Wagner chief Evgeny Prigozhin was killed by Russians .
«The Embraer Legacy 600 business jet with registration number RA-02795», which belonged to the leader of the mercenary group, «was shot down by the air defense fire of the Moscow Defense Ministry », reports the Telegram channel close to Wagner Gray Zone. The aircraft was allegedly shot down while traveling in the Tver region of Russia.
Then Rosaviatsia, the federal agency of Russian air transport, confirmed: « In the plane that crashed in the Tver region, Evgeny Prigozhin was listed among the passengers ». Also on board was Prigozhin's right-hand man and co-founder of the mercenary group Dmitry Utkin .
The definitive confirmation came from the pro-Russian governor of Zaporizhzhia, an oblast in which Wagner fought for a long time: «I've just been in contact with important 'musicians' (this is how Wagner members are called, ed). They confirmed the deaths of Evgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin .'
Before the plane crashed, local residents heard two bursts of characteristic air defenses, later confirmed by the words of direct eyewitnesses and by the contrails seen in the sky in one of the released footage.
Earlier, the Tass news agency reported that ten people had died after a private plane crashed in Russia's Tver region north of Moscow. The aircraft, en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg, was carrying seven passengers and three crew members . Eight bodies have been found since the crash so far.
Last June Evgeny Prigozhin was the protagonist of a failed coup against the Russian Federation , which came at the culmination of weeks of attacks against the Moscow defense minister and the chief of staff: he started from Donbass, where his group of mercenaries was engaged in the war against Ukraine, Prigozhin embarked on a march towards Moscow which almost without opposition reached 200 km from the Kremlin , before being interrupted by the mercenary leader himself, apparently mediated by the Belarusian president Lukashenko .
"I stopped so as not to shed Russian blood," said the head of Wagner, while Putin in a speech to the nation condemned the "stab in the back" and threatened "punishments" for all "traitors" .
Since then it has always been a mystery about the fate of the head of Wagner, who appeared here and there in some video released by the social channels of the Brigade itself. The last one two days ago, when Prigozhin was in Africa : «I work. The temperature is 50 degrees. Everything as we like it», he said, adding that his militiamen were conducting «reconnaissance and research activities to make Russia even bigger in every continent and Africa even freer».
"Wagner - he concluded - is continuing to carry out the tasks that have been assigned to us and to which we promised that we would do well".
Comments
"Speaking of Prigozhin: it is worth waiting for the fog to clear ... In the meantime, it is obvious that Putin does not forgive anyone," writes Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak . “He was waiting for the moment. It is obvious that Prigozhin signed a special death warrant for himself the moment he believed Lukashenko's bizarre guarantees and Putin's equally absurd word of honor. The demonstrative elimination of Prigozhin and Wagner's command two months after the coup attempt is Putin's signal to the Russian elites ahead of the 2024 elections. Attention! Disloyalty equals death .'
The White House still uses the conditional, informs that Joe Biden has been informed of what happened in Russia and affirms that " Prigozhin's death would not be a surprise ".
(Unioneonline/L)