Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is believed to be dead following the crash of a private jet in Russia’s Tver Oblast. Russian authorities told the media that Prigozhin was listed as a passenger of the plane and that all 10 people onboard were killed in the crash.
“The Embraer plane was flying out of Sheremetyevo to St. Petersburg. There were three crew and seven passengers on board. They all died,” Russia’s Emergencies Ministry told TASS.
Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency said that “an investigation of the Embraer plane crash that happened in the Tver Region this evening was initiated. According to the passenger list, first and last name of Yevgeny Prigozhin was included in this list.”
A video circulating on social media purports to show the plane falling from the sky, and other videos show a devastating wreck. A Wagner-linked Telegram claimed Russian air defenses downed the plane, but nothing is confirmed, and other Russian channels speculated a bomb may have been planted onboard.
Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency published the list of all the passengers who were also on the plane. The list includes Dmitry Utkin, a Wagner commander who is believed to be a co-founder of the mercenary group.
The incident occurred just two days after a video of Prigozhin was posted on Telegram, where he appeared to be in Africa. In the video, he vowed to make Africa “more free” and “Russia even greater on every continent.”
Before the video, which was posted on Monday, Prigozhin had stayed relatively out of the public eye after his short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military establishment was put down in June.
The downing of the plane came after reports surfaced that Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who is suspected of having foreknowledge of Prigozhin’s uprising, was removed from his position as the head of Russian Aerospace Forces.
When asked by reporters about the news, President Biden said he didn’t know what happened but that he was “not surprised.”
Well ….. if’n yur gonna lead a mutiny against the Russian military …. yur plane might just get shot down.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy…
I could come up with a few candidates who have done and are doing a helluva lot more damage to the community of nations than Prigozhin.
But then, consigning others to the dustbin is above my pay grade.
There always seem to be more deserving folks, right? š
If there was ever a report of a possible/apparent death guaranteed to provoke speculation . . .
A Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel is claiming that Russian MoD shot down the Embraer. Maybe, but only if they wanted the world to know they did it. Western surveillance wouldn’t have missed that.
Between that and the leak that Surovikin has been formally relieved of command, it seems likely that some kind of internal regime power struggle finally got settled on particular terms.
OR … It was a western intelligence op. Behead Wagner just as the West preps to invade Niger so Wagner is not quite up scratch to help oppose the Empire’s attack. Plus, blame Putin to create internal dissension in Russia.
Cui bono?
Cui bono? Potentially any number of people or entities. It seems unlikely that this would be a Western operation. There’s almost no way Western entities could blow an aircraft out of the sky in Russia without leaving plenty of evidence for Russian investigators to find. And taking out Prigozhin and/or Wagner isn’t nearly important enough to the West, if it’s important at all (I doubt it), to risk the consequences of being caught.
Why should they care about evidence? Darya Dugina was assassinated by an operative of Ukrainian intelligence. The Ukrainians had to figure their fingerprints would be discovered. If the Ukrainian GUR or SBU acted as the cutouts then CIA or MI6 or whoever has plausible deniability.
Why should they care about evidence? Because they have no choice but to consider potential consequences. And blowing Wagner’s business jet out of the sky is a bigger deal by an order of magnitude than the Dugina car bomb.
The West has nothing to gain that would make it worth the risk. The Ukrainians might be reckless enough to do it, but there’s not much upside for them, either.
They really donāt care anymore. They say stupid things like Russia blew up nordstream and the press parrots the nonsense and the people eat it up.
The West does have something to gain, the radicalization of the Wagner Group fighters. Imagine now, if Wagner Group fighters turn on Russian military fighters, making it two forces for Russia to contend with. If would make it easier for Kiev counteroffensives. Oh yes, the West does have something to gain.
“Imagine now, if Wagner Group fighters turn on Russian military fighters . . .”
I think you should remember that imagination isn’t reality.
Yep, Nuland did it or maybe one of those new Ukrainian hypersonic drones.
How about a simple bomb on the plane?
Yeah, that’s why I meant.
Anew weapon in the fabled arsenal of Bacon, Julio & alpaca.. The dreaded hypersonic BULLSHIT….
Sorry, I meant Nuland’s Flying Submarines.
Another reasonable premise.
RT now has video up showing a smoking aircraft falling out of the sky in an uncontrolled spin and then footage of the burning wreck on the ground.
https://www.rt.com/russia/581731-video-wagner-boss-plane-crash/
As many with aviation experience of almost any kind will know, falling out of the sky like that, seemingly burning, apparently while in cruise, is perhaps the rarest of ways airplanes crash. Something sudden and catastrophic almost certainly happened.
Sputnik is now quoting the Air Transport Agency as confirming the identities of those aboard the aircraft, including Prigozhin.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20230823/wagner-chief-prigozhin-was-aboard-crashed-private-jet-1112830074.html
And RIA Novosti is citing unnamed sources reporting Surovikin’s removal.
It’s been Shoigu’s doing. I’m 99.99% certain. Putin is every day more a puppet of Shoigu’s ambition and jealousy.
The first sentence I agree with. Not so with the second.
That’s what Prigo denounced all the time: the inefficiency of the Russian military because it was in the wrong hands for the last decade (Shoigu has been MoD since 2012, Putin apparently chose him because he was not part of a faction… but a decade in such a powerful position makes you the boss of your own faction for sure) and, less explicitly, how Putin has become relatively isolated in his “ivory tower” as he grows older. Of course it can be the old narrative of “don’t blame the king but his ministers”, the kind of narrative that had Watt Tyler killed and his once successful uprising destroyed, the kind of narrative that had Gapon and his peaceful protesters massacred in Moscow in 1905… maybe it’s all the time the machiavellan mastermind of Vlad, can’t say for sure.
Delete.
Thank you. It is a reasonable premise. Get rid of
Prigozhin and Utkin,Wagner Group fighters turn on Russian military, chaos. If he was behind this, you can bet he is not in Russia now.
And it happened as they were going near military facilities in North Tver oblast.
The probable reason why it happened that way is because it was not Putin’s hand but Shoigu’s, who is a true snake and has been in personal growing confrontation with Prigozhin since this one (and Kadyrov) criticized the war effort last Autumn.
Probably shot down by Nuland and Sullivan which is definitely an escalation and a red line for Putin.
Almost IMPOSSIBLE for Nuland & or Sullivan to do any antiaircraft missile launch just outside Moscow…!!!!!!!!!
A better chance it was your Lemonie Alpaca…..!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t Nuland and Sullivan control everything? Don’t you guys blame them for everything that happens around the world?
With Russian anti-aircraft artillery? Only if Shoigu is their “man in Moscow”.
You seem just as delusional and demented as Biden today.
Sorry, you are not good at sarcasm.
Well, if he is really dead, you know Putin will take over Wagner in Africa through Shoigu. Keep the billions within the family.
I think you have it backward — Prigozhin/Wagner and Surovikin seem to have been Putin’s personal vassals and his counterweights to Shoigu. With them gone, it’s more likely Shoigu exercising additional power through Putin than vice versa.
Yes, to some extent you’re right. But that happened contrary to Putin’s apparent wishes, as he has clearly favored Shoigu way too much.
Perhaps š¤·š½āāļø
If President Putin wanted General Shoigu gone …. he’d be gone. You do know that Putin was a Lt. Col. in the Soviet KGB, yes?
Yes, Putin was a chekist (and once a chekist, always a chekist).
That doesn’t make him magically all-powerful.
But it does explain why he’s managed to survive for several decades. He’s chosen his masters wisely.
Were KGB lawyers (he had a degree in international law) directly involved in clandestine activities ? Just asking.
That’s easier said than done. Almost no Wagnerites signed for the regular army when they could and most are now deployed in Belarus anyhow.
In Belarus but not for too long. They are on the run now because they know they are next.
Some were weeping at St. Petersburg this morning. They have nowhere to run and they know it, chances are that this will trigger a Wagnerite uprising and it can go really wild if we take the historical example of the Almogavars in Byzantium. The Russian military has its hands quite tied and they are not a target they can destroy by nuking, we saw in June how they could truly march on Moscow and they are extremely good troops able to fight in almost any conditions.
remember when we got bin-Laden but instead of parading his dead body around like any other respectable do-gooders would do, we threw his lifeless carcass into the middle of the ocean where it belonged
Bin Laden was removed in 2001, we never saw him again, only fake Bin Ladens. The one killed in Pakistan was his son.
he died of renal failure in late 2001 – the entire rest of the world other than US ran his obituary in their news. it was 2011 when uncle sam claimed to have taken him out
Oh no, I guarantee you, the guy taken out was Bin Laden. But you are entitled to support conspiracies.
You can “guarantee” all you like.
All we have to go on there is a claim by the US government that it’s so.
And the US government lies. All the time. Flagrantly. Any reason, or no reason at all, is a good enough reason for it to do so. “We’re going to hide all evidence of what we say we did” is not a strong case that what they say they did is in fact what they did.
You guarantee me how? I saw the pictures and there was no Osama Bin Laden anywhere to be found.
It has been written that he died of kidney disease long before that fabled operation. He was undergoing dialysis. The source of the money for that operation is now our buddy. Interesting how that works.
So, who had August 23rd in the pool?
Of course the instant response is suspicion.
However, the crash of a foreign built plane during prolonged sanctions on things like plane parts is also an expected event. More so for small private planes.
We can’t leap to conclusions without evidence, when a number of theories are entirely possible.
Was he really on that plane? What brought it down? If he was on the plane, what will the reaction of the Wagner Group fighters be? Would they turn against Russian soldiers. This whole thing seems fishy to me. Let’s see what Putin has to say. To me, anyway, it does not seem like he would order something like this.
Was he alive before this?
On August 21st he published a selfie video in arid Sahelian landscape and claimed to be in Mali to “make Africa free and Russia even greater” or something like that. That’s the biggest contradiction, bc the attack happened only 48 hrs later in a completely different place.
Perhaps he orchestrated his own death…!
It lost a wing, so a missile or a bomb onboard are at the top of my list. Structural failure can shed a wing, but it’s very rare. Soundsbto me like some one or ones were angry with him. May have even have been a nobody launch operator…
A credible source (Liu Sibaya) reported hrs ago that rescue teams recognized the bodies of both Prigozhin and Utkin (top commander of Wagner). Other sources have shown the Wagner office building in St. Petersburg displaying a cross made of office lights, while Wagnerite sources in Telegram have claimed that the plane was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery, allegedly showing the characteristic shrapnel marks. It seems hardly a coincidence that Prigo’s former ally Gral. Surovikin was sacked from his post as commander of the Aero-Space Forces just two days ago.
Whether this was Putin’s doing or rather Shoigu’s on his own, I don’t know but regardless it’s gonna de-stabilize the country seriously and harm their geopolitical influence in Africa. The “qui bono” therefore rather points to the West but I’m of the tentative opinion that Shoigu is a traitor, so both things are not contradictory. Now, Putin kicking himself in the arse is not impossible either, but IMO less likely (doesn’t make much sense when the Niger situation is heating up and considering he usually keeps his word and he promised to not to take revenge on Wagner).
Even Putin needs the blessing of the Russian godfathers to pull a move like this. Anyone in Wagner brave enough to attempt anything similar will find themselves in a ditch.
In Russia there’s no godfather other than Vlad, that’s the secret of his success: he got all oligarchs and gave them a choice: be rich but do not mess in politics or mess in politics and become poor and probably a prisoner or exile. Russia or China do not operate like the USA, where the oligarchs command and the politicians obey, they are national-capitalist regimes and not mere oligarchies.
We’ll see what happens but I think the Wagners have little choice but to mutiny again.
Wagner is headless now. If he was taken out, there wont much of a mutiny now.
Wagner always adopted its core decisions by the Council of Commanders, Prigo was definitely a leader but he did not act on his own. There are many commanders alive and one that is not very much talked about (and is not dead) is Mizintsev, who used to be vice-minister of defense for logistics, clearly circumvented Shoigu’s orders re. strangling Wagner of supplies in the midst of the battle of Bakhmut, was fired and overnight re-hired as second in command by Wagner. He’s at least nominally number one now.
Defense Post reports that Putin has just signed a decree requiring “paramilitary fighters” to swear an oath to the Russian flag. It also reports Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying that “legally the Wagner private paramilitary group does not exist.”
Maybe. Wagner is not in Russia anymore anyhow. They have some headquarter in St. Petersburg, that’s all. Wagnerites were all redeployed to Belarus after the June mutiny (others are in CAR, Mali and Syria since long ago), allegedly their most obscure trade registry may be in Argentina.
The question is: what if Wagnerites march on Russia from Belarus: the small and poorly trained Belarussian army can’t hold them back and Moscow is not far away. They’re being corralled and that’s a very bad idea from a military viewpoint, even Sun Tzu advised against that.
IDK if history can actually repeat itself but last time something similar happened, when Michael Paleologos had Roger da Flor murdered and corralled his mercenaries at Gallipoli… Byzantium was destroyed.
Shot down. Assassination ordered by Putin because who else? At least Putin’s hit team is getting better with their assassination methods.
Wagner fighters have pledged revenge.
That is why I seriously doubt Putin had anything to do with this radically destabilizing event. Was that deposed General behind this as a revenge for his sacking?
There is a video, presumably of this accident, where the person, who filmed it, talking about an explosion in the air and a part of the plane separated. He thought it was a military plane and a separated part was the ejected pilot.
Iām full of suspicion most of the time so of course I am now, lol.
What sanctions? I thought i heard here they arenāt working.
And that was not a foreign plane. That was a private plane flying in Russian airspace with a flight plan. Numerous flights fly that path daily.
Not working is a relative term. They aren’t destroying Russia as was the plan.
And that’s why they are definitely not complaining about it.
Running with a very sketchy assumption that he is in fact dead, the first question would be; “Who benefits?”
Not Putin. Ukraine NAZIs and the Biden administration.
Possible but unlikely.
There are so many possibilities voiced by various pundits.
Generally I see distinct groups. An assassination by one of imperial terrorist organizations with the intent to redirect attention from BRICS summit and the other is a staged show by Wagner/Kremlin to reduce/hide Prigozhin/Wagner activities in Africa.
Itās weird that the first we see him in a while was video released yesterday, supposedly in Africa. How old was the video? And was it used as āproof of lifeā to then theatrically kill him off in a plane crash? Maybe he has been ānot of this worldā for some time. Or itās all coincidental, but I donāt know.
The video is dated to August 21st and was shot in Mali, just 48 hrs before that downing. He was alive then.
All of this stuff can be spoofed, though, right?
Maybe but early evidence is often the most credible, the one they did not have time to bury.
How do you know it was early?
Because it was reported in the hours or even minutes after the “incident” happened.
No. I meant the video.
Same thing: the video was circulating just minutes after the attack.
No the video in Africa
That was 2-3 days earlier.
Could have been from anytime
What do you mean? That Prigo in his own Telegram account was posting rubbish for what reason?
I leave open the possibility that he was knocked off before the plane crash. But likely not.
This was no “accident” and everybody knows that, the only doubt is if it was actively shot down by the Russian military (presumably under Shoigu’s or Gerasimov’s orders, rather than direct ones from Putin, who promised to behave and would have rather used the secret services than such a blunt maneuver) or it was a planted bomb instead (in which case the suspects can be several). For what I know Wagnerites claim it was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery and have shown alleged marks of such kind of weapon, incidentally the plane had just gone near a military area before plummeting. All sources so far also seem to agree to confirm that both Prigozhin (CEO) and Utkin (top commander) have been recognized by the rescue teams, while the Wagner Group building in St. Petersburg displayed a cross icon with office lights, so all seem to point to the deaths being very real.
I’m of the historically-based opinion that this could be extremely de-stabilizing for Russia, because last time something similar happened (Constantinople 1305), the result was the total devastation of an empire with almost the same schuteon as Russia by the rebel mercenaries. The only differences are that the Almogavars were not ethnically Greek, while Wagnerites are mostly Russians (Shoigu isn’t: he’s half-Mongol, half-Ukrainian) and that it is doubtful that even Wagner can approximate the unearthly efficiency of the Catalans, who managed to defeat and ravage a Byzantine army, 15 times their size, in open battle with nearly no casualties.
I disagree. The “incident” will be forgotten in a couple of weeks. It seems likely most Russians wanted Prigozhin to go away. It’s bad form to lead a mutiny against Mother Russia.
Most Russians considered Prigo and Wagner the greatest heroes of their country. They may be neutral for reasons of unity but the mood is getting bad even if the infos are being somewhat curtailed. I would expect a second mutiny…
Russians are notorious of using poison to kill their political enemies. Perhaps he died a while back and they just added his name on the flight roaster to give the illusion. Nevertheless, his death was made as an example for anyone else who my try something similar.
Yes …. it was only a matter of time before his “accident” occurred.
That was my thinking. On the other hand, he was not successful with his coup and the previous leaks indicated he was talking to Zelensky ( remember the wapo report that got scrubbed after Zelensky had a shitfit about someone in Ukraine sharing intel?) Maybe he was double agenting and the west, with an insider, had him killed for a double cross? Or heās not actually dead. Or the plane just crashed.
The issue is that in 2019, he was also presumed dead in Africa. Until he wasnāt.
Why the hell was this the top story on NPR today? Fodder for speculation and innuendo in the guise of news. As always lately I guess, nothing newsworthy at all is occurring in Ukraine. That stuff is so last month. You know, the war, lost down the memory hole.
You listen to NPR? I didn’t know anyone listened to NPR anymore.
NPR is simply the more tranquilizing version of msm propaganda.
š
Not me.
I wanted to know the first time NPR aired anything suggesting Ukraine’s counter offensive might have not gone wonderfully. Last night after the GOP debate brought it up. NPR acted like they had been reporting the truth from the start. The cat is officially out of the bag, there’s no stuffing it back in.
He slipped on a bar of soap.
Anglo-American propaganda is always so full of beliefs. It may as well be a religious organization.
God ‘s in heaven and all ‘s right with the world.
Has anyone found his remains?
Supposedly. The report said the remains were “identifiable”. Don’t see how they could be after a small jet crash from such an altitude, though….
“The report said the remains were ‘identifiable’.”
What report said that? If the videos posted to Russian news sites are of the crash of Prigozhin’s aircraft, none of the remains will be identified other than by DNA and/or forensic dentistry.
I agree. I don’t remember exactly where I read this, but it was a MSM outlet (which we know is shite, anyway). I did a search on Bing and several of the networks’ articles came up.
Yeah, this is one of those stories that trigger reckless guessing and speculation everywhere you look.