Russian paramilitary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s apparent assassination continues to stir “reasonable doubts” in the minds of Western officials, wary as they are to trust Russia's official statements.
“We don't yet know the circumstances of this crash,” French government spokesman Olivier Veran said Thursday. "We can have some reasonable doubts.”
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Prigozhin, the long-time leader of the vaunted Wagner Group mercenary force, died in a plane crash on Wednesday along with most of his most senior associates, according to Russian authorities. Russian aviation officials wasted little time in announcing that Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on the plane, and Kremlin officials addressed the death of their former ally within a day — but European officials jaundiced by years of Russian deceptions remained wary.
“I understand that Russia is claiming that Prigozhin has died,” outgoing Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš told Politico’s European affiliate. “I’ll let the facts establish themselves … Either he has been killed or he has not been killed.”
Many observers and analysts feel confident that Prigozhin has been killed, given the commentary from Wagner-affiliated social media channels and Russian government officials alike.
“It’s not clear who would be lying in this case. If Prighozin staged it ... why would officials participate in this?” expatriate Russian economist Konstantin Sonin, a Putin critic now affiliated with the University of Chicago, told the Washington Examiner. “Imagine that this is staged ... it's like a bad novel joined into a worse novel, right? Why would they conspire [together]?”
The growing consensus about Prigozhin’s death nonetheless reflected some confusion about the cause of the crash. Initial reports suggested that the plane was shot down.
“The footage we've seen so far of the plane, it looks as though maybe one of its wings was clipped off,” the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Rob Lee said late Wednesday on the Geopolitics Decanted podcast. “There are sounds that probably have explosions in the air, from eyewitnesses, consistent with the use of air defense. And the fact that [the senior Wagner leaders were on board], that would be a pretty massive coincidence to say that this occurred and it was an accident.”
The international uncertainty about even those details was apparent on Thursday. Reuters cited unnamed U.S. officials to report that the “U.S. believes surface-to-air missile originating inside Russia likely shot down plane carrying Prigozhin,” an assessment soon contradicted by other U.S. officials who told the Wall Street Journal that “preliminary” information points to the idea “that a bomb exploded on the aircraft or that some other form of sabotage caused the crash” on Wednesday.
"Our initial assessment is that it's likely Prigozhin was killed. We're continuing to assess the situation," Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon's press secretary, said Thursday. "The press reporting stating that there was some type of surface-to-air missile that took down the plane, we assess that information to be inaccurate. Again, nothing to indicate, no information to suggest that there was a surface-to-air missile."
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, pledged that the “tragedy” would receive a proper investigation.
"Regarding the airplane crash, first of all I would like to express my sincere condolences to the families of all those who died,” the Kremlin chief said. "I knew Prigozhin for a very long time, since the early '90s. He was a man of complicated fate, and he made serious mistakes in his life, but he achieved the right results ... It will be conducted in full and brought to a conclusion. There is no doubt about that.”
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Prigozhin in June led a mutiny of Wagner troops against the Russian military establishment. His forces seized Russian locations unopposed en route to Moscow, but he called off the revolt after one day and appeared to have accepted exile in neighboring Belarus.
Putin offered a security guarantee “to those Wagner Group soldiers and commanders” who agreed to abort their march on Moscow — “I will keep my promise,” he insisted two days after the uprising — and the entire episode only has confirmed his unreliability as a narrator.
“We have seen the report about the plane crash which allegedly killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Wagner group, alongside members of his entourage and crew members,” European Union spokesman Peter Stano told reporters Thursday. “But again, like so many other things in Russia, this is very hard to verify for us, and therefore not for us to comment.”