After the first hours of uncertainty due to the mysterious death of Yevgueni Prigozhin in a plane crash, the reactions to his death have not stopped happening. Saint Petersburg woke up this morning with flowers and Wagner emblems (the iconic skull) at the group’s headquarters. In the windows of the PMC Wagner Center, a huge cross made with the lighting inside the building could be seen at night. Outside, a huge banner read ‘PMC Wagner, we are together’.
Prigozhin, born in the city of the tsars, 62 years ago, made his fortune and founded his controversial group of mercenaries there.
Prigozhin’s Embraer Legacy 600, the private plane of Wagner’s boss, left Moscow for St. Petersburg. But at the height of the town of Kuzhenkino, in the Tver region, his jet collapsed. Some sources in Russia claim that Prigozhin was returning from a trip to Africa.
Putin’s silence
In Moscow, for the moment, the reaction of his former friend, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has not occurred. The words and condolences of the Russian president are conspicuous by their absence, and that on Wednesday, after the news of the accident was released, the Russian president participated in an event in the Kursk region to commemorate the anniversary of one of the most famous battles that took place during World War II. Putin paid tribute to the Russian soldiers who fell in the Russian invasion, or as the president refers to as a “special military operation” in Ukraine, during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the Kursk battle.
In neighboring Ukraine, a country invaded by Russia since February 24, 2022 and highly valued by the Wagner group on some fronts, Ukrainian military experts were broadcasting almost live what was known about the incident.
“It is worth waiting for the fog of war to disappear…”, he wrote on his social networks Mikhailo Podoliakadviser to the Chief of Staff of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. For Podoliak, “it is obvious that Putin does not forgive anyone for his own bestial terror. Exactly the one that annulled him in June 2023. And he was waiting for the moment. It is also obvious that Prigozhinsigned a special death warrant for himself at the moment when he believed in Lukashenko’s outlandish “guarantees” and Putin’s equally absurd “word of honour”, explains Zelensky’s adviser.
“The demonstrative elimination of Prigozhin and the Wagner commando two months after the attempted coup is a signal from Putin to the Russian elites ahead of the 2024 elections. “Watch out! Disloyalty equals death“. But it is also a signal to the Russian military: There will be no “SVO heroes”. If it is not a Ukrainian court, it will be an FSB bullet.”
to some like Olena Halushkaco-founder of the International Center for the Victory of Ukraine and a member of the Ukrainian anti-corruption center, was surprised that the Russians mourned Prigozhin and “other Wagner terrorists killed yesterday.”
For Halushka, this image of condolences, once again, this serves as an argument to show that this is also the war of the Russian people, that not only Putin is to blame, and he asks that they show him some similar tribute or commemoration when innocent children Ukrainians have been killed.
When asked about it, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, assured during his vacations in Nevada that he had been informed of what happened. Biden advocated yesterday for being “cautious” until all the details are known. Even so, he did not hesitate to declare that he was not surprised. “There are few things in Russia that Putin isn’t after, but I don’t know the answer.”
From France, the spokesman for the Government of Emmanuel Macron, Olivier Veránassured this Thursday that “There can be reasonable doubts” about what happened with the plane that crashed. According to the EFE agency, Veran insisted during an interview on France 2 that the conditions in which the accident of the device occurred, in which the head of this militia of mercenaries linked to Russian power, is supposed to have died, are not known.
Beyond this question, the French spokesman pointed out that “Progozhin leaves behind him cemeteries and terrible disorder in a good part of the globe”, such as in Africa or Ukraine, which “He is the man of (Vladimir) Putin’s dirty jobs” and that his activity is “inseparable” from the policy of the Russian president.
In the United Kingdom, a spokesman for the Government of Rishi Sunak has stated that they are “closely monitoring the situation”. Shortly after the incident on Wednesday afternoon, Alice KearnsConservative deputy and chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, assured that “the speed with which the Russian government has confirmed that Yevgeny Prigozhin he was on a plane that crashed on a flight from moscow to st petersburg should tell us all we need to know. Reports that Russian air defense shot down the plane suggest that Putin is sending a very clear message.”
