The President of Belarus, Alexandr Lukashenko, who mediated to quell the Wagner mutiny last June against the Russian military leadership, said Friday that he warned Prigozhin through Putin that he had information that an attack was being prepared against him.

Lukashenko added that the Wagner leader later confirmed that he had received the notice.

Precisely the detonation of an explosive device placed in the landing gear compartment of Prigozhin’s plane, an Embraer Legacy 600, is being considered as the possible cause of the accident.

Some media pointed out the possibility that the aircraft could have been shot down, intentionally or by mistake, by missiles from the anti-aircraft defense units that protect a Putin residence located next to the route followed by Prigozhin’s plane.

The Russian authorities also do not rule out a technical defect or even a piloting error as the cause of the accident, while on social networks there is no shortage of those who maintain that everything is a setup and that Prigozhin is alive.

In any case, the Kremlin flatly rejected the accusations by the opposition and the statements by Western politicians that Putin was behind the Prigozhin plane crash.

“It is an absolute lie,” emphasized the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitri Peskov.

The Russian authorities continued this Saturday the investigation of the accident of the plane in which, according to the official version, the leader of the Wagner Group was traveling

Although even the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, gave Prigozhin for dead when he offered his condolences for the death of the Wagner boss, until today his death has not been legally confirmed with DNA tests, necessary due to the condition of the bodies of the occupants of the plane that crashed on Wednesday.

Identification through comparative analysis of genetic material could take several days, since it depends on the delivery of samples from the direct relatives of the deceased.

Many media have recalled that Putin declared at the time that he does not forgive treason, as he described the Wagner rebellion in a television message to the population on the same day as the riot, on June 24.

After the agreement that put an end to the uprising of the mercenaries and that included their transfer to Belarus, the Wagner Group was stripped of its heavy weapons.

And now with the accident of the Prigozhin plane, the mercenary company has been left headless, since Dmitri Utkin, its most prominent commander and co-founder of Wagner, was flying with him.

A former Russian military intelligence (GRU) officer, Utkin fought in Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine, and was awarded the title of Hero of Russia.

In one of the few known photographs of him, he appears with a shaved head and several Nazi tattoos.

Also among the ten occupants of the damaged Embraer Legacy 600 was Valeri Chekalov, responsible for Prigozhin’s personal security and part of his businesses, recently sanctioned by the United States.

The mercenaries of the Wagner Group will continue in Belarus, where they settled after the failure of their rebellion, according to the Belarusian president, Lukashenko.

“Wagner is alive and will live in Belarus no matter how much some do not want him,” said the president, quoted by the official Belarusian news agency BELTA.

He downplayed satellite images showing that Wagner’s camp in the Mogilev region of eastern Belarus has shrunk in size.

“In a few days, everyone will be here, about 10,000 people,” he stressed, noting that some Wagnerites are currently “on vacation.”