24- August-2023- News Agencies
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the foul-mouthed chief of the Wagner private army who masterminded an aborted mutiny against the Kremlin, has not been officially pronounced dead.
Russian authorities have yet to confirm via a DNA test that the 62-year-old’s body was among the charred and mangled remnants of 10 people found in the debris of the private jet that crashed 350km (217 miles) northwest of Moscow late on Wednesday
Few doubt Prigozhin’s presumed death that took place exactly two months after the June 23 “justice march” of thousands of Wagner’s best fighters towards Moscow which sowed panic in the Kremlin and reportedly forced Russian President Vladimir Putin to flee Moscow.
The mutiny – or a “justice march,” in Prigozhin’s words – was triggered by a months-old conflict with Russia’s Ministry of Defence that delayed or sabotaged ammunition supplies to Wagner on the front lines of southeastern Ukraine.
The march stopped only 200km (124 miles) south of Moscow after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko promised Prigozhin and all of Wagner a safe haven in his forested ex-Soviet nation bordering Ukraine.
A top expert on Wagner is all but certain that Prigozhin is dead.
“I’ve heard from a source in Wagner close to him that it’s likely true,” John Lechner, an investigative reporter in the United States who is writing a book about Prigozhin summarising years of research, told Al Jazeera shortly after Russian media reported the plane crash
Dead or alive?
But those who doubt the demise cite Prigozhin’s penchant for disguises – and his chance to escape to the Central African Republic, Mali or other African nations where Wagner provides “security services” to local strongmen in exchange for a stake in mining and trading local natural resources
Russian police discovered a stash of fake passports with Prigozhin’s mugshots and names of other people a day after the failed coup, and framed photos of him wearing wigs, glasses and beards were found in his St Petersburg mansion and immediately ridiculed in online memes.
“It’s nice and easy to fake one’s own death,” Ukrainian defence expert Maria Kucherenko, who authored a detailed report on Wagner, wrote on Facebook late Thursday.
But there are no chances of really faking Prigozhin’s death in Russia, given the scrutiny of officials and forensics experts investigating the crash, said an analyst.
“There could have been rumours [of fake death] had he done it in Africa, but not in Russia, where a DNA test will be quickly performed,” Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany’s University of Bremen told Al Jazeera
According to a cellphone video purportedly showing Prigozhin’s Legacy Embraer jet midair, it was falling, not gliding down, and apparently had only one engine running.
A plume of smoke that didn’t resemble exhaust was seen behind the plane, and its tail and one of the wings fell far apart from the fuselage, which may indicate that the crash was caused by an explosion, according to the photos and videos from the crash site.
In another amateur video showing the falling plane, witnesses say they had&nbs犀利士 p;heard “two explosions”. Air defence forces routinely shoot at a plane twice to ensure it is hit.
A source in Rosavication, Russia’s main aviation oversight body, told the Tsargrad television channel that the plane was “blown up”.
However, Flightradar 24, a Swedish aircraft tracker, said that the Brazilian-made jet went up to 8,500 metres (28,000 feet).
Very few air defence weapons can hit a plane that high – and the Kremlin allegedly used two S-300 missiles, the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel with links to Russian law enforcement agencies claimed.
Putin’s revenge?
Putin, a former KGB colonel who headed the FSB, the main KGB successor, in the late 1990s, is notoriously vindictive.
Kremlin critics cite the case of Alexander Litvinenko, an FSB expert on organised crime who accused Putin of profiting from drug trafficking and money laundering.
Litvinenko defected to the United Kingdom and died an agonising death in 2006 after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210, an extremely rare and expensive poison.
What’s next for Wagner?
Unlike other Putin allies who prefer to keep a low profile, Prigozhin was a motormouth
For months before the mutiny, he lambasted Russia’s top brass.
And after it, thousands of key Wagner fighters relocated to hastily built camps in Belarusian forests.
Some were spotted near the Suwalki Gap near the Polish-Lithuanian border that separates Belarus from Kaliningrad, Russia’s Baltic exclave.
Prigozhin visited Russia several times and even met with Putin, while Wagner’s recruitment centres continued to operate.
So, Putin may have followed the example of cinematic mafia boss Michael Corleone by serving his revenge cold, a Russian opposition activist said
