MOSCOW: Russia's most powerful mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin was on board a plane which crashed on Wednesday evening (Aug 23) north of Moscow with no survivors, the Russian authorities said, two months to the day after he
There was no official comment from the Kremlin or the Defence Ministry on the fate of Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group and a self-declared enemy of the army's leadership over what he argued was its incompetent prosecution of Russia's war in Ukraine.
A building housing Wagner's offices in St Petersburg lit up its windows after dark in such a way as to display a giant cross in a mark of respect and mourning. Russian investigators said they had opened a criminal investigation to determine what had happened. Some unnamed sources told Russian media they believed the plane had been shot down by one or more surface-to-air missiles. Reuters could not confirm that.
Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speech writer turned critic whom the Russian authorities have branded a"foreign agent", suggested the Russian leader, who is expected to run for another term in office next year, was behind the crash and had strengthened his authority in the process.
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