Top Kremlin officials on Friday angrily rejected suggestions that the death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was an assassination ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite widespread belief in the West that the Russian leader ordered a hit against his most powerful rival.
The denials from Mr. Peskov came a day after U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the leading American theory is that an explosion on board brought down the Embraer Legacy 600 business jet carrying Mr. Prigozhin and six other passengers on Wednesday.
After the crash, suspicion immediately turned to Mr. Putin and his inner circle. Top Putin critics over the past two decades have a history of dying, or almost dying, under mysterious circumstances. The death of Mr. Prigozhin may have been payback for the short-lived Wagner Group rebellion earlier this summer, during which Mr. Prigozhin mounted arguably the most serious challenge to the Putin regime in its 23-year history.
Mr. Putin broke his silence on the crash Thursday afternoon and praised the Wagner Group’s contributions to Moscow’s war in Ukraine, but he also made it a point to single out the “serious mistakes in life” made by Mr. Prigozhin.
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