Wagner Army’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin feared killed in plane crash

Moscow/New York/Washington: The chief of Russia’s controversial private army, the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on the aircraft that crashed northwest of Moscow on August 23, 2023. Wagner’s most prominent commander, Dmitri Utkin, was also on the passenger manifest, the New York Times reported quoting Russian news outlets. NYT, however, referred to Grey Zone, a Telegram account associated with the Wagner group, which posted that it remained uncertain whether Prigozhin was dead or alive.

Russian aviation authorities said all 10 people aboard were killed in the crash.

In Washington, the United States President Joe Biden, when told in a press gaggle that Prigozhin was apparently killed, said he didn’t know “for a fact what happened, but I am not surprised”. When asked whether he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind this, he quipped, “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer.  I’ve been working out for the last hour and a half”.

62-year-old Prigozhin had launched a mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin which started on June 23, 2023, when his army seized the city of Rostov and marched on Moscow. Prigozhin, once considered very close to Putin and even called Putin’s chef as his restaurants used to provide services to the Kremlin openly criticised the Russian government over Moscow’s prolonged war with Ukraine. However, the mutiny was shortlived and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko stepped in to broker peace and make Putin offer immunity to Prigozhin and his men. Prigozhin met President Putin on June 29, 2023.

After Prigozhin’s short rebellion, Putin said at a meeting with the  Defence Ministry personnel in Moscow on June 27, 2023, that all of the funding the Wagner Group received came from the state budget. Between May 2022 and May 2023 alone, Putin claimed, the Wagner Group received 86,262 million rubles from the state to pay military salaries and bonuses, including 70,384 million rubles for payroll and 15,877 million rubles for paying out bonuses. Insurance premiums totalled 110,179 million.

“But while the state covered all of the Wagner Group’s funding needs, the company’s owner, Concord, received from the state, or should I say earned, 80 billion rubles through Voentorg as the army’s food and canteen provider. The state covered all its funding needs, while part of the group – I mean Concord – made 80 billion rubles, all at the same time. I do hope that no one stole anything in the process or, at least, did not steal a lot. It goes without saying that we will look into all of this,” Putin said then.

That Putin remained suspicious of Prigozhin was reflected in his move to remove General Sergei Surovikin, a former commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine believed to be close to Prigozhin, from his post as chief of the Russian Air Force. He reportedly knew about the mutiny in advance, according to NYT.

-global bihari bureau