Joe Biden has strongly suggested Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the apparent death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash, as Ukrainian officials interpreted the incident as a warning to Russian “elites” and flowers were laid for the Wagner chief outside the organisation’s St Petersburg headquarters.
“I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised,” the US president said after a briefing after the crash of Prigozhin’s private jet between Moscow and St Petersburg. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind. But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”
Rosaviatsia, the Russian aviation authority, said Prigozhin and the senior Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin were among 10 people travelling on an Embraer business jet that crashed on Wednesday evening. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but Prigozhin’s longstanding feud with the military and the armed uprising he led in June would give the Russian state ample motive for revenge.
Russian authorities said on Thursday that the investigation into the crash would be led by Ivan Sibul, a veteran investigator who has previously examined other high-profile plane crashes, including one in 2014 that killed the head of France’s TotalEnergies, Christophe de Margerie.
According to Reuters, the Embraer executive jet model that crashed with Prigozhin onboard had recorded only one accident in more than 20 years’ service, and that was not related to mechanical failure.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said Kyiv had nothing to do with the presumed death of Prigozhin. The Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted Zelenskiy telling journalists on Thursday: “We had nothing to do with it. Everybody realises who has something to do with it.”
The Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said the plane crash on Wednesday evening – exactly two months after Wagner forces marched on Moscow – was “a signal from Putin to Russia’s elites ahead of the 2024 elections. ‘Beware! Disloyalty equals death’.”
Those sentiments were echoed by the Russian journalist Ksenia Sobchak, whose father Putin once described as his mentor. “Absolutely clear signal to all the elites, in fact. To everyone who had any seditious thoughts,” she said on Telegram.
The Kremlin has not yet commented on the crash. Rosaviatsia, the Russian aviation authority, said Prigozhin and Utkin were among 10 people travelling on the Embraer business jet.
Putin made no mention of the incident during a speech in Moscow to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Kursk during the second world war. He instead hailed “all our soldiers who are fighting bravely and resolutely” in Ukraine.
According to the St Petersburg outlet Fontanka, the bodies were driven to a morgue of a forensic medical examination bureau in the city of Tver. A source in the morgue told Fontanka that Prigozhin was among the bodies.
On the ground in Russia a building housing Wagner’s offices in St Petersburg lit up its windows on Wednesday in such a way as to display a giant cross, in a mark of respect and mourning. Flowers were left and candles lit near the offices early on Thursday. The future role of Wagner, which once played a prominent role in the war in Ukraine and is active in Africa, remains unclear.
Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speech writer turned critic, said: “The establishment is now convinced that it will not be possible to oppose Putin. Putin is strong enough and capable of revenge.”
Bill Browder, a businessman with years of experience in Russia and another Kremlin critic, agreed. “Putin never forgives and never forgets. He looked like a humiliated weakling with Prigozhin running around without a care in the world (after the mutiny). This will cement his authority.”
The Ukrainian ministerial adviser Anton Gerashchenko suggested Wagner mercenaries may seek revenge against Putin and Russia’s military establishment, with whom Prigozhin clashed repeatedly, and implied on social media that other paramilitary leaders linked to Putin may feel at risk, including a picture of Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman head of Chechnya whose forces have been fighting in Ukraine.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled leader of the opposition of Belarus – where some Wagner fighters moved after their short-lived mutiny in Russia – said Prigozhin would not be missed in her country. “He was a murderer and should be remembered as such,” she said.
Prigozhin’s apparent demise coincides with the removal of one of the Wagner founder’s key allies in the Russian military, Gen Sergei Surovikin. The commander was rumoured to have been put under house arrest, interrogated, or even put in the notorious Lefortovo prison. His whereabouts have not been confirmed publicly. Surovikin’s ousting was the highest-level sacking yet of a military commander after Prigozhin’s abortive mutiny in June.
The Polish foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, said on the state news channel TVP Info: “We would have great trouble naming anyone who would intuitively think this was a coincidence. It so happens that political opponents whom Vladimir Putin considers a threat to his power do not die naturally.”
Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia, told CNN: “If true, it shows Putin will eliminate opponents and that scares anyone who is thinking of expressing opinion different than his.”
The British MP Alicia Kearns, the chair of the foreign affairs committee, tweeted: “The speed at which the Russian govt has confirmed Yevgeny Prigozhin was on a plane that crashed on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg should tell us everything we need to know. Reports Russian air defence shot down the plane suggests Putin is sending a very loud message.
“For Putin there is one unforgivable sin: the betrayal of Putin and Russia. He hunts down those he perceives to be traitors, [including] on British shores, such as Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal.
“Now Yevgeny Prigozhin has been added to that list, ending Putin’s humiliation.”
Pavel Luzin, an expert with the US thinktank the Center for European Policy Analysis, said that regardless of whether Putin had ordered the plane’s destruction “this event demonstrates that the Russian elite is not united, that the contradictions within the Kremlin are growing, that the coordination between different branches within the Russian leadership is really bad. In the end, if Vladimir Putin is so powerful, why didn’t he arrest Prigozhin?”
Russia’s investigative committee, which examines serious crimes, said it had opened an investigation into the crash, as has Rosaviatsia.
The plane showed no sign of a problem until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data.
The Brazilian Embraer Legacy 600 model of executive jet that crashed has recorded only one accident in more than 20 years of service, according to website International Aviation HQ, and it was not due to mechanical failure.
A 2008 Brazilian air force report blamed two US pilots, traffic controllers and faulty communications for a mid-air collision, while a lawyer for the pilots said individual air traffic controllers and flaws in Brazil’s air traffic control system caused the accident.
Embraer said it had complied with international sanctions imposed on Russia and had not provided maintenance for the aircraft since 2019.
Agencies contributed to this report
