US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke by phone to his Russian counterpart Yuri Ushakov to rule out any Washington involvement in Wagner Group leader Yevgeni Prigozhin’s failed uprising in June.
Sullivan contacted Ushakov to inform Moscow that the brief sedition attempt by Prigozhin, believed to have been killed in a plane crash in Russia on Wednesday, was an internal matter, in an effort to avoid a further deterioration in relations already exacerbated by the invasion of Ukraine, they said. to sources at The Wall Street Journal on condition of anonymity.
Prigozhin protested vigorously against the Ministry of Defense and the Russian military leadership for months, and on June 23, he sent an armored column towards Moscow.
The goal was supposed to hasten the fall of the military leaders, but the mercenaries were stopped about a hundred kilometers from the capital, thanks to the mediation of the president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
Russian President Vladimir Putin described it as high treason, but Prigozhin and his men were given the chance to go into exile in Belarus, join the regular Russian armed forces or reform.
On Wednesday, two months after the uprising, a private jet Prigozhin was traveling on, according to Russian aviation authorities, crashed in Russia’s Tver region, north of Moscow, along with nine other people, including Dmitri Utkin, founder of the group. Wagner.
In an initial response, United States President Joe Biden said he was not surprised by the possible death of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“I still don’t know exactly what happened, but it doesn’t surprise me. Few things happen in Russia without Putin having something to do with it,” said the US head of state during his vacation in Lake Tahoe. between Nevada and California.
Source: DN
