This Thursday, August 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to pay tribute, in his own way, to the former leader of Wagner Evgueni Prigojine, who died in a plane crash the day before. While thanking Prigozhin’s contribution to the offensive in Ukraine and promising to shed light on this fatal crash, the Russian president criticized certain decisions of the businessman.
“He was a man with a complicated destiny, who made serious mistakes in his life, but who was getting the results he needed,” Putin said in a televised meeting, offering his condolences to the relatives of the crash victims.
“These are people who have made a significant contribution to our common effort” in Ukraine, where Russia has been waging a military offensive since February 2022, Putin continued. Referring to the investigation into the causes of the crash launched by the Russian authorities, the president promised to “conduct it in its entirety and reach a conclusion”.
The accident, which fueled speculation that the man who had become the enemy of the Kremlin after its abortive rebellion in June had been assassinated, killed all 10 occupants of the aircraft, according to authorities. Yevgeny Prigojine, whom Mr Putin said he had “known since the early 1990s”, had been called a “traitor” by the Russian president during his abortive mutiny in June. According to Mr Putin, the Wagner boss had “returned from Africa” ??on the day of the crash, Wednesday.
In the village of Koujenkino, near which the plane crashed, a resident, Vitali, said he “heard a boom” in the air. “I looked up and saw a plane, with white smoke above,” he said in a video released by Fontanka. Footage from Russian rescuers shows smoldering remains in a clearing.
On social networks, accounts close to Wagner – who has no official online presence – mentioned on Wednesday a surface-to-air missile launch, fueling speculation about an assassination. If some evoke a staging of Prigojine to disappear, the head of the public media RT Margarita Simonian does not believe it. “I’m leaning towards the more obvious (track),” she wrote on ex-Twitter X.
During the day, residents of Saint Petersburg, the city where he was based, marched to lay flowers on an improvised memorial, a sign of the warlord’s popularity with some, who appreciated his outspoken criticism of Russian elites. , the military hierarchy and sometimes the Kremlin, and its nationalism.
“To us he was a friend, a brother. I think for all the soldiers it’s a very important moment,” says Natalia, 31, who came by bicycle to drop her bouquet in the shade of the glass building where Wagner established his headquarters in the former Russian imperial capital. . In Ukraine, where Wagner fought for a long time, we rejoice on the other hand at the death of the warlord. “Perhaps it will give impetus to destabilizing events” in Russia, said Iryna Kuchina, a civil servant interviewed by AFP on Kiev’s central avenue.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted that kyiv had “nothing to do” with the accident, also implying that the Kremlin was responsible. Recalling that the Wagner Group had helped bring death to Ukraine, he later added, “There is a court in The Hague, there is God’s justice. But Russia has an alternative (justice) – President Putin.” His American counterpart Joe Biden, for his part, felt that “little thing happens in Russia without Putin having something to do with it”.
Many critics of the Russian regime have been killed or targeted by assassination attempts. The Kremlin has always denied its involvement.
“If this disappearance were proven, it would be a major element”, especially in Africa, underlined the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Yevgeny Prigojine had led a rebellion on June 23-24 against the Russian general staff and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, marching on Moscow, taking a military headquarters and shooting down Russian army planes.
He had given up his mutiny after an agreement which provided for his exile with his men in Belarus and the abandonment of the charges. He had appeared Monday evening in a last video, claiming to be in Africa where Wagner was to continue his activity as mercenaries in the service of authoritarian regimes
