Kremlin slams accusations it killed Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin: ‘Absolute lie’
The Kremlin has slammed accusations that it killed Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin as an “absolute lie” — as top US military brass cautioned that confirming the mercenary leader’s death will take some time.
Two days after a plane crash that is presumed to have killed the feared fighter, who led a mutiny against the Russian military, neither the Kremlin nor Wagner has officially confirmed the 62-year-old’s death.
Prigozhin, along with six other passengers and three crew members, was listed in the manifest of the doomed Embraer Legacy 600 jet.
There has been rampant speculation as to the cause of the crash, but preliminary US intelligence reports suggested that the Wagner leader’s private jet was downed by an explosion inside the aircraft.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov clapped back at Western insinuations that the plane was downed on Putin’s orders.
“There is now a great deal of speculation surrounding this plane crash and the tragic deaths of the plane’s passengers, including Yevgeny Prigozhin,” Peskov told reporters. “Of course, in the West, all this speculation is presented from a well-known angle.”
“All of this is an absolute lie, and here, when covering this issue, it is necessary to base yourself on facts,” he added. “There are not many facts yet. They need to be established in the course of investigative actions.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also hit out at Biden Friday for saying earlier this week that he was not “surprised” that Prigozhin had been killed in a plane crash, noting that “there’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.”
Ryabkov said that such remarks showed Washington’s disregard for diplomacy.
“It is not for the US president, in my opinion, to talk about such tragic events of this kind,” Ryabkov was quoted by the state TASS news agency as saying.
Who was Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin?
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin as a talented businessman following the plane crash that apparently killed him.
Prigozhin was the owner of the private military contractor Wagner Group.
Prigozhin planned to capture the Russian military’s top officials during his attempted coup.
Prigozhin and his mercenary fighting force did not face charges and were instead exiled despite leading an armed insurrection against the Kremlin.
Prigozhin began his career as a petty criminal — he was convicted of robbery and assault in 1981 and served 12 years in prison.
He criticized the Russian Ministry of Defense as incompetent and accused it of withholding arms and ammunition from his troops, who were fighting on behalf of Russia in Ukraine.
Prigozhin was indicted in the United States for interfering in the 2016 presidential election through his infamous internet “troll factory.”
Meanwhile, President Biden’s top military commander, Gen. Mark Milley, said that it would take some time for Western intelligence agencies to say with certainty that Prigozhin was aboard the plane, the New York Times reported.
Still, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff assured that even if President Vladimir Putin’s government was unwilling to reveal what really happened to the aircraft, he expected the truth to come out sooner or later.
“Even on things like this, eventually you figure it out,” he told reporters Thursday, before adding, “I can assure you that, to my knowledge, the United States had nothing to do with any of this whatsoever.”
If Prigozhin is confirmed killed, Milley said his death will reverberate across the world in places where the Wagner Group has been active, including several African countries.
“If the leadership of Wagner is suddenly killed, there is going to be an effect,” he said. “What that impact is, I don’t know yet.”
Milley then echoed Biden’s words, saying that he was not surprised by the Russian warlord’s apparent demise, just two months after he led a short-lived rebellion against his country’s military leadership that challenged Putin’s rule.
“Prigozhin was probably at some degree of risk because of the mutiny that occurred two months ago,” Milley said.
Putin on Thursday extended his condolences to the families of the 10 people presumed dead in the crash, among them Prigozhin, whom he praised as a “talented businessman” – after publicly labeling him a “traitor” during the June uprising.
Asked Friday if the Russian president planned to attend Prigozhin’s funeral, the Kremlin rep hedged.
“There are no dates for the funeral yet, it is impossible to talk about it at all,” Peskov said, again citing the ongoing investigation and tests yet to be completed. “The only thing I can say is that the president has a rather busy schedule at the moment.”
With Post wires
