Kremlin denies role in plane crash believed to have killed Wagner Group leader

Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call: “Right now, of course, there are lots of speculations around this plane crash and the tragic deaths of the passengers of the plane, including Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“Of course, in the West those speculations are put out under a certain angle, and all of it is a complete lie.”

Asked by The Associated Press whether the Kremlin has received an official confirmation of mercenary group leader Mr Prigozhin’s death, Mr Peskov referenced the Russian President’s remarks from a day earlier: “He said that right now all the necessary forensic analyses, including genetic testing, will be carried out.

“Once some kind of official conclusions are ready to be released, they will be released.”

A preliminary US intelligence assessment concluded that the plane was downed by an intentional explosion.

One of the US and Western officials who described the initial American assessment said it determined that Mr Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that the explosion falls in line with Mr Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics”.

Mr Prigozhin, who was listed among those on board the plane, was eulogised by Mr Putin, even as suspicions grew that the Russian leader was behind the crash on Wednesday that many saw as an assassination.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence said the presumed death of Mr Prigozhin in a plane crash could destabilise the Wagner Group.

The ministry said of Mr Prigozhin: “His personal attributes of hyperactivity, exceptional audacity, a drive for results and extreme brutality permeated Wagner and are unlikely to be matched by any successor.”

Wagner mercenaries were key elements of Russia’s forces in its war in Ukraine, particularly in the months-long fight to take the city of Bakhmut, the conflict’s most gruelling battle.

The group’s fighters also have played a central role projecting Russian influence in global trouble spots, first in Africa and then in Syria.

Mr Peskov said: “When it comes to the future (of Wagner), I can’t tell you anything – I don’t know.”

The jet crashed on Wednesday soon after taking off from Moscow, carrying Mr Prigozhin, six other Wagner members, and a crew of three, according to Russia’s civil aviation authority.

Rescuers found 10 bodies, and Russian media cited anonymous sources in Wagner who said Mr Prigozhin was dead. There has been no official confirmation so far.

US President Joe Biden said he believed Mr Putin was likely behind the crash.

“I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised,” Mr Biden said. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.”

Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov took offence at that. “It is not for the US president, in my opinion, to talk about certain tragic events of this nature,” he said on Friday.

The passenger manifest also included Mr Prigozhin’s second-in-command, whose nom de guerre became the group’s name, as well as Wagner’s logistics chief and at least one possible bodyguard.

It was not clear why several high-ranking members of Wagner, including top leaders who are normally exceedingly careful about their security, would have been on the same flight. The purpose of their trip to St Petersburg was unknown.

Russian authorities have opened an investigation into the crash. The country’s Investigative Committee said on Friday that it had recovered the plane’s flight recorders and that genetic testing was being used to identify the bodies.

In his first comments on the crash, Mr Putin said the passengers had “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine.

“We remember this, we know, and we will not forget,” he said in a televised interview with the Russian-installed leader of Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin.

Mr Putin recalled that he had known Mr Prigozhin since the early 1990s and described him as “a man of difficult fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life, and he achieved the results he needed – both for himself and, when I asked him about it, for the common cause, as in these last months. He was a talented man, a talented businessman”.

Russian state media have not covered the crash extensively, instead focusing on Mr Putin’s remarks to the BRICS summit in Johannesburg via video link, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sergei Mironov, the leader of the pro-Kremlin Fair Russia party and former chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament, said on his Telegram channel that Mr Prigozhin had “messed with too many people in Russia, Ukraine and the West”.

“It now seems that at some point, his number of enemies reached a critical point,” Mr Mironov wrote.

Numerous opponents and critics of Putin have been killed or gravely sickened in apparent assassination attempts, and US and other Western officials long expected the Russian leader to go after Prigozhin, despite promising to drop charges in a deal that ended the June 23-24 mutiny.

Mr Prigozhin was long outspoken and critical of how Russian generals were waging the war in Ukraine, where his mercenaries were some of the fiercest fighters for the Kremlin.

For a long time, Mr Putin appeared content to allow such infighting, but Mr Prigozhin’s brief revolt raised the stakes.

His mercenaries swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot. They then drove to within about 125 miles of Moscow and downed several military aircraft, killing more than a dozen Russian pilots.

Mr Putin first denounced the rebellion as “treason” and a “stab in the back”, but soon made a deal that saw an end to the mutiny in exchange for an amnesty for Mr Prigozhin and his mercenaries and permission for them to move to Belarus.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who facilitated that deal, said on Friday that Mr Prigozhin never asked him for security guarantees. “I don’t have to ensure Prigozhin’s safety … the conversation was never in that vein,” he was quoted as saying by the state news agency Belta.

Mr Lukashenko said he previously warned Mr Putin of “an impending assassination attempt on Prigozhin,” according to Belta. Mr Lukashenko told Belta he received “very serious information from the deepest sources” while on a recent trip to the United Arab Emirates and passed it on via the Russian ambassador in the UAE to Mr Putin and the head of Russia’s FSB security agency.

Mr Lukashenko later checked with Mr Prigozhin, who confirmed Mr Putin had warned him about the threat, according to Belta.

Since Mr Prigozhin’s presumed death, unconfirmed reports said hundreds of Wagner’s fighters have fled Belarus. “Even before August 23, we recorded that the number of mercenaries in Belarus was decreasing, and since August 23, their number has also continued to decrease,” Ukrainian border service spokesperson Andriy Demchenko said on Friday.

Relatives of Wagner fighters on one Telegram chat reported long lines for payments at a Wagner office in the southern Krasnodar region, the private force’s base.