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The Kremlin has denied Vladimir Putin had anything to do with the death of Wagnerian militia leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has launched the biggest challenge to the president’s rule in decades.
Prigozhin’s private jet was filmed falling from the sky and crashing northwest of Moscow on Wednesday, leading Western officials to believe the warlord was killed on Putin’s orders and in retaliation for an insurgent march he led in Moscow in June .
“These are outright lies,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, adding that the Kremlin could not confirm Prigozhin’s death until DNA and other tests were completed. Authorities said several bodies had been recovered from the crash site. Russia’s aviation agency listed Prigozhin as one of the passengers.
“Naturally there will be a lot of speculation surrounding this plane crash and the tragic death of those on board, including Yevgeny Prigorzhin,” Peskov told reporters by phone.
“We need to report on this issue based entirely on the facts,” he said, adding that “there are very few facts” but that more information may come to light as Russian authorities investigate.
U.S. officials said they were still assessing what was behind the crash. An early theory suggested that an explosion may have occurred on board, but officials cautioned they had not yet reached firm conclusions.
Others have raised the possibility that the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile, although people with knowledge of the initial U.S. intelligence report said they had no information to support that theory.
In addition to his right-hand man Prigorzhin, Wagner founder Dmitry Utkin was among the passengers.
The Kremlin did not confirm Prigozhin’s death, saying it needed to wait for the results of the investigation.
“The Russian president has stated that all necessary expert assessments, including DNA tests, will be carried out,” Peskov said. “There are no official conclusions yet and they will be published as soon as they are ready.”
Speaking on Prigozhin’s death on Thursday, Putin said he had known the businessman since the 1990s and that despite “a difficult path in his life and serious mistakes,” he also “Getting results”. The president said “preliminary data” indicated members of Wagner were on board and offered his condolences to the families of all 10 killed.
The future of Wagner, based in Prigorzhin’s hometown of St. Petersburg, remains in doubt. At its peak last year, the militia included tens of thousands of fighters, many recruited from Russian prisons, but also many experienced mercenaries who had fought alongside Wagner in operations in Syria, Libya and several African countries for many years.
Just two months before the crash, Prigozhin had launched an uprising against the leadership of the Russian military. Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko brokered a deal between Prigozhin and Putin that ended the rebellion.
According to the terms of the truce, Wagner fighters should be transferred to Belarus. Since then, the group is expected to continue many of its overseas operations, and Prigozhin himself was recently photographed in an undisclosed location in Africa, possibly Mali.
Now, the future of these lucrative ventures is in doubt, and what will happen to his loyal mercenaries – some of whom were involved in the June uprising – is unclear.
When asked about Wagner’s future on Friday, a Kremlin spokesman said it was “important not to forget that such an organization does not exist”. . .in Lawand dismissed questions about a potential replacement for Wagner’s Prigozhin at the helm.
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