They didn’t knock him down from the outside, but from the inside. It is the theory that Vladimir Putin has put into circulation about the death in an air disaster of the man who challenged his army, Evgeni Prigozhin.
The Russian president suggested today Thursday that the plane crash that killed the Wagner’s mercenary chief in August it was caused by hand grenades that detonated inside the plane. He thus rules out a missile attack, the theory that points to responsibility of the Ministry of Defense, Prigozhin’s main enemy in those days.
The private Embraer plane in which Prigozhin was traveling to St. Petersburg crashed in the Tver region, north of Moscow on August 23. All 10 people on board diedincluding two other important Wagner commanders, Prigozhin’s four bodyguards, and a three-person crew.
At a meeting of the Valdai Debate Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin suggested that the plane was blown up from insidestating that the head of Russia’s investigative committee had informed him a few days ago: “Fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of those killed in the accident.”
American officials said shortly after Prigozhin’s death that they believed he had been shot down. Putin now denies this: “There was no external impact on the plane; this is already an established fact.”