How the plane he was on board crashed Yevgeny Prigozhin? Who ordered the massacre? What will be its consequences and the future of group of Wagner mercenaries? All questions that are still trying to give some answers.
Meanwhile the Russian president Vladimir Putin has almost confirmed the death of the mercenary and former friend who two months ago had attempted the coup by marching towards the Kremlin. “I offer my sincere condolences to the families of all those killed in the plane crash… Preliminary data show that Wagner company executives were on board… I knew Prigozhin for a long time, since the early XNUMXs. He was a man of a complex fate and made serious mistakes in his life. But he got the results that were needed, both for himself and for the common cause when I asked him to. Just like in the last few months”.
Why did Prigozhin's plane crash?
Putin hasn't said a word about the causes that led to the crash of the plane, but no one at an international level seems to have any doubts: it wasn't a tragic fatality, but the aircraft “has been dropped”. According to the main American media on board the private jet carrying Prigozhin, his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin and some of the highest executives of the Wagner group, there would have been a bomb or other type of device. A hypothesis also put forward by the Russian Telegram magazine Shot, according to which the investigators assume that the bomb was placed in the trolley compartment. According to two American executives quoted by the Reuters, instead, Washington would be inclined to embrace the thesis of Gray Zone, a Telegram channel close to Wagner, according to which the plane was shot down by surface-to-air missiles from Russian territory. In particular, says former Russian deputy Ilya Ponomaryov, who has lived in Ukraine for years and opposes Putin, the jet would have been hit by two missiles from the S-300 anti-aircraft system.
even the UK he is speculating that the plane was shot down deliberately, although the exact cause of the crash is not yet clear, an official said.
Prigozhin: who ordered the killing of the Wagner leader
Also in this case, the first confirmations of what everyone had thought from the beginning arrive from the USA: Yevgeny Prigozhin would have been a murder and his murder was probably approved by the Russian president Vladimir Putin himself. It is very probable that the facts will never be fully clarified, but a few hours after the news of the crash of the plane, the US president Joe Biden he said: "It's no surprise... nothing happens in Russia without Putin knowing about it". Already last July, the number one in the White House had stated: "Prigozhin should be careful what he eats", referring to a possible poisoning of him.
“It is no coincidence that the whole world is watching the Kremlin,” said the German foreign minister Anna Lena Bareback. “We have nothing to do with what happened,” the Ukrainian president said instead Volodymyr Zelensky "Everyone knows who did it."
What will happen to the Wagner Group?
"The Wagner Group will probably no longer exist as a quasi-independent parallel military structure following the almost certain assassination by Russian President Vladimir Putin of Wagner's financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner's founder Dmitry Utkin, and Wagner's logistics and security chief Valery Chekalov. This is the prediction of'Institute for the Study of War (ISW), according to which "the death of Wagner's central leadership jeopardizes his ability to reverse the effects of the Kremlin and Russian Defense Ministry's campaign to weaken, contain and destroy the organization following the June 24 armed rebellion", continues the US study center.
“The Russian Defense Ministry has set up private military companies (PMCs) which have recruited Wagner's current and former staff to take control of Wagner's operations abroad,” the think tank points out.