think most of you have seen one or more of the many articles reporting the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a “plane crash” today. The plane, which was traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, crashed halfway in the Tver Republic.
We know for certain that the plane did not explode in midair. Watch these two videos.
In the Twitter video taken by a woman who lives on a farm in Russia, a trail can be seen on the left, then the plane appears as if falling into a slight spin. This means that it has lost almost all of its aerodynamic lift capabilities. The Embraer 600's engines (pictured above) are attached near the tail of the aircraft. When the plane falls, it rotates slightly, which means that part of a wing is still attached. However, most of the wings are not visible. The vapor trail that follows the jet as it plummets to the ground is likely fuel rather than smoke.
What caused the wings to separate? It could be shrapnel from a surface-to-air missile. I have heard that according to Western intelligence, several SA-20 batteries were close enough to engage and that these systems were active (rather unusual in this region) at the time of the attack. Prigozhin's plane was flying overhead. The hypothesis of a slaughter is therefore conceivable.
Structural failure, due to poor maintenance or sabotage, is another possibility for catastrophic wing loss.
Due to Prigojine's ties to the GRU, I'm still skeptical of the story originally presented. Note that this coincides with messages on Telegram (unconfirmed) that Sourovikine is being punished/prosecuted and with recent public statements by Prigojine regarding a greater military role on the Niger side. This is another possible list of suspects.
Another scenario to consider: Friends or relatives (or both) of Russian airmen killed by Wagner in the June mutiny may have taken matters into their own hands for revenge.
I am skeptical of the claim that Putin ordered this action. First of all, Putin officiated during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the battle of Kursk. I find it hard to believe that Putin wanted to divert attention from this event by giving the green light to Prigozhin's execution in this way. This does not serve Putin's interests, as the plane crash also killed pilots and other passengers who were not involved in the Prigozhin mutiny. If Putin had wanted to kill Prigozhin, he would have ordered it sooner and done it in a much less haphazard way. For example, when you shoot down a plane, you have no way of predicting where the debris from the plane might land. Of course, identifying the remains will be a challenge. The aircraft was burning on the ground and certainly consumed at least some of the bodies.
I don't think it was Maskirovka's act because it resulted in the deaths of at least eight other people whose public profile is unrelated to Wagner's.
Why not consider the possibility of staging? In other words, no passengers or crew members were actually on board. So the Embraer was remotely piloted and shot down in order to send Western intelligence into a frenzy (because that is exactly what is happening right now) trying to figure out what is going on?
One thing is certain: it feeds the meme according to which if one crosses Putin, one is a dead man on borrowed time. Whether this idea is true or not does not matter. If that's what outsiders believe, then it's true by definition.
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