US says Prigozhin plane not downed by surface-to-air missile

Washington — The US is looking at a number of theories over what downed the plane carrying Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, but it was unlikely that it was a surface-to-air missile, officials said on Thursday.

The US has not seen indications that a missile hit the plane, said the department of defense. The US military has “no information to suggest that there was a surface-to-air missile” involved in the crash, said department spokesman Pat Ryder, describing reports of a missile as “inaccurate.” The surface-to-air missile strike was among theories earlier on Thursday.

The US intelligence community is still in the early stages of assessing what may have caused the private jet to crash outside Moscow on Wednesday, CNN reported.

Russia’s aviation authority has said Prigozhin, his right-hand man Dmitry Utkin and eight other people were on the private plane that crashed with no survivors north of Moscow on Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his condolences to the victims families on Thursday, adding that “preliminary data” indicated Prigozhin and other Wagner employees had been on the downed plane. His comments were the most definitive yet on Prigozhin’s fate. Before he spoke, the only official statement had come from the aviation authority.

A Telegram channel linked to Wagner, Grey Zone, pronounced Prigozhin dead on Wednesday evening, hailing him as a hero and a patriot who had died at the hands of “traitors to Russia”.

The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that a bomb aboard the aircraft or some other sabotage caused the crash.

The Russian online news outlet Baza, which has good sources among law enforcement agencies, reported that investigators were focusing on a theory that one or two bombs may have been planted on board.

The crash came two months to the day after Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries staged a mutiny in which they took control of a southern city and advanced towards Moscow, shooting down a number of Russian air force planes and killing their pilots.

US President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he was not surprised by reports that Prigozhin had died in a plane crash, adding that not much happens in Russia that Putin was not behind.

Putin said he wished to express sincere condolences to the families of those who died in the crash, and said it was necessary to await the outcome of the official investigation.

He paid tribute to the renegade mercenary, calling him a talented businessman who knew how to look after his own interests and who could, when asked, do his bit for the common cause. He acknowledged Wagner’s part in the Ukraine war. But he also described Prigozhin as a flawed character who had made some bad mistakes.

“I want to express my most sincere condolences to the families of all the victims. It’s always a tragedy,” Putin said in televised remarks. “I had known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the start of the 90s. He was a man with a difficult fate, and he made serious mistakes in life.”

Russian investigators have opened a probe into what happened, but have not yet said what they suspect caused the plane to suddenly fall from the sky northwest of Moscow. Nor have they officially confirmed the identities of the 10 bodies recovered from the wreckage. The passenger list suggests that Wagner’s core leadership team was flying with him too and had also perished.

Prigozhin frequently criticised the Russian army top brass over what he said was its incompetent prosecution of the war in Ukraine.

The Embraer executive jet model that crashed in Russia had only recorded one accident in more than 20 years of service, and that was not related to mechanical failure.

While portraying it as a purely private commercial operation, the Kremlin has used Wagner to expand Russian influence on the continent in competition with Western powers such as France and the US. 

Prigozhin and a Russian company he controlled were indicted in 2018 and accused of funding a propaganda operation to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election to sway it in favour of Republican candidate Donald Trump and to disparage rival Hillary Clinton.

A Reuters reporter at the crash site on Thursday morning saw men carrying away black body bags on stretchers. Part of the plane’s tail and other fragments lay on the ground near a wooded area where forensic investigators had erected a tent.

Residents of Kuzhenkino, the village near the crash site, said they had heard a bang and then saw the jet plummet to the ground. The plane showed no sign of a problem until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data.

One villager, who gave his name as Anatoly, said: “It wasn’t thunder, it was a metallic bang — let’s put it that way.”

Mourners left flowers and lit candles near Wagner’s offices in St Petersburg and at other locations across Russia.

With Staff Writer 

Reuters