The White House said Monday it is “increasingly confident” that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin died in last week’s plane crash in Russia.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked whether the White House was any closer to determining what brought down “Prigozhin’s plane.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during a daily news briefing at the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on August 28, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Getty Images)
“We are increasingly confident that Prigozhin died in the plane crash that took place on August 23rd this past Wednesday,” Jean-Pierre said. “I don’t have any new assessment on that for you, so I’ll just leave it there.”
Jean-Pierre’s comments come a day after the Russian Investigative Committee said genetic testing on the 10 bodies recovered at the crash site confirmed the identities of all of those listed on board the doomed flight – including Prigozhin and some of his top lieutenants.
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The Investigative Committee did not indicate what might have caused the business jet to plummet from the sky halfway between Moscow and Prigozhin’s hometown of St. Petersburg.
The deadly crash came two months after Prigozhin, 62, spearheaded a daylong mutiny against Russia’s military, leading his Wagner mercenary troops from Ukraine toward Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin decried the act as “treason” and vowed punishment for those involved.
FILE: In this image taken from video released by Razgruzka_Vagnera telegram channel on Aug. 21, 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group military company speaks to a camera at an unknown location. (Razgruzka_Vagnera telegram channel via AP)
Instead, the Kremlin – much to the world’s surprise – cut a deal with Prigozhin to end the armed revolt, saying he would be allowed to walk free without facing any charges and to resettle in Belarus. Questions remained about whether the former ally of Russia’s leader would face a comeuppance for the brief uprising that posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s authority during his 23-year rule.
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A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that an intentional explosion caused the plane to go down, fueling suspicions that Putin was the chief architect.
FILE: In this image taken from video, smoke and flames rise from a crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023. (AP Photo)
One of the Western officials who described the initial assessment said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that an explosion would be in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics.”
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The fate of Wagner, which until recently played a prominent role in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and was involved in a number of African and Middle Eastern countries, is uncertain.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
