Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested on Thursday that the plane carrying Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin did not fall victim to an “external” attack in August. Instead, he proposed that hand grenades inside the aircraft were the cause.
While speaking at the Valdai Forum in Sochi, Putin conveyed that the “chairman of the investigative committee recently revealed that fragments of hand grenades were discovered within the bodies of the victims. There was no external interference with the plane; this is an established fact.”
Yevgeny Prigozhin, who had led an unsuccessful uprising against the Kremlin, was one of the ten individuals on board the private plane. The aircraft crashed in a field northwest of Moscow while en route to St. Petersburg, resulting in the tragic loss of all passengers, including Prigozhin and his top associates.
The Russian leader, whose government has consistently denied involvement in the incident, did not provide specific details regarding how the grenades might have detonated on the plane. Nevertheless, he suggested that investigators should have conducted drug or alcohol tests on the victims’ remains.
Putin indicated that the chairman of the investigation committee had endorsed the public disclosure of this information as an “established fact.”
The plane crash occurred exactly two months after Prigozhin’s attempted rebellion against Russia’s military leadership, marking one of the most significant challenges to Putin’s rule in decades.
In June, Prigozhin and his Wagner troops had seized crucial military sites and advanced toward Moscow, where the Kremlin had deployed heavily armed forces in the streets. However, before a confrontation could occur, an agreement was reached to end the insurrection and relocate Prigozhin and his fighters to neighboring Belarus.
Following the tragic crash, Russian officials explored various scenarios related to the incident, including the notion of a “deliberate atrocity,” as confirmed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in late August.
Conversely, U.S. and Western intelligence officials conveyed to CNN at the time their belief that the crash was an intentional act. U.S. President Joe Biden even insinuated the possible involvement of Vladimir Putin, stating, “I don’t have concrete evidence of what occurred, but I’m not surprised.”
Peskov vehemently denied any Kremlin involvement in the plane’s demise and labeled such speculation as an “outright falsehood.”
