Wagner Group leader Yevgency Prigozhin was once “likely” killed in a plane crash together with 9 others close to Kuzhenkino, Russia, on Wednesday, the Pentagon mentioned, however there is not any indication a surface-to-air missile was once the reason for the crash.
“We don’t have any information to indicate right now … there was some type of surface to air missile that took down the plane, that we assessed that information to be inaccurate,” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder mentioned.
He added, “But beyond that, I’m really just not going to have any further information. What was it something that came internal from inside the plane? Again, I don’t have any additional insight to provide on that.”
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented his first feedback at the mysterious plane crash that probably killed Prigozhin and the personal army corporate’s co-founder Dmitry Utkin.
His feedback had been made hours after the our bodies of the crash sufferers had been moved to the Tver Regional Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination, ABC News discovered.
“As for the aviation tragedy, first of all, I want to express my sincerest condolences to the families of all the victims,” Putin mentioned in an on-camera cope with, including that Wagner Group made a “significant contribution to our common cause of fighting the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine.”
“I knew (Yevgeny) Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early 1990s. He was a man with a complex destiny, and he made serious mistakes in life,” Putin mentioned. “He achieved the results he needed both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause, as in these last months.”
He added at the investigation, “But what is absolutely clear – the head of the Investigative Committee reported to me this morning, they have already launched a preliminary investigation into this incident. And it will be carried out in full and to the end. There is no doubt about that here. Let’s see what the investigators say in the near future. Tests — technical and genetic tests — are being carried out now. This takes some time.”
Earlier Thursday, Putin addressed the BRICS summit of leaders assembly in Johannesburg remotely, however made no point out of the crash in his remarks.
Meanwhile, in St. Petersburg — Prigozhin’s house the town — dozens of folks had been arriving to mild candles and drop plants at a pop-up memorial.
People hang around portraits of Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, a shadowy determine who controlled Wagner’s operations and allegedly served in Russian army intelligence, as they pay tribute to them on the makeshift memorial in entrance of the PMC Wagner place of job in Novosibirsk, on August 24, 2023. Russian state-run news businesses on August 23, 2023 mentioned that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the pinnacle of the Wagner staff that led a mutiny towards Russia’s military in June, was once at the listing of passengers of a plane that crashed close to the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver area.
Vladimir Nikolayev/AFP by the use of Getty Images
The jet producer that Prigozhin and Utkin had been reportedly on has an impeccable file and it was once the primary recorded crash in the historical past of the Embraer Legacy 600.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made remarks commemorating marking Ukrainian Independence Day and passed out medals to Ukrainian solders.
Among the ten lifeless had been 3 team participants and 7 passengers, Russian officers mentioned. The seven passengers recognized on a flight listing had been Sergey Propustin, Evgeniy Makaryan, Aleksandr Totmin, Valeriy Chekalov, Dmitriy Utkin, Nikolay Matuseev and Prigozhin. The team was once recognized as Cmdr. Aleksei Levshin, co-pilot Rustam Karimov and flight attendant Kristina Raspopova.
The Federal Air Transport Agency mentioned the plane was once en path from Moscow to St. Petersburg when it went down close to Kuzhenkino.
TOPSHOT – A member of personal mercenary staff Wagner will pay tribute to Yevgeny Prigozhin (L) and Dmitry Utkin, a shadowy determine who controlled Wagner’s operations and allegedly served in Russian army intelligence, on the makeshift memorial in entrance of the PMC Wagner place of job in Novosibirsk, on August 24, 2023. Russian state-run news businesses on August 23, 2023 mentioned that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the pinnacle of the Wagner staff that led a mutiny towards Russia’s military in June, was once at the listing of passengers of a plane that crashed close to the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver area.
Vladimir Nikolayev/AFP by the use of Getty Images
White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson mentioned in a observation on Wednesday that officers had been observing the stories of the plane crash.
“If confirmed, no one should be surprised. The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now — it would seem — to this,” she mentioned.
Prigozhin was once the pinnacle of the personal paramilitary group Wagner Group, which performed a key function in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier than in short launching an riot towards the Russian army in June. Forces unswerving to Prigozhin marched towards Moscow, earlier than turning again after a number of days.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Will Gretsky, Mark Osborne, Ivan Pereira and Tanya Stukalova contributed to this file.
post credit to Source link
