Eko Hot Blog reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that the death of the Wagner boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was caused by the detonation of hand grenades inside the aircraft.
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Prighozin died, exactly two months after the day he led a mutiny against the Putin military, on a private Embraer jet, which crashed north of Moscow with 10 people aboard while traveling to Saint Petersburg no August 23.
Putin suggested that the airplane crash was caused by an accidental detonation of grenade on the plane and not hit by a missile as speculated and rumoured. According to Putin, the Russia’s investigative committee reported that traces of explosives were found in the remains of those who died in the crash in August.
“Fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of those killed in the crash,” Putin told a meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
In the bid to discard the claims made by the United States officials, Putin said: “There was no external impact on the plane – this is already an established fact,”.
However, the Russian president did not give any further detail as to how the alleged grenade could have been detonated on board the jet. He felt drug and alcohol tests should have been carried out on the bodies of the people who died in the crash. “In my opinion, such an examination should have been carried out, but it was not,” Putin said.
Putin also said that the claimed that 10 billion roubles ($100m) in cash and 5kg (11 pounds) of cocaine were found in Wagner’s offices in St Petersburg following searches conducted in the office.
However, Moscow rejected an offer from Brazil, where the Embraer business jet was built, to join the crash inquiry., while the investigators of the crash have yet to report publicly on their findings.
A Washington, DC-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think tank that has been monitoring the conflict in Ukraine, described Putin’s explanation for the crash as “bizarre” and intended to “deflect blame from the Kremlin”.
The Institute said that Putin had to involve alcohol, drugs and mishandling of explosives by the Wagner team in order to blame them for their own deaths.
The Russian president “implied that the plane crash victims may have been using alcohol or drugs onboard that could have led to the negligent handling of grenades (that were presumably on board for some unexplained reason)”, ISW said.
“Putin’s bizarre explanation of the plane crash is likely an attempt to blame Prigozhin for his own and his comrades’ deaths and further disgrace him among his remaining supporters,” they added.
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