‘Everything’s OK’: Prigozhin talks assassination attempts in newly released video fueling rumors he’s alive
Newly released video eerily shows Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin bragging about surviving assassination attempts — further fueling conspiracies that the Russian warlord may still be alive.
The footage was released on a Telegram channel linked to Prigozhin’s mercenary group on Wednesday — a week after he is understood to have died in a fiery plane crash.
“For those who are discussing whether I’m alive or not, how I’m doing — right now it’s the weekend, second half of August 2023, I’m in Africa,” Prigozhin, 62, says in the clip released by the Wagner-linked Grey Zone Telegram channel.
“So for people who like to discuss my liquidation or my private life, how much I earn or whatever else — everything’s OK,” he adds with a dismissive wave of his hand.
The footage was posted without comment, including details on exactly when or where it was filmed.
However, Prigozhin’s camouflage clothing and matching hat, along with the watch on his right wrist, matched his appearance in a video released on Aug. 21 seemingly from Africa.
That had been his first public address since President Vladimir Putin branded him a “traitor” over his short-lived June mutiny — and the last before he was declared dead in the private jet crash two days later.
Prigozhin’s “weekend” reference in the latest clip suggested that it must have been shot between Aug. 19 and Aug. 20 — only days before he and other top Wagner commanders and bodyguards were killed in a plane crash in the Tver region on Aug. 23.
The Grey Zone channel earlier released what it described as some of Prigozhin’s “last” photos from Africa, showing him posing with a large group of young black men.
The accompanying post stated that the images were taken in the Central African Republic “not long before his departure for Russia.”
While the Grey Zone made no suggestion that Prigozhin is still alive, the timing of the release and the strongman’s comments about surviving “liquidation” attempts only added fuel to already widespread conspiracies that he is still alive.
Among them is Dr. Valery Solovey, a former professor at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations, repeating a widely shared conspiracy that the warlord was not on the crashed jet.
“His [body] double was flying instead of him. By the way, Vladimir Putin is perfectly aware of that,” the analyst said in a recent YouTube interview, claiming that the real Wagner chief is “alive, well and free.”
The former academic said that Prigozhin plans to exact revenge “on the people who planned to destroy him.”
The Russian Investigative Committee probing the aviation disaster has confirmed, citing genetic testing, that Prigozhin was among the 10 people who died in the crash.
The rogue mercenary leader was laid to rest in a private ceremony at a cemetery in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.
The Kremlin has rejected as an “absolute lie” the suggestion that Putin had Prigozhin killed as payback for his uprising, but has said the investigation into the crash is looking into the possibility that the plane crash was the result of “deliberate wrongdoing.”
