Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed among the passengers on a plane that crashed while en route from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency reported on Wednesday.
Reports of a plane crash near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia’s Tver region first appeared on Russian Telegram channels. The Russian Emergency Services Ministry later confirmed that a private plane had crashed in the Tver region, killing 10 people on board, including three crew members.
Telegram channels linked to the Wagner Group claim that both Prigozhin and the mercenary outfit’s first commander, Dmitry Utkin (callsign “Wagner”), died in the crash. However, these reports have yet to be confirmed.
Everybody in and around Russia is going to presume that Putin had Prigozhin whacked. I wouldn't be surprised if it was an "accidental" shoot-down by air defenses.
The real shocker is that it took as long as it did for Prigozhin to become corpsified.
FYI, I haven't been blogging about what's been happening to Alexei Navalny because he was a complete and utter fool to go back to Russia after recovering from being poisoned.
Just think after God's anointed is returned to his throne, this will be a daily occurrence here.
ReplyDeleteHe must have been sitting at a window seat. Defenestration perfected, now with collateral casualties.
ReplyDeleteA bomb or a missile?
ReplyDeleteA missile. The wreckage shown on the news looked like it had been hit with shrapnel, not blown out from a bomb.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Plum with a manpad in the ballroom?
ReplyDeleteFly Air Prigozhin, free red shirts with every ticket!
ReplyDeleteReportedly, the Embraer Legacy 600 was at 28,000 feet (probably 8,550 meters) or so when it suddenly started descending rapidly and out of control. No manpad has that kind of vertical reach, most topping out in the 10,000-15,000 foot range.
ReplyDeleteHeather Cox Richardson:
ReplyDeleteToday, a plane on which Wagner Group mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin of Russia was allegedly on board crashed, taking all three pilots and seven passengers’ lives. While it is not clear whether Prigozhin was actually on the plane, national security analyst Mark Hertling took the position that it doesn’t matter whether he was on board or not, because the loss of Prigozhin from the head of Wagner will infuriate the Wagner mercenaries, who are being merged with the regular Russian military, and who were much better paid under Prigozhin than are regular Russian soldiers.
This fury will not calm things inside increasingly unstable Russia. As Ukraine’s troops are advancing, slowly but surely, “this is not a good time to start reforming the military,” Hertling told CNN. “Even if it's part of a charade,” chair of the Human Rights Foundation (and world chess champion) Garry Kasparov wrote, “it reflects chaos among Ukraine's enemies, murderous energy turned against one another. Dictatorships are stable until they are not, hard but brittle like glass.”
"Reportedly, the Embraer Legacy 600 was at 28,000 feet (probably 8,550 meters) or so when it suddenly started descending rapidly and out of control. No manpad has that kind of vertical reach, most topping out in the 10,000-15,000 foot range."
ReplyDeleteVladdy with two S-300 missiles in the sky at said altitude looks like Occams Razor.
Unvetted stuff: Artur Rehi noted shrapnel in the wings. This is supposed to show missile contrails https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N41ApnhMRMc
Bellingcat has a book out on OSINT.
I never did understand why Navalny did that. But then again, I don't have that tragic Russian instinct for self destruction.
ReplyDeleteSince kompromat is one tool used to gain and keep position/status, I wonder if he had a ‘deadman’s switch’ to release what he had.
ReplyDeleteHardly anyone points a cellphone camera at a jet at cruising altitude. There’s nothing to see. So nobody’s going to do that unless they hear something. Like an explosion.
ReplyDelete