Russia: Wagner boss Prigozhin declared dead after plane crash

Two months after his mysterious mutiny against the Russian authorities, mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has been pronounced dead after a plane crash in Russia. The Telegram channel Gray Zone, which Prigozhin used to distribute his videos, reported the death of the head of the private army Wagner last night.

The Rozaviazia Aviation Authority published a passenger list that included Prigozhin and the official Wagner commander, Dmitry Utkin. All ten occupants died, said the Russian civil defense. There was no official confirmation or clear evidence of the death of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin’s longtime confidante until the morning.

In the Russian war of aggression against the Ukraine, Prigozhin and the fighters in his private army, Wagner, played a major role, particularly in the costly capture of the city of Bakhmut. On Thursday it was exactly a year and a half since Putin ordered the attack on the neighboring country. The invasion began on February 24, 2022. Thursday is also the national day when Ukraine celebrates its independence in 1991. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised at a conference that the country would take back Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed from Russia in 2014.

Russian military blogger speaks of murder

The Embraer private jet carrying Prigozhin on its passenger list crashed northwest of Moscow in the Tver region yesterday. There was no official information on the cause, and the authorities were only just beginning their investigations. However, Gray Zone and some military bloggers spread the thesis that the crash was not an accident. Gray Zone said it was shot down by Russian anti-aircraft guns. This assertion could not be verified. “Prigozhin died as a result of the actions of traitors to Russia,” the post said.

“Prigozhin’s murder will have disastrous consequences,” military journalist Roman Saponkov wrote on Telegram. “The people who gave the order don’t understand the mood in the army and their morale.” Prigozhin was popular with soldiers for his criticism of regular army leadership and some of his mercenaries’ successes on the battlefield.

Exactly two months to the day before his death, Wagner’s troops mutinied and marched towards Moscow at Prigozhin’s behest, although the background to these events remains unclear to this day. For Russian President Putin, who does not tolerate public questioning of his authority, it was an unprecedented shaking of his position of power. He then called Prigozhin a traitor. And even if the two men met again later, many experts assumed that Putin would not forgive his former intimate for disobedience.

When the current president was still working in the St. Petersburg city administration, he is said to have stopped off at Prigozhin’s restaurant. Prigozhin, who was imprisoned for several years for robbery, later made a career as a food supplier for the Kremlin, hence his nickname “Putin’s cook”.

The Wagner mercenary group he built up first carried out unofficial special assignments for the Russian government in Syria, later also in several African countries and finally fought in the Ukraine. Most recently, the mercenary leader spoke up on Monday with a video from Africa. It is unclear what will become of the several thousand Wagner fighters who went to Belarus after the mutiny and have now lost their leader.

Biden: Putin is behind many things in Russia

The Russian television station Tsargrad, which is loyal to the Kremlin, also raised suspicions of a plot to assassinate Prigozhin. However, he blamed the Ukrainian military intelligence service for the crash of the plane. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak said in Kiev that it was obvious that Putin would not forgive anyone for the fear the mutiny had instilled in him. Prigozhin’s fate is a signal to the Russian elite that any disloyalty will be punished with death.

US President Joe Biden appeared unsurprised by Prigozhin’s plane crash. He didn’t know exactly what happened, but he wasn’t surprised, Biden said while on vacation in the US state of California. When asked by reporters if he thought Putin was responsible for the crash, Biden said, “There’s not much that’s happening in Russia that Putin isn’t behind.” But he doesn’t know enough to answer the question.

Ukrainian flag flies over Robotyne

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s strenuous counter-offensive in the south of the country continues. Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zalushnyi released a video showing the Ukrainian flag over Robotyne, a town that has been contested for weeks. This is the place in the Zaporizhia region where the Ukrainian army fought its way furthest through the heavily mined Russian defenses.

President Zelenskyy meanwhile rejected foreign criticism of an allegedly wrong formation of the army. “Does an expert know how many people, how many occupiers, are in the east? About 200,000!” he said in Kiev. If he strengthens the troops in the south, Russia will break through in the east. “We will not give up Kharkiv, the Donbass, Pavlohrad or Dnipro.” He responded to statements by US military and other experts in the “New York Times” that Ukraine was not concentrating enough units in the south. That is why the advance towards the Sea of ​​Azov is halting.

Zelenskyj: Ukraine does not trade with its people

At a summit meeting of the so-called Crimean Platform, Zelenskyy promised to bring back the peninsula of the same name. “Crimea will be liberated, as will all other parts of Ukraine that are now under the (Russian) occupiers,” said the head of state in Kiev.

Dozens of companies are already ready to invest in the peninsula once it is back under Ukrainian control. He again rejected the idea of ​​ceding territories to Russia in exchange for peace. “Ukraine doesn’t trade in territory, because Ukraine doesn’t trade in people, period,” he said.