The dramatic assassination of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was orchestrated by Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man, a new report claims.
Putin’s oldest ally, Russian security chief Nikolai Patrushev, ordered Prigozhin’s death in a fiery plane crash on August 23, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed Western intelligence agencies and a Russian intelligence official.
Prigozhin, 62, was flying to St. Petersburg with nine other passengers when a “small explosive device” placed under the plane’s wing detonated and caused the plane to spin onto the ground, the outlet claimed.
The incident comes exactly two months after the warlord launched a rebellion that nearly toppled Putin’s two-decade stronghold — but the Kremlin has repeatedly denied any role in the incident.
Patrushev – a former spy who has known Putin since his KGB days in the 1970s – previously warned Putin that Prigozhin was consolidating too much political influence as Russia increasingly relied on the Wagner Group to support its military operations in Ukraine, the outlet explained.
Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a fiery plane crash on August 23. AP Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev (left) has been a close ally of Putin since the 1970s. POOL/AFP via Getty Images
The warning, however, went largely unnoticed due to Wagner’s relative success on the battlefield.
Putin, 71, gradually became aware of the issue in October 2022, when Prigozhin contacted him to complain about the paramilitary group’s lack of supplies, a former Russian intelligence official told the Journal.
Patrushev, 72, was present during the call, and used it to encourage Putin to freeze Prigozhin — a move that sparked months of wrangling that eventually erupted into the June 23-24 uprising.
As Putin luxuriated in a villa far from Moscow, Patrushev asked Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to negotiate a deal that forced Prigozhin to step down, the Journal said.
Patrushev has warned Putin that the Wagner Group boss has too much power, sources said. Reuters
In the tense eight weeks that followed, Prigozhin traveled to Africa – while Patrushev allegedly planned to eliminate him in August, sources claim.
“You can see what Putin’s plan is — to keep the dead walking so they can continue to know what’s going on,” Rolf Mowatt-Larsson, the former head of the CIA in Moscow, told the Wall Street Journal.
Hours after the fiery crash on August 23, a Kremlin official told European intelligence collectors “without hesitation” that Prigozhin “had to be removed,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
A woman visits a makeshift memorial to Yevgeny Prigozhin. Reuters
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, dismissed the Wall Street Journal’s claims on Friday as “pulp fiction.”
“We have seen this material, but we do not want to comment on it. There is no way such material can be commented on,” he scoffed.
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
