While the Russian authorities do not advance, this Thursday evening, August 24, any track explaining the crash of the plane which probably killed the day before Evgueni Prigojine, Vladimir Putin praised the “contribution” to the offensive in Ukraine of the boss de Wagner, and promised to “lead to the end” of the investigation after the death of the 10 passengers of the device.
“He was a man with a complicated destiny, who made serious mistakes in his life, but who got the results he needed,” Vladimir Putin said during a meeting broadcast on television, offering his “sincere condolences to the loved ones of the crash victims. “These are people who have made a significant contribution to our common effort” in Ukraine, where Russia has been leading a military offensive since February 2022, Vladimir Putin continued.
Referring to the investigation into the causes of the crash launched by the Russian authorities, the president promised to “conduct it in its entirety and reach a conclusion”. “We will see what the investigators will say in the near future. The expertise is in progress, a technical and genetic expertise. It will take some time,” Vladimir Putin said.
The private jet was carrying, according to Russian Civil Aviation, Yevgeny Prigojine, his right-hand man Dmitri Outkine and other Wagner officials.
Investigation and speculation
The accident, which fueled speculation that the man who had become the enemy of the Kremlin after its abortive rebellion in June had been assassinated, killed the 10 occupants of the aircraft, according to the authorities. An investigation has been opened for violation of aviation safety rules. Agents from the Investigation Committee, a powerful investigative body, were already on site less than 24 hours after the plane crashed. Wagner hasn’t had an official account since June 26 and the last posting of an audio from Prigojine. But the accounts close to this group evoke the track of a firing of S-300 surface-to-air missile(s), an allegation to date not demonstrated.
The hypothesis was put forward in the minutes following the information on the crash. The Gray Zone account spoke on Wednesday evening of “characteristic white traces of anti-aircraft defense in the sky” on an amateur video presented as that showing the plane falling, which could not be formally verified by the AFP. On other images, this time authenticated, we could see the spiral fall of the device in which Prigojine was. Even the boss of the media group RT, Margarita Simonian, seemed to favor the trail of the assassination, debunking a rumor that the most famous mercenary on the planet wanted to orchestrate his false disappearance.
Yevgueni Prigojine, whom Vladimir Putin said he had “known since the beginning of the 1990s”, had been called a “traitor” by the Russian president during his abortive mutiny in June. According to Vladimir Putin, the boss of Wagner had “returned from Africa” the day of the crash, Wednesday.