Putin: Hand grenades found in Wagner boss’s plane crash

Putin suggests hand grenades caused a plane crash involving Prigozhin.
Fragments of grenades were found in the victims.
The crash happened two months after Prigozhin’s rebellion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed that the August plane crash involving Wagner warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin was not the result of an “external” attack, but rather due to hand grenades detonated inside the aircraft.

Speaking at the Valdai Forum in Sochi, Putin said the “chairman of the investigative committee just reported a few days ago that the fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of the victims. There was no external influence on the plane, it is a fact.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, who spearheaded an unsuccessful rebellion against the Kremlin, was one of the ten individuals aboard a private plane that crashed in August while traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, landing in a field to the northwest of Moscow.

Tragically, all passengers, including Prigozhin and his key associates, lost their lives in the incident.

Despite his government’s consistent denial of any involvement in the crash, President Putin did not provide specific details about the mechanism by which hand grenades could have detonated on the plane.

Nevertheless, he expressed the opinion that investigators should have conducted drug or alcohol tests on the deceased individuals as part of their examination.

“I repeat, in my opinion, such an examination should have been carried out but it wasn’t,” he said, also saying that “10 billion in cash and 5 kilos of cocaine” had previously been found by Russian security forces in Wagner’s office in St Petersburg.

Putin said the chairman of the investigation committee said it was okay to “share this information publicly” as it was “a fact.”

The plane crash occurred exactly two months after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted rebellion against the leadership of Russia’s military, which represented the most significant challenge to Vladimir Putin’s rule in many years.

In June, Prigozhin and his Wagner forces seized critical military installations and advanced towards Moscow, where the Kremlin had deployed heavily armed troops in anticipation of a showdown.

However, a negotiated agreement was reached before a confrontation took place, bringing an end to the mutiny and relocating Prigozhin and his fighters to neighboring Belarus.

In the wake of the tragic crash, Russian authorities stated that they were exploring various scenarios related to the incident, including the possibility of a “deliberate atrocity,” as reported by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in late August.

Conversely, US and Western intelligence officials, as reported by media at the time, believed that the crash was a deliberate act. Even US President Joe Biden suggested potential involvement by Vladimir Putin, saying in late August, “I don’t have concrete information about what transpired, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Dmitry Peskov firmly rejected allegations of Kremlin involvement in the plane’s downfall, dismissing such speculations as “absolutely false.”

Putin: Hand grenades found in Wagner boss’s plane crash

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