Russia formally confirmed this Sunday the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, whose plane crashed on Wednesday, amid growing questions about the cause of the crash.
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The private plane carrying Prigozhin and his close aides crashed on Wednesday in the Tver region, northwest of Moscow.
After carrying out a “molecular genetic analysis”, it has been established that the identities of the ten victims whose bodies were found “correspond to the list” of passengers and crew on the plane, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement.
In addition to Prigozhin, the list included his right-hand man, Dmitri Utkin, head of operations for the paramilitary group, whose existence was barely recognized by the Kremlin at the end of 2022.
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The accident occurred exactly two months after Wagner staged a mutiny against Moscow’s military leadership, sparking a wave of speculation about the origin of the incident.
Western governments and opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted that the Kremlin could be behind the event. The Kremlin, however, flatly denied those accusations. and the Russian president on Thursday promised a “thorough” investigation into the case.
At the moment, the Russian investigators have not mentioned any hypothesis about the causes of the accident.
makeshift altars
The president of Belarus, a country allied to Moscow, Alexander Lukashenko, gave his support to the Kremlin and said he “could not imagine” the Russian president giving the order to assassinate the Wagner leader.
Since the plane crash makeshift altars were erected in homage to Prigozhin in various cities of the country, dFrom Novosibirsk (Western Siberia) to Saint Petersburg (Northwest).
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Small memorials illustrate Prigozhin’s popularity in those areas, where Wagner had training centers.
“The enemies killed him (…), but we hope there will be revenge against those who committed this crime,” a Prigozhin supporter told reporters on Sunday, outside a flower-filled memorial in Moscow.
Prigozhin and Utkin “will remain in our history as true heroes, as an example of the kind of people to be,” added this man wearing a T-shirt bearing the capital letter “Z”, symbol of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, which started in February 2022.
Putin accused Prigozhin, whom he had known since the 1990s, of being a “traitor” after he led an armed mutiny on June 23-24 against Russia’s military leadership. Wagner’s aborted rebellion rocked the Russian government into the conflict with Ukraine.
Drone attacks
After a long silence, the Russian leader on Thursday highlighted Prigozhin’s “contribution” to the offensive in Ukraine, despite his “mistakes”.
Prigozhin backed down in June after a deal was struck so he could go into exile with his men in Belarus and the charges against him were dropped.
But the Wagner leader continued to travel to Russia and in June he went to the Kremlin at least once. Wagner, who left Ukraine after the riot, is still present in Africa, although his future is now in question.
The group has been accused of abuses, extrajudicial executions and torture. Confirmation of Prigozhin’s death coincides with an upsurge in attacks between Russia and Ukraine. Russia reported on Sunday that its border regions were once again targeted by drone attacks.
Ukraine, in turn, reported a nightly shelling. The Russian Defense Ministry said it shot down two Ukrainian drones that were flying over border regions. Shortly before, the governor of Belgorod had reported that a drone had killed a man.
In the Kursk region, also on the border, the governor announced that a drone crashed into a block of flats at night. “There were no fires, none of the residents were injured,” Roman Starovoit said on social media. The capital and other Russian regions have been targeted by drone strikes in recent days, after kyiv vowed earlier this summer to “return” the conflict in Russia.
AFP
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