Putin’s Alleged Involvement Unproved

A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment has ascribed the aircraft accident presumed to have ended the life of Yevgeny Prigozhin—Russian oligarch, mercenary leader, and former confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin—to an intentional explosion.

A U.S. official familiar with the assessment set forth the report goes so far as to state Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and the explosion aligns with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”

The unnamed official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, offered no details pertaining to the alleged explosion’s cause.

Pentagon spokesman and suspected automaton USAF General Pat Ryder refuted press reports alleging the Embraer Legacy 600 jet belonging to Prigozhin and aboard which he is presumed to have been at the time of its destruction was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. Ryder declined to comment on whether U.S. intelligence agencies suspect Prigozhin was targeted for assassination.

Details of the U.S. intelligence assessment surfaced as Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the families of persons reported to have been aboard the downed jet and alluded to “serious mistakes” made by Prigozhin in the months preceding his assumed demise.

Speaking to reporters in the hours following the destruction of Prigozhin’s jet, Joe Biden stated he believed Putin was behind the occurrence. Biden conceded he had no factual basis upon which to base his presumption.

“I don’t know for a fact what happened,” Biden declared, “but I’m not surprised. There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.”

Supporters claimed on pro-Wagner Group messaging apps that Prigozhin’s Legacy 600 was deliberately downed, suggesting the aircraft may have been struck by a missile or destroyed in-flight by an on-board bomb.

Sergei Mironov, the leader of the pro-Kremlin Fair Russia party and former chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament said on his Telegram channel that Prigozhin had “messed with too many people in Russia, Ukraine, and the West.”

Mironov added: “It now seems that at some point, his number of enemies reached a critical point.”

Anastasia Bukharova, 27, reported she was walking with her children when she observed the Embraer jet passing overhead, “and then—BOOM!—it exploded in the sky.” Stating she feared the aircraft’s wreckage would impact nearby, Bukharova fled with her children. What remained of the jet, however, came to ground in a field.

“Something sort of was torn from it in the air,” Bukharova added.

Shortly after the downing of Prigozhin’s Embraer, a Telegram channel linked to the Wagner Group—a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) founded and controlled by Prigozhin and the vehicle by which his coup attempt was orchestrated—reported Prigozhin’s aircraft had been shot down by air defenses in the Tver Oblast, an area of alternating lowlands and highlands some 143-nautical-miles northwest of Moscow.

Russian news outlets stated the Legacy 600 had been airborne less than half-an-hour prior to its destruction and eight bodies had been recovered from the wreckage.

Prigozhin founded the Wagner Group in 2014. Under his guidance, the organization grew to upwards of fifty-thousand trained warfighters organized in a manner similar to the structure and hierarchy of Russia’s state armed forces.

FMI: www.state.gov