Early U.S. intelligence assessments counsel that an intentional explosion led to the aircraft crash that apparently killed Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, Western officers stated Thursday, amid widespread suspicion that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the assassination of one other one in every of his rivals.
U.S. and different Western officers provided little element on precisely what they consider induced the explosion, however these officers advised the Associated Press that it seems to have been a purposeful act, the newest in Mr. Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”
Mr. Prigozhin was one in every of seven passengers on board an Embraer Legacy 600 enterprise jet that crashed Wednesday whereas flying from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. Russian state-run media hasn’t formally confirmed Mr. Prigozhin’s demise, however Russian retailers stated all seven passengers and three crew members are presumed useless.
The gorgeous crash sparked fast hypothesis that Mr. Putin was indirectly accountable and will have sought revenge after Mr. Prigozhin led a short-lived insurrection in opposition to the Kremlin two months in the past. The Russian president broke his silence on the crash Thursday afternoon and praised the Wagner Group’s contributions to Moscow’s struggle in Ukraine, however he additionally made it some extent to single out the “serious mistakes in life” made by Mr. Prigozhin.
For some Kremlin-watchers, there’s little doubt about what occurred within the skies over Russia on Wednesday. Daniel Fried, a distinguished fellow on the Atlantic Council suppose tank and former U.S. ambassador to Poland, stated the incident resembled “something out of the ‘Godfather’ series.”
“While the circumstances are not yet clear, it seems best to assume that this was not an accident, but a targeted hit. The only unusual feature is that Prigozhin was not pushed out of a window or shot on the street or in an apartment stairwell, like other Kremlin opponents, but apparently shot down from a plane in lurid fashion,” Mr. Fried stated in an evaluation previous to the information Thursday that officers consider an explosion on board the aircraft is in charge.
Indeed, Pentagon officers shot down early studies {that a} missile could have struck the aircraft.
“There’s no information to suggest that there was a surface-to-air missile,” Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder advised reporters on the Pentagon on Thursday. “But beyond that, I’m not going to have any further information.”
The use of an explosive on board the aircraft, moderately than a missile, would have made the operation harder to detect for U.S. and different Western officers. Whatever the small print, even President Biden appeared to counsel that Mr. Putin was accountable for, or a minimum of conscious of, a doable plan to convey down Mr. Prigozhin’s aircraft.
“There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer,” Mr. Biden stated Wednesday when requested concerning the crash.
The timing can also be no coincidence, specialists say.
In the fast aftermath of the June insurrection, Mr. Putin initially appeared to increase an olive department to Mr. Prigozhin. He signed off on a deal that provided Mr. Prigozhin a free cross to Belarus, a key Russian ally, moderately than remaining in Russia and going through legal fees. The Kremlin even opted in opposition to punishing the Wagner fighters who participated within the mutiny, providing them the prospect to return house or be a part of the Russian military and combat in Ukraine.
But all of which will have been a part of Mr. Putin’s chilly, calculated technique, Mr. Fried stated.
“The strange spectacle of Prigozhin’s initial lenient treatment is over; the delay in going after him may have meant only that Putin needed to gauge the degree of Prigozhin’s support before acting,” Mr. Fried wrote in his evaluation, posted on the Atlantic Council’s web site.
If he’s accountable, Mr. Putin could have concluded that he’ll face no severe blowback for ordering the killing of Mr. Prigozhin. But there have been indications Thursday that a minimum of some Wagner members are deeply offended with the Kremlin within the wake of the crash, which additionally presumably killed Valery Chekalov, the mercenary group’s logistics chief, and Wagner Group Cmdr. Dmitry Utkin.
The information website Readovka, which is assumed to have hyperlinks to the Wagner Group, stated the mercenary group has a “mechanism of action” in place within the occasion of the deaths of Mr. Prigozhin or Mr. Utkin. Readovka reported {that a} Wagner Group “council of commanders” is assembly to determine the subsequent step. They instructed they might as soon as once more march towards Moscow, simply as they did throughout their transient insurrection in June.
“We suspect Kremlin officials led by Putin in an attempt to kill him. If the information about the death of Prigozhin is confirmed, we will organize the second March of Justice to Moscow,” the Wagner Play channel on the Telegram social messaging website posted Thursday.
‘Man of a difficult fate’
After almost 24 hours of silence, Mr. Putin addressed the crash throughout a TV interview Thursday. He known as Mr. Prigozhin “a man of a difficult fate” and stated the Wagner Group chief made “serious mistakes in life” — an obvious reference to the short-lived Wagner mutiny this summer time.
Still, Mr. Putin stated the passengers on board the doomed plane “made a significant contribution” to Russia’s army marketing campaign in Ukraine.
“We remember this, we know, and we will not forget,” he stated within the interview with Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed chief of Ukraine’s Donetsk area.
Mr. Prigozhin, a former restaurant proprietor who grew to become often known as “Putin’s chef” due to the Russian chief’s affinity for his meals, presumably died throughout the low level of his two-decade relationship with the Russian chief. The advanced dynamic between the 2 males reached the breaking level throughout the June insurrection, when it briefly appeared that Mr. Prigozhin could have had the assets and the willingness to overthrow Mr. Putin.
Overthrowing the president, nevertheless, was by no means the Wagner Group’s publicly said purpose. Instead, Mr. Prigozhin demanded that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and different high officers get replaced.
Mr. Prigozhin blamed Mr. Shoigu and others atop the Kremlin for the nation’s army failures in Ukraine and for Moscow’s incapability to supply Wagner Group troops with the provides and weapons they wanted to succeed.
Mr. Putin instructed Thursday that these tensions had been smoothed over.
Mr. Putin stated Mr. Prigozhin “achieved the results he needed — both for himself and, when I asked him about it, for the common cause, as in these last months. He was a talented man, a talented businessman.”
Despite Mr. Putin’s public feedback, it’s no shock that Western officers consider he or different figures in his interior circle could have performed some position within the downing of Mr. Prigozhin’s aircraft.
Numerous Kremlin critics over the previous 20 years have died, or come near demise, underneath mysterious circumstances.
Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition chief and anti-corruption activist, was hospitalized in August 2020 after being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. He’s now in a Russian jail, with a Russian court docket sentencing him to 19 years in jail on high of two different sentences.
Boris Nemtsov, a politician and outspoken critic of Mr. Putin, was shot to demise on Feb. 27, 2015, whereas strolling alongside a bridge close to the Kremlin. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian FSB agent, died in November 2006 after ingesting tea that had been laced with radioactive polonium-210. Litvinenko, who had been granted British citizenship, accused Mr. Putin of being corrupt and orchestrating a sequence of condo block bombings in Russia that helped ignite the Second Chechen War in 1999.
With that historical past in thoughts, U.S. officers anticipated Mr. Prigozhin could ultimately meet the same destiny.
“In my experience, Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback,” CIA Director William Burns stated final month. “So I would be surprised if Prigozhin escapes further retribution for this.”
• This article is predicated partly on wire service studies.
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