The Kremlin has refused to categorically confirm Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, citing the need to wait for test results, but said Western claims that he had been killed on its orders were a “absolute lie.”
The head of the Wagner Mercenary Group, Prigozhin, was reportedly aboard the private plane that crashed on Wednesday night northwest of Moscow, according to the Russian Aviation Authority. There were no survivors.
President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the families of those killed in the crash on Thursday and spoke of Prigozhin in the past tense, breaking his silence two months after Prigozhin led a failed rebellion against Army Chiefs.
Putin reported “preliminary information” indicating that Prigozhin and his senior Wagner Mercenary Group collaborators had all been slain, and while praising Prigozhin, he also admitted to making some “serious mistakes.”
Without providing evidence, Western politicians and commentators have suggested that Putin ordered Prigozhin’s death to punish him for leading the June 23-34 mutiny against the Army’s leadership, which also represented the biggest challenge to Putin’s own rule since he came to power in 1999.
Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, said the charge and others like it were baseless.
Earlier on Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov had chastised U.S. President Joe Biden for expressing his lack of surprise that Prigozhin had been killed in a plane crash, accusing Biden of disregarding diplomatic norms.
Russian investigators have launched an investigation into what happened, but they have yet to reveal what they believe led the plane to crash-land northwest of Moscow.
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