Wagner boss
US sees no evidence of missiles shooting down Prigozhin’s plane
A body is recovered from the wreckage of the crashed private jet in which Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is said to have been
© Uncreditet/AP/DPA
Why did the plane in which Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is said to have been crashed over Russia? In any case, according to the US government, no missile was involved.
According to the United States, there is no evidence that the plane carrying the Wagner boss was shot down Yevgeny Prigozhin boarded by a surface-to-air missile. “There is no information to suggest there was a surface-to-air missile,” US Defense Department spokesman Pat Ryder said at a Pentagon news briefing on Thursday. Reports of a missile are “wrong”. However, he could not provide any information about the cause of the crash.
The US government, on the other hand, considers it likely that Prigozhin was killed in the plane crash. According to the first assessment, which was based on various factors, the head of the private army Wagner was probably killed in the crash, Ryder said.
Death of Yevgeny Prigozhin not yet formally confirmed
The plane crashed on Wednesday evening in the Tver region near the town of Kuschenkino. According to the Ministry of Disaster Management, none of the ten occupants survived. The Russian aviation authority Rozaviatsiya confirmed at the same time that Prigozhin was on board the plane en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg. However, the authorities did not formally announce the mercenary chief’s death because the bodies have not yet been identified.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Prigozhin openly challenged with a brief rebellion in June, expressed his condolences to “the families of all the victims” on Thursday. At the same time, he described Prigozhin as a “capable” man who had made “serious mistakes”.