Conspiracy theories swirled Thursday surrounding the alleged deaths of Russian mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin and several of his top lieutenants in a plane crash the day before.
Prigozhin, whose private military group Wagner launched a short-lived armed rebellion against the Kremlin earlier this summer, was reportedly among ten people aboard a short-haul plane that crashed north of Moscow, according to Russia’s civil aviation agency, President Vladimir Putin and state news channel Tass.
The Pentagon said Thursday that it had also reached an assessment that Prigozhin was killed, without explaining the process.
The list of passengers on the small private plane included the warlord’s second-in-command Dmitry Utkin, Wagner’s chief of logistics, a fighter who had been wounded in US airstrikes in Syria and at least one possible bodyguard.
A channel on Russian social media network Telegram affiliated with paramilitary units confirmed on Wednesday that Prigozhin was on the plane and had been killed in retaliation for his rebellion, calling him a “true patriot of his Motherland.”
The 62-year-old’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation since Putin denounced his march on Moscow amid complaints about how Wagner’s forces had been used in the Ukraine War as “treason” and vowed revenge, and unproven theories abounded in the aftermath. his death report.
It’s a missile
Wreckage of a burning plane near the Russian village of Kuzhenkino that was said to be carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin and several of his top lieutenants.TELEGRAM/ @grey_zone/AFP via Getty Images
Two US officials and some supporters of Prigozhin have speculated online that the plane was hit by a missile, pointing to witness accounts and purported footage of the monoplane falling from the sky near the village of Kuzhenkino, published by a state-run news agency. RIA Novosti.
An initial investigation indicated that a surface-to-air missile launched from inside Russia brought down the plane, according to two American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, however, Pentagon spokesman General Pat Rider later said the report was inaccurate.
A resident who witnessed the disaster told the RIA Novosti outlet he heard “something like a bang, like a shot,” before seeing the plane fall from the sky.
“Then suddenly there was an explosion, I looked up and heard a sound above me – it was like an explosion, like several explosions.
“The plane started to spin. Then a cloud of smoke appeared and the plane started to descend, to dive,” he said.
Kuzhenkino resident Anastasia Bukharova, 27, also witnessed the plane crash.
“Something ripped from it in the air, and it started going down and down,” he added.
Witness Vitaly Stepenok, 72, said, “I heard an explosion or bang. Normally, if an explosion happens on the ground then you get an echo, but it was just a bang and I looked up and saw white smoke,” according to Sky News.
“One wing goes one way and the fuselage goes that way,” he said, gesturing with his hand to show how the plane was heading down to the ground.
“And then it glided down on one wing. It doesn’t nose dive, it glides.”
The account led to speculation that the plane had been shot down en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg, where it stopped transmitting tracking information after reaching an altitude of 28,000 feet.
“It goes down quickly in the rotation, and it trails a lot of smoke. So, this is a burning plane. And it looks like some structural pieces, aerodynamic surfaces, are missing,” science and aerospace reporter Miles O’Brien told CNN.
“Planes like this … they don’t fall out of the sky without something extraordinary happening,” he said.
Theories that the plane was shot down would be linked to Putin’s history of eliminating the enemy at all costs, alluded to by the leader of the pro-Kremlin Fair Russia party.
“Prigozhin messed up too many people in Russia, Ukraine and the West,” wrote Sergey Mironov online. Now it seems that at some point the number of his enemies reached a critical level.”
There’s a bomb in the wine crate
Rescuers are said to have found eight of the 10 bodies of the plane’s 10 passengers that were said to have been found. AP
Others theorized that it was an explosion on board that brought down the Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet, which showed no signs of distress until the “sudden vertical downwards” fall, according to Ian Petchenik of flight-tracking site Flightradar24.
US officials said Thursday that initial intelligence reports led them to believe that an explosion aboard the plane was responsible for bringing it down.
An unsupported hypothesis making the rounds on the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, linked to the Russian security services, is that a bomb was planted on board, possibly in a wine crate.
“Someone should have testified that at the last moment, a certain gift consisting of a box of expensive wine was loaded into the plane,” wrote the VChK-OGPU. “And now they are looking into claims that the crate may have contained a bomb.”
The plane was thoroughly inspected with sniffer dogs before the crates of wine were loaded, the Telegram channel added.
Who is the head of the Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin?
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin as a talented businessman following the plane crash that apparently killed him.
Prigozhin is the owner of the private military contractor Wagner Group.
Prigozhin planned to arrest the top Russian military officers during his coup attempt.
Flames engulf plane after crash.TELEGRAM/ @grey_zone/AFP via Getty Images
Prigozhin and his mercenaries did not face charges and were instead exiled despite leading an armed rebellion against the Kremlin.
Prigozhin began his career as a petty criminal – he was convicted of robbery and assault in 1981 and served 12 years in prison.
The location where the plane crashed.
He criticized Russia’s Defense Ministry as incompetent and accused it of withholding weapons and ammunition from its troops, who are fighting on behalf of Russia in Ukraine.
Prigozhin has been indicted in the United States for meddling in the 2016 presidential election through his infamous internet “troll factory”.
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The possibility that explosives were planted in the jet’s landing gear is also being investigated, according to Russian outlet SHOT, which reported that a flight attendant killed in the crash told family members that the plane was being held for repairs before takeoff. .
“Of course it was an inside job, the suggestion was that it was a bomb in a wine crate,” former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele told Sky News.
“It’s an ironic end for Putin’s former caterer,” he added, referring to Prigozhin’s restaurant and catering company that provided services to the Kremlin.
He wasn’t actually on the plane
Theories that the plane was shot down or blown up have run rampant, while others speculate Prigozhin was not on board.Razgruzka_Vagnera/UPI/Shutterstock
Conspiracy theorists also rule out the possibility that he was not on the downed plane, suggesting that he may have actually been on a second jet associated with the Wagner group that landed safely in St. Petersburg.
Without the results of forensic evidence, it cannot be known for certain whether Prigozhin was actually on the doomed plane, according to conspiracy theorists.
The last four digits of the plane’s registration number came down as 2795, aligning it with Prigozhin’s own plane registered as RA-02795.
However, a second jet – an Embraer ERJ-135BJ Legacy 650 aircraft – landed at Ostafyevo Airport at the same time it happened, The Sun reported.
The speculation was fueled by an incident in the Democratic Republic of Congo four years ago in which Prigozhin was reported dead in a plane crash, only to emerge days later.
“Several individuals have changed their names to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, as part of his efforts to obfuscate his travels,” Keir Giles, a Russia expert with international affairs think tank Chatham House, told the outlet.
“Don’t be surprised if he appears shortly in a new video from Africa.”
Inside separate interview with Sky NewsGiles said, “This is a man who cares about his safety, even before he makes himself a marked man by marching to Moscow.”
He is dead
Russian military personnel inspect part of a crashed private jet Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023. AP
When Prigozhin appeared in a military recruitment video said to have been filmed in Africa earlier this week, some were surprised that he was still alive, two months after occupying Rostov-on-Don and leading 25,000 of his men towards Moscow.
The surrender was arranged by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko who allowed Prigozhin to seek safe harbor in the country, which is a Russian ally.
Unverified footage of the leader wearing camouflage and carrying an assault weapon emerged on Telegram on Tuesday, more than a month after a former senior US military leader suggested he had been assassinated.
“I personally don’t think he is, and if he is, he’s in prison somewhere,” Robert Abrams, a retired general, told ABC News when asked if he thought Prigozhin was still alive.
Ukrainian involvement
A member of Wagner’s private mercenary group pays tribute to Yevgeny Prigozhin at a makeshift memorial in front of Wagner’s PMC office in Novosibirsk, on August 24, 2023. AFP via Getty Images
The apparent attack came on the eve of Ukraine’s Independence Day, fueling speculation that the country was behind the downing of the warlord’s plane which added to Russia’s unprovoked aggression.
Rumors of possible Ukrainian involvement prompted President Volodymyr Zelensky to set the record straight on Thursday.
“We have nothing to do with it,” Zelensky said, as his country stepped up its retaliation on Russian soil.
“Everyone is aware of who is involved,” he continued, referring to Putin, who had offered his condolences to Prigozhin’s family on Thursday in his first public acknowledgment of the plane crash.
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
