At this time, there is no information to indicate that Prigozhin’s plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder said.
According to US media, the version that the plane of the head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was shot down by an air defense system, has not been confirmed by satellite intelligence.
According to The New York Times, satellites have not recorded any rocket launches that would confirm this assumption.
Earlier, a Western official told the Financial Times about the Russian air defense strike in the first hours after the crash, and a day later this version was repeated by US officials interviewed by Reuters.
Prigozhin plane crash. The Pentagon has not confirmed the shooting
Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder said “there is no information at this time to indicate that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.” “As far as Prigozhin’s fate is concerned, the first estimate, based on several factors, is that he is likely deceased,” he added.
According to the “NYT,” Western and US officials believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Prigozhin’s elimination.
The armed uprising launched by the Wagner group in late June, when mercenaries took Rostov-on-Don and then began to march on Moscow, shooting down Ministry of Defense planes along the way, left Putin looking weak and perhaps most dramatic moment in more times. than twenty years of his reign,” writes the American daily.
Western intelligence services had long expected Putin to finally respond, and were amazed that Prigozhin traveled freely in Russia and dared to appear at the summit between Russia and Africa. – It is completely incomprehensible why he was able to travel around the world for two months – a source at the Russian Ministry of Defense told FT.
Putin spoke for the first time
In his first public comment on the disaster, Putin expressed his condolences to all the families of the victims. He stressed that the members of the Wagner group on board “have made an important contribution to our common cause: the fight against the neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine.” “We remember and we won’t forget,” he added.
He said he had known Prigozhin “for a long time, since the early 1990s”. “He was a man with a complicated destiny, he made serious mistakes in his life and achieved the expected results, both for himself and, when I asked him, for a common goal, as in recent months. He was a talented man, a talented businessman,” the Russian president said.
He explained that an investigation into the plane crash with the Wagner ships on board is under way, which “will be carried out in its entirety and terminated”. “We’ll see what researchers say in the near future.” Now expert advice is being implemented – technical and genetic. It will take some time,” Putin said.
Source: Do Rzeczy
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
