Intentional explosion brought down Wagner chief’s plane, says US intelligence

WASHINGTON (AP):

A preliminary US intelligence assessment concluded that the plane crash presumed to have killed Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was intentionally caused by an explosion, US and Western officials said Thursday as Russian President Vladimir Putin eulogised the man who staged the biggest challenge to his 23-year rule.

One of the officials said the initial assessment determined it was “very likely” Prigozhin was targeted and that the explosion falls in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics”.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to comment, did not offer any details on what caused the explosion, which was believed to have also killed several of Prigozhin’s lieutenants to avenge a mutiny that challenged the Russian leader’s authority.

US officials had no information to suggest a surface-to-air missile was launched against the private aircraft, according to one official.

Details of the US assessment surfaced as Putin expressed his condolences to the families of those who were reported to be aboard the jet and referred to “serious mistakes” by Prigozhin.

The founder of the Wagner military company and six other passengers were on the jet that crashed Wednesday soon after taking off from Moscow with a crew of three, according to Russia’s civil aviation authority. Rescuers found 10 bodies, and Russian media cited anonymous sources in Wagner who said Prigozhin was dead. But there has been no official confirmation.

President Joe Biden, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said he believed Putin was behind the crash, though he acknowledged that he did not have information verifying his belief.

“I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised,” Biden said. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.”

The passenger manifest also included Prigozhin’s second-in-command, who baptised the group with his nom de guerre, as well as Wagner’s logistics chief, a fighter wounded by US airstrikes in Syria and at least one possible bodyguard.

It was not clear why several high-ranking members of Wagner, including top leaders who are normally exceedingly careful about their security, were on the same flight. The purpose of their joint trip to St Petersburg was unknown.

At Wagner’s headquarters in St Petersburg, lights were turned on in the shape of a large cross, and Prigozhin supporters built a makeshift memorial, piling red and white flowers outside the building Thursday, along with company flags and candles.

In this first comments on the crash, Putin said the passengers had “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine.

“We remember this, we know, and we will not forget,” the president said in a televised interview with the Russian-installed leader of Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin.

Putin recalled that he had known Prigozhin since the early 1990s and described him as “a man of difficult fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life, and he 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.”

Russian state media have not covered the crash extensively, instead focusing on Putin’s remarks to the BRICS summit in Johannesburg via video link and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Several Russian social media channels reported that the bodies were burned or disfigured beyond recognition and would need to be identified by DNA. The reports were picked up by independent Russian media, but The Associated Press was not able to independently confirm them.