the passenger list. According to preliminary information, all seven passengers and three crew members on board died, the Russian civil defense said.
The Embraer Legacy aircraft was to fly from Moscow to St. Petersburg, where Prigozhin’s companies are based. It crashed in the Tver region near Kuschenkino, more than 200 kilometers from Moscow.
This is unclear: It has not yet been possible to confirm whether Prigozhin was actually on the plane. So far, no information has been given about the cause of the crash or the identity of the other passengers.
This speaks for an act of revenge: The almost immediate information from the Russian aviation authority that Prigozhin was on board the crashed plane raises questions. “Russian aviation journalists write that the authority normally only publishes the passenger list hours after a crash. It only took three minutes here,” says SRF Russia correspondent Calum MacKenzie. This will undoubtedly fuel theories that Prigozhin has now experienced the revenge of the Kremlin for the uprising of his Wagner troops two months ago. However, that too has not been confirmed for a long time.
Legend:
“Where Yevgeny Prigozhin was in the end, there is no precise information at the moment,” writes Wagner’s “Grey Zone” telegram channel.
Keystone/Prigozhin Press Service via AP
“In addition, Telegram channels close to Wagner claim that residents of the village at the crash site heard the sounds of surface-to-air missiles,” says MacKenzie. There were also increasing indications that Yevgeny Prigozhin had actually returned to Russia from Africa on his plane today – and that his relatives could not reach him at the moment.
This speaks for a plane being shot down: There is no concrete evidence of this yet, says MacKenzie. “But it is undisputed that the Kremlin would have a motive to eliminate Prigozhin.” In the past, the Putin regime had acted with all severity against renegades. “Kremlin insiders recently expressed their incomprehension to Russian independent media that Prigozhin was not punished for his uprising.”
“The rumors that surface-to-air missiles could be heard at the crash site are rumors for now,” MacKenzie said. “But Russian propagandists are already spreading the theory online that the plane was mistaken for a Ukrainian drone and accidentally shot down.”
This is how Prigozhin’s “environment” reacts: The Internet medium Prigozhin spread the version of a targeted shooting. The machine was shot down by anti-aircraft defenses over the Twer region, it said on Wagner’s “Grey Zone” telegram channel. Priogoshin usually used it to distribute his videos. The assertion of a shooting is not verifiable.