Russia officially confirmed on Sunday, “following genetic expertise”, the death of the boss of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigojine, whose plane crashed on Wednesday, raising suspicions of revenge from the Kremlin two months after an abortive coup. The fall of the private jet carrying Prigojine and his close guard had occurred in the Tver region, northwest of Moscow, killing ten people.
At the end of the “molecular genetic expertise” which took several days, it was established that the identities of the ten victims “correspond to the list” of the passengers and the members of the crew of the plane, announced Sunday the Russian Investigative Committee in a statement. The names of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, a former military intelligence officer and operational commander of Wagner, appeared on this list.
The investigators have not said anything for the time of the tracks examined, evoking neither the thesis of the accident, nor those of a bomb or a surface-to-air missile. For their part, Westerners pointed the finger at Vladimir Putin, who had called Prigojine a “traitor” for his rebellion against Moscow. The Kremlin denied having ordered the assassination of Yevgeny Prigojine, denouncing “speculation”.