Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader who led a failed coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin, is dead.
Russian authorities announced that Prigozhin’s plane crashed en route to Moscow, near Tver.
All ten passengers aboard the plane perished. The deceased reportedly include Dmitry Utkin, a former Russian special forces soldier who became known as Prigozhin’s right hand.
The Prigozhin-founded Wagner Group had up to 50,000 fighters in Ukraine before he attempted a drive on Moscow due to frustrations over mounting losses in the city of Bakhmut and a decree from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu that private military companies must sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense.
Putin announced Prigozhin’s replacement to lead Wagner last month amid the Kremlin’s efforts to discredit the former mercenary chief. The new head of Wagner – which has been restructured and stripped of its heavy weapons – is Andrei Troshev, an ex-Russian Army artillery colonel with a penchant for alcohol.
Putin moved quickly after his initial shock to purge Russian military leadership of officers sympathetic to Prigozhin’s anger over the war’s disastrous mismanagement. The Federal Guard Service (FSO), roughly equivalent to our Secret Service, moved quickly to subject Russian commanders to a loyalty “crash test.”
Leading Russian General Sergei Surovikin has not been seen since the attempted mutiny. A Russian state-owned news agency recently announced that Surovikin was relieved of his command as head of the air force. The report added that Surovikin had been “transferred” and was “on a short vacation.”
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Plane hit by missile
More likely to be a bomb or some other sort of sabotage, a missile launch is much more easily detected.
he was eliminated
I think the cause of the crash was most likely that a bomb was placed on the airplane by someone working for Putin, and not by a missile. A missile would leave a smoke trail heading for the target whereas an onboard explosion would leave less telling evidence. The video shows a white puff of smoke at the beginning of its descent to the ground which would indicate a bomb onboard, not a missile. Did anyone see a smoke trail from the ground moving toward the aircraft?
Just another Putin assassination.. to go along with all of those Oligarchs that “jumped off” their balconies…
I seem to recall that Prigozhin was on a video protesting the shelling of his Wagner troops by Russian Army and saying that he was a marked man, probably a dead man walking. He recognized his position.