The head of German diplomacy, Annalena Baerbock, joined the suspicions of European countries about the Kremlin’s responsibility in the presumed death of the head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in the crash of a jet plane in Russia.
“It is no coincidence that the whole world is now watching the Kremlin as a former Putin aide literally fell from grace, suddenly from heaven, two months after an attempted rebellion.”said Baerbock.
On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden had already said that “few things happen in Russia without Putin having something to do with it.”
“We know this pattern in Putin’s Russia. The questionable deaths and suicides, the defenestrations. All unsolved cases pointing to a system of dictatorial power,” Germany’s foreign minister added.
Caution reigns among European countries regarding reactions to Wednesday’s plane crash, which may have caused Prigozhin’s death.
French government spokesman Olivier Verán admitted there are “reasonable doubts” about what happened, given the years of ties between Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In the United Kingdom, defense sources consulted by the BBC’s public radio identify the Russian security service FSB as the prime suspect in the death of Prigozhin, who was traveling with nine other people, including the “general staff” of the mercenary group. According to the Russian authorities, there were no survivors due to the disaster.
In Ukraine, the intelligence services of the Ministry of Defense were convinced that the Kremlin was behind the crash of the plane carrying Prigozhin.
“Only Russian propaganda can assume the probability that an accidental accident occurred in this case. It is clear that this is a deliberate act of terrorism,” defended service director Andri Yusov in a televised interview.
Yusov added that while the information that Prigozhin traveled on that plane is yet to be confirmed, the most likely scenario is that he was one of the passengers.
On Wednesday, Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) said Prigozhin was one of the passengers of a private jet that crashed north of Moscow, killing all on board.
According to the same source, the passengers also included Dmitry Utkin, one of the founders of the Wagner group and a former officer of the Russian special forces.
Source: DN
