MOSCOW — Russian authorities on Sunday confirmed the demise of Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, placing to relaxation any doubts about whether or not the wily mercenary chief turned mutineer was on a airplane that crashed Wednesday, killing everybody on board.
Genetic testing on the ten our bodies recovered on the crash website “conform to the manifest ” for the flight, Russian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko mentioned in an announcement. Russia’s civil aviation authority had mentioned Prigozhin and a few of his prime lieutenants had been on the checklist of seven passengers and three crew members.
The Investigative Committee didn’t point out what might need triggered the enterprise jet to plummet from the sky midway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, Prigozhin’s hometown.
However the crash’s timing raised suspicions of a doable Kremlin-orchestrated hit, whereas Prigozhin’s chameleon-like background allowed for hypothesis that he wasn’t on the airplane or had in some way escaped demise.
Two months in the past, Prigozhin, 62, mounted a daylong mutiny in opposition to Russia’s army, main his mercenaries from Ukraine towards Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin decried the act as “treason” and vowed punishment for these concerned.
As an alternative, the Kremlin rapidly reduce a take care of Prigozhin to finish the armed revolt, saying he can be allowed to stroll free with out dealing with any prices and to resettle in Belarus. Questions remained about whether or not the previous ally of Russia’s chief would face a comeuppance for the temporary rebellion that posed the largest problem to Putin’s authority of his 23-year rule.
A preliminary U.S. intelligence evaluation concluded that an intentional explosion triggered the airplane to go down. As suspicions grew that the Russian president was the architect of an assassination, the Kremlin rejected them as a “full lie.”
One of many Western officers who described the preliminary evaluation mentioned it decided that Prigozhin was “very possible” focused and that an explosion can be in keeping with Putin’s “lengthy historical past of attempting to silence his critics.”
Prigozhin’s second-in-command, Dmitry Utkin, in addition to Wagner logistics mastermind Valery Chekalov, additionally had been killed within the crash. Utkin was lengthy believed to have based Wagner and baptized the group together with his nom de guerre.
The destiny of Wagner, which till just lately performed a distinguished position in Russia’s army marketing campaign in Ukraine and was concerned in various African and Center Jap nations, is unsure.
After the mutiny, the Kremlin mentioned Prigozhin can be exiled in Belarus, and his fighters had been provided three choices: to comply with him there, retire or enlist in Russia’s common military and return to Ukraine, the place Wagner mercenaries had fought alongside Russian troops.
A number of thousand Wagner mercenaries opted to maneuver to Belarus, the place a camp was erected for them southeast of the capital, Minsk.
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