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Russian president Vladimir Putin mentioned the airplane carrying Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was blown up from the within and fragments of hand grenades have been discovered within the our bodies of these killed within the crash.
That is the primary time Mr Putin commented on the main points of the airplane crash that killed Prigozhin – the mercenary chief who had challenged his regime and launched a navy coup by marching onto Moscow in a dramatic menace to the Kremlin not seen in many years.
“Fragments of hand grenades had been discovered within the our bodies of these killed within the crash,” Mr Putin advised a gathering of the Valdai Dialogue Membership within the Black Sea resort of Sochi, however didn’t share any particulars on the sort and variety of hand grenades that might have been detonated on board.
He denied an exterior affect or concentrating on of the airplane from the surface.
“There was no exterior impression on the airplane – that is already a longtime truth,” he mentioned, rejecting assertions by unidentified US officers who mentioned shortly after the crash that they believed it had been shot down. Mr Putin mentioned the top of Russia’s investigative committee had reported to him just a few days in the past.
The non-public Embraer jet carrying the Wagner chief and the mercenary group’s co-founder together with eight different folks crashed north of Moscow on 23 August. All 10 folks onboard had been reported lifeless.
Mr Putin additionally instructed that the stays of the passengers, together with Prigozhin, ought to have been examined for alcohol and medicines. He mentioned he thought investigators had been mistaken to haven’t carried out these assessments on the our bodies of these killed within the crash.
“In my view, such an examination ought to have been carried out nevertheless it was not,” he mentioned.
The searches of Wagner’s places of work in St Petersburg by the FSB discovered 10bn roubles ($100m) in money and 5kg (11 kilos) of cocaine, he mentioned.
The investigators of the crash have but to report publicly on the trigger. Neither Wagner nor Prigozhin’s household may very well be reached to touch upon Mr Putin’s remarks.
Prigozhin had claimed delight in casting Wagner because the world’s most war-hardened combating pressure and was recognized to have carried out Russia’s soiled work in middle-east and Africa. The mercenary fighters waged a brutal battle – dubbed the “meat grinder” – in Bakhmut final yr in winter, the place they finally handed Moscow its greatest territorial achieve in lots of months.
Simply two months earlier than his dying, he had accused Mr Putin’s high navy brass, defence minister Sergei Shoigu and basic workers Valery Gerasimov of incompetence and warned that Russia may lose the conflict in Ukraine except it raised its sport.
The transient mutiny towards Russia’s defence institution posed the most important problem to Putin’s rule for the reason that former KGB spy got here to energy in 1999. In response to the leaders within the West, not solely did it expose the strains on Russia of the conflict in Ukraine, it additionally confirmed the worsening relations between the Russian president and his long-time stooge.
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