Vladimir Putin openly said on Thursday that Yevgeny Prigozhin was dead, in the Kremlin’s first sanctioned response to the warlord’s apparent demise in a aeroplane crash a day ahead.
A member of Wagner pays tribute to Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitri Utkin, a founder of the militia, near its offices in Novosibirsk © Vladimir Nikolayev/AFP/Getty Images
The Russian chairman said “ original data ” indicated numbers from Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group were on board and expressed his condolences to the families of all 10 people who failed in the crash.
But sympathizers of Prigozhin, who was listed among the passengers of a private spurt that crashed north- west of Moscow on Wednesday, killing all aboard, indicted “ serpents ” of assassinating him in retaliation for a insurgency he led in late June.
Putin said Wagner had “ made a significant donation to the fight against Nazism in Ukraine ” during his irruption of the country.
“ We flash back this and wo n’t forget it. I knew Prigozhin from a long time, from the early 1990s. He'd a delicate path and made serious miscalculations in his life. But he got results for himself, and for the common cause when I asked him, like in the last many months, ” he added.
Investigators launched a felonious inquiry into the crash on Thursday and the aeronautics agency said it was searching for the aeroplane ’s black box.
Footage from the point of the crash showed the aeroplane ’s burning corpse. Several bodies have been recaptured, authorities have said, but none has been officially linked as Prigozhin.
A body is carried down from the crash point © AP
Prigozhin and his group are indicted of multitudinous brutal war crimes in Ukraine and also in corridor of the Middle East and Africa where they've operated, but the warlord was popular with some in Russia for his battleground successes in Ukraine and his straight- talking notice of the army leadership.
Fellow hardliners dubbed Prigozhin the leader of a “ party of palm ” encompassing ultranationalists, Chechen zealots and shadowy security service numbers who wanted Russia to go indeed further than Putin’s stated pretensions and conquer Ukraine entirely.
“ I ’m the only leader (of the ‘ party of palm’) left, ” Konstantin Malofeyev, a nationalist mogul and patron of a host that has fought alongside Wagner in Ukraine, told the Financial Times. “ We want to fight to a victorious end. effects like this only bring people together. ”
Wagner’s St Petersburg headquarters lit up in the shape of a cross overnight and some masked fighters wearing disguise knelt in gashes in front of filmland of the warlord.
“ It was a huge honour to have known and worked with Number One. The country has lost its idol and stylish captain, ” a Wagner- combined channel wrote on Telegram. Another said Prigozhin would be “ the stylish, indeed in hell ” and participated a clip of the classical musician Richard Wagner’s Lift of the Valkyries.
numerous in the strict group participated Prigozhin’s view that Russia could have been more successful in its irruption of Ukraine had it not been for blunders committed by the country’s top generals. Several popular channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers argued that Prigozhin had been assassinated in retaliation and participated purported evidence that the aeroplane had been shot down by ananti-aircraft bullet system.
The apparent move to guillotine Wagner gestured Putin’s intention to shore up the position of Russia’s fortified forces and the return to favour of uniformed generals over the greedy group’s leaders and officers near to them, western officers told the FT on Thursday.
While warning that details of the operation and its fallout were still unclear, the officers intimately suggested that it would oppressively weaken Wagner’s influence inside Russia, but not significantly affect its conditioning in foreign countries where it remained an important aspect of Kremlin power.
Tighter Kremlin control over the group could also allow Putin to bring itsnon-military operations, similar as economic natural resource force contracts in African countries, near to the state budget, one of the officers added.
“ It shows Putin’s focus on vengeance, ” said one of the officers.
Men hang a flag near a Wagner centre in St Petersburg on Thursday © Dmitri Lovetsky/ AP
Numerous anticipated some retaliation for Prigozhin’s insurgency attempt in June and misdoubted that the deal the warlord struck with the Kremlin which would have seen Wagner and its leader dislocate still to Belarus — would be the end of the story.
“ Yevgeny Prigozhin was a nuisance to too numerous people. The number of adversaries reached a critical point, ” Sergei Mironov, the open,pro-war leader of a Kremlin- controlled opposition party, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“ In Prigozhin’s case, it was specific proletariat who planned his death, ” he added. It wasn't clear who he was criminating.
Malofeyev suggested that the warlord’s death “ was planned to produce domestic political consequences ” after Putin promised to leave Wagner alone.
“ The chairman gave his word that nothing would be to the revolutionaries, and it did. Whoever did this wanted to embarrass and provoke Putin, ” he said.
The Ukraine war had created so important fermentation in Russia’s governing and security outfit that Prigozhin’s rivals could have credibly had him killed without a direct order from Putin, according to a person familiar with the warlord’s operations.
Military numbers keen to retaliate the soldiers killed by Wagner during their insurgency “ decided it was worth the threat ”, the person said. “ Now they ’re just going to explain to Putin after the fact why it happed. ”
Prigozhin’s private spurt, an Embraer Legacy that he'd lately used to travel between Moscow, Belarus, his birthplace of St Petersburg, and to corridor of Africa where Wagner operates, crashed at noon on Wednesday in the Tver region north- west of Moscow, near the vill of Kuzhenkino.
Prigozhin was killed by “ serpents of Russia ”, one Wagner- linked channel wrote.
“ The assassination of Prigozhin will have disastrous consequences. The people who gave the order don't understand the mood in the army and morale at each, ” said Roman Saponkov, a Russian war- blogger and irruption cheerleader who's also considered close to the Wagner group.
Another anonymous Telegram channel, known to be run by a former Wagner staffer, also mourned the death of revolutionist Dmitri Utkin, a author of the Wagner host who appears to have failed in the crash with Prigozhin.
“ Alas, treason... led Dmitri Utkin to his grave, ” the authors wrote. “ The fabulous fighter and commander failed not on the battleground, but from a dastardly blow in the reverse. ”
Russian officers said all 10 people aboard the aeroplane had been killed, and Russia’s aeronautics agency latterly listed their names, including Prigozhin, Utkin, and other less well- known Wagner numbers, as well as three crew members.
videotape of the crash and its fate posted by social media channels with ties to Russian security services showed the aeroplane fleetly descending from the sky, accompanied by a premium suggesting shots fired fromanti-aircraft defences, before crashing to the ground in a ball of dears.
The RIA state news agency reported that the aeroplane ’s tail was set up 3.5 kilometres from the crash point.
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