Wagner director Yevgeni Prigozhin’s private plane crashed on Wednesday evening in Russia. listed the most important theories and speculations about the plane crash of Prigozhin, who defied Putin.
Both the Russian authorities and the mercenary Wagner have been confirmed by the Wagner director Yevgeny Prigozhin deadly.
He is said to have been one of ten passengers who died when a private plane crashed on Wednesday night between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The plane crash and the president Vladimir Putin There are various speculations about the fate of the defiant Wagner in the Russian media.
In this story, three main theories about what really happened yesterday are presented.
1. Shooting down the plane with a missile
Eyewitness videos confirm the notion that the plane was shot down.
The shooting down of the Embraer plane carrying Wagner became a central theory immediately after the crash.
The GreyZone channel connected to the Wagner company is a messaging service in Telegram announced almost immediately after the fact that the plane was shot down by an anti-aircraft system.
The plane crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tverskaya region. Putin’s dacha is also located about 50 kilometers from where the plane fell. At the beginning of the year, Russian media independent of the Kremlin toldthat the Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft system has been placed near the presidential residence.
Also spread in the media the videos reinforce the notion that the plane was shot down. In the video, eyewitnesses talk about two explosions from the air and a shooting down. One video, on the other hand, shows a cloud of smoke that could come from an anti-aircraft missile.
The videos also show the plane falling to the ground uncontrollably without part of the plane’s wing and tail. This means that there was an explosion in the plane. It still does not necessarily mean that the explosion happened externally, i.e. that a missile was fired at the plane.
2. Sabotage inside the machine
Another version of what happened is that the plane exploded from the inside. Then we would talk about sabotage or a terrorist attack.
The Kremlin-supporting Russian media immediately reported on this theory on Wednesday evening. For example Tsargrad told message channel on Telegram that an anonymous source from the Russian air traffic agency Rosaviatsija considers the plane’s internal explosion to be the cause of the crash.
It is understandable that the state-controlled media supports the theory of sabotage or a terrorist attack. If the plane was shot down with an anti-aircraft missile, we can unequivocally talk about the involvement of the Russian security forces in the plane crash.
On the other hand, the internal explosion is supported by the plane’s flight height and its damage.
According to Flightradar24, the plane rose to a height of more than 8.5 kilometers before falling. Therefore, independent Russian media Medusa estimates that at least a medium-range missile would be needed to shoot down the plane. Such a thing would probably cause much more serious damage to the fuselage of the plane than seen in the video of the eyewitnesses.
3. Staging of Prigozhin’s death
The death of the Wagner director has also been reported in the Russian media before.
About a year ago, he allegedly died in the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine. In 2019, on the other hand, it was erroneously reported that Prigozhin had died after a military plane crashed in the Congo.
Russian Air Transport Agency publicly after the crash on Wednesday, the passenger list, which also contained Yevgeni Prigozhin’s name. However, it is not certain whether he was actually on the plane.
One claim spread in the media is that Prigozhin’s death was staged.
Both in Kremlin propaganda and by independent researchers in speculations it has been considered possible that the Wagner manager would not have been in the crashed plane. In that case, the leader of the Wagner Rebellion could try to disappear from the public eye and continue living under a false identity.
You can discuss the topic on 25.8. until 11 p.m.