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The Kremlin has denied Vladimir Putin had any role in the presumed death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner militia leader who launched the biggest challenge to the president’s rule in decades.
Prigozhin’s private jet was filmed plummeting out of the sky on Wednesday and crashing north-west of Moscow, leading western officials to assume the warlord was killed on Putin’s orders and in retribution for the mutinous march he led on Moscow in June.
“These are all total lies,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, adding that the Kremlin could not confirm that Prigozhin had died until DNA and other tests were complete. Several bodies have been pulled from the crash site, authorities have said. Russia’s aviation agency listed Prigozhin among the passengers.
“Naturally there will be a lot of speculation around this plane crash, and around the tragic death of the plane’s passengers, including Yevgeny Prigozhin,” Peskov said on a phone call with reporters.
“We need to base our coverage of this issue exclusively on the facts,” he said, adding that “there are few facts” but more information may come to light as a result of the ongoing investigation by Russian authorities.
US officials have said they are still assessing what was behind the crash. One early theory is there could have been an explosion on board but officials cautioned that they have come to no firm conclusions.
Others have floated the possibility the plane was downed by a surface-to-air missile, though people briefed on initial US intelligence reports said they had no information to support this theory.
Prigozhin launched an uprising against the leadership of Russia’s army exactly two months before the plane crash. Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal between Prigozhin and Putin that put an end to the revolt.
Lukashenko on Friday claimed he had never guaranteed the personal safety of the warlord, who relocated to Belarus as part of the agreement. Along with Prigozhin, his right-hand man, Wagner founder Dmitry Utkin was also listed among the passengers in the crash. Lukashenko said he had “categorically warned” both Prigozhin and Utkin that they were in danger.
“I can’t say who did it . . . But I know Putin. He is a prudent, very calm and even slow-paced person,” Lukashenko said. The presumed assassination was “too rough, unprofessional work” to be the Russian president’s, the Belarus leader said.
The Kremlin did not confirm Prigozhin’s death, saying it was necessary to await the results of an investigation.
“The Russian president has said that all necessary expert evaluations will be conducted, including DNA tests,” Peskov said. “There are no official conclusions yet, they will be published as soon as they are ready for publication.”
Putin addressed Prigozhin’s death on Thursday, saying he had known the businessman since the 1990s and though “he had a difficult path and made serious mistakes in his life,” he also “got results”. The president said “initial data” indicated Wagner members were on board and expressed his condolences to the families of all 10 people who died.
Questions remain over the future of the Wagner operation, which is headquartered in Prigozhin’s hometown, St Petersburg. At its peak last year, the militia included tens of thousands of fighters, many of them recruited from Russian prisons, but also numerous seasoned mercenaries who had fought with Wagner for years in operations in Syria, Libya and several countries in Africa.
Lukashenko said Wagner fighters would continue to be based in Belarus, despite Prigozhin’s death. From there, the group was expected to continue many of its foreign ventures, and Prigozhin himself had recently been pictured in an undisclosed location in Africa, potentially Mali.
Now, the future of these lucrative ventures is in doubt, and what will happen to his loyal mercenaries — some of whom participated in the June uprising — is also unclear.
Asked about Wagner’s future on Friday, the Kremlin’s spokesman said it was “important not to forget that no such organisation exists . . . de jure”, and dismissed questions about a potential replacement for Prigozhin at the helm of Wagner.
