A private jet crashed Wednesday soon after taking off from Moscow. Rescuers found 10 bodies, and Russian media cited anonymous sources in Wagner who said Yevgeny Prigozhin was dead.
and some of his top lieutenants were presumed dead in a plane crash — widely seen Thursday as an assassination to avenge a mutiny that challenged President Vladimir Putin’s authority.and six other passengers were on a private jet that crashed Wednesday soon after taking off from Moscow, with a crew of three, according to Russia’s civil aviation authority. Rescuers found 10 bodies, and Russian media cited anonymous sources in Wagner who said Prigozhin was dead.
Putin remained silent as speculation swirled. On Thursday, he addressed the BRICS summit in Johannesburg via videolink, talking about expanding cooperation among the group’s members. He didn’t mention the crash and the Kremlin made no comment about it. As news of the crash broke a day earlier, he spoke at an event commemorating the WWII Battle of Kursk and hailed the heroes of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Numerous opponents and critics of Putin have been killed or gravely sickened in apparent assassination attempts, and U.S. and other Western officials long expected the Russian leader to go after Prigozhin, despite promising to drop charges in a deal that ended the June 23-24 mutiny. Further fueling speculation that the plane crash was a strike at the heart of Wagner, among those aboard was a top Prigozhin associate, Dmitry Utkin, according to the civil aviation authority. Utkin’s call sign was Wagner, which became the company’s name.
Putin first denounced the rebellion — the most serious challenge to his authority of his 23-year rule — as "treason" and a "stab in the back." He vowed to punish its perpetrators — and the world waited for Putin’s move, particularly since Prigozhin had publicly questioned the Russian leader’s justifications for the war in Ukraine, seen as a red line.
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