The assassination of the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was organized by Nikolai Patrushev, one of Putin’s closest people, the American press reports.
According to intelligence sources, both Western and Russian, the 72-year-old head of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, is behind the plan to eliminate Yevgeny Prigozhin, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Patrushev, an army general and former head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), is the Kremlin’s eminence grise and the closest ally of Vladimir Putin, considered one of the most radical people in his orbit.
‘WSJ’ writes that Patrushev began warning the Russian president in the summer of 2022 about the threat posed by Prigozhin. However, Putin ignored them for a long time, as the head of the Wagner Group achieved successes on the Ukrainian front.
The president’s attitude toward Prigozhin would change in October 2022, when the mercenary leader called the Kremlin and brutally announced a shortage of ammunition, according to a former Russian intelligence officer. Patrushev sat next to Putin during the conversation and heard Prigozhin berate the president. Patrushev used this opportunity to convince the president to depose Prigozhin.
The Wagner Group Rebellion. Patrushev tried to stop it
This summer The Kremlin announced plans to liquidate the Wagner Group and ordered all mercenaries to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. This forced Prigozhin to organize an armed uprising, capture the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don and announce a march on Moscow on June 23.
Putin was staying in his home far outside the capital at the time. The matter was taken up by Patrushev, who tried to call Prigozhin and convince him to stop the uprising. The dictator of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, also became involved in the negotiations. Prigozhin finally agreed to stop the march on Moscow when he was promised that he and his men could move to Belarus without consequences.
Prigozhin subsequently disappeared from public space and traveled between Belarus, Russia and Africa. In early August, when most officials were on vacation and leaving Moscow, Patrushev ordered his aide to develop an operation to take out Prigozhin, according to a former Russian intelligence officer.
According to WSJ sources, Patrushev showed Putin the prepared plan, and the president did not object.
“WSJ”: A bomb was placed on Prigozhin’s plane
A few weeks later, Prigozhin returned from Africa and waited at Moscow airport for authorities to finish checking his private jet en route to St. Petersburg. According to a Western intelligence official, a small explosive device was placed under the wing of the Embraer Legacy 600 aircraft during this delay.
According to the official version, half an hour after take-off, the plane began to rapidly lose altitude and crashed in Tver Oblast. All passengers and three crew members (10 people in total) were killed.
After the crash, Putin said “hand grenade fragments” had been found in the victims’ bodies and that the passengers may have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
DNA tests confirmed that Prigozhin was on board the crashed plane. He was buried quietly on August 29 in a cemetery in St. Petersburg.
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.
