A survey of the North American newspaper Wall Street Journal (WSJ), published Thursday, attributes the authorship of a plan to eliminate Yevgeny Prigozhin, former leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, to Nikolai Patrushev, a former spy close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Prigozhin died on August 23, aged 62, in a plane crash with nine other people on board, including senior officials from his paramilitary company, while flying between Moscow and St. Petersburg, after leading a mutiny against the Russian military leadership, which was demolished. when his men’s columns of vehicles were already on the outskirts of Moscow.
Both Ukraine (a country that has been the target of a Russian invasion since February 2022) and the West suspect that the plane crash was not an accident, but an attack, a claim denied by Moscow, which, despite the investigation has not yet disclosed to the authorities, The disaster that killed Prigozhin speaks vaguely about possible violations of flight safety rules, while Putin more specifically mentioned the explosion of a grenade on board, but refuted the intention to kill his former ally .
However, “none of this was true,” according to the WSJ, in the investigation entitled “How Putin’s Right Hand Man Eliminated Prigozhin,” which spoke to “undercover” elements and active and retired operatives in the United States, Europe and Russia. .
A European intelligence source with contacts in the Kremlin said that when he saw the news of the plane crash, he asked what had happened: “He [Prigozhin] had to be removed”they responded.
On the day the Embraer Legacy 600 carrying the “warlord” was preparing to take off in Moscow, “no one” noticed the small explosive under the wing,” the newspaper reported, citing its sources.
It was in this way, says the WSJ, that the private jet ended up on the ground 30 minutes after the start of the flight, killing Prigozhin and Dmitri Utkin, chief commander and co-founder of the Wagner Group, which was responsible for the victory came. Bakhmut’s Russia in eastern Ukraine and which, in collaboration with the Kremlin, maintained mercenaries in various conflicts in the Middle East and the African continent.
Behind the plan to depose Prigozhin, whose mutiny was considered the greatest threat ever to Putin’s regime and his intentions to extend the presidential term in 2024, was, according to several sources in the journalistic investigation, the former spy, right-hand man and eldest man. confidante of Kremlin leader Nikolai Patrushev, whose role in the alleged August attack was until now unknown, the North American newspaper says.
The WSJ follows the path of Patrushev, 72 years old, since he, like Putin, became involved in espionage in the 1970s, a profession he pursued after the collapse of the Soviet Union until he became director of the FSB ( successor to the KGB). ) and on the right arm of the Russian president.
He has been described as someone who sees the United States as an enemy of Russia seeking to steal its natural resources, and as someone who readily develops conspiracy theories that have been reported in interviews he has given.
“He [Patrushev] rose to the top by interpreting Putin’s policies and carrying out his orders. During Putin’s rule, he expanded Russia’s security services and terrorized his enemies with assassinations at home and abroad.describes the newspaper, adding that his influence has grown recently, leading him to support the invasion of Russia, and that his son Dmitry, a former banker, was appointed Minister of Agriculture and is being hailed by some as a potential successor to Russia’s president.
Since 2008, he has been secretary of the National Security Council, which formally gives him little power, but in practice, due to his close relationship with Putin for more than twenty years, he is “the second most powerful man in Russia”.
According to the WSJ, Patrushev had long warned Putin about Moscow’s dependence on the Wagner Group in Ukraine “gave Prigozhin so much political and military influence that he increasingly became a threat to the Kremlin”.
After the failed riot in June it continues: “Patrushev intervened to fend off the biggest challenge yet to Putin’s government in more than two decades and also saw an opportunity to eliminate Prigozhin for good”.
The Kremlin was “cautious” despite doing little publicly to restrict the life of Prigozhin, who traveled to Africa to monitor activities and was allowed to continue working in St. Petersburg, Maksim Shugaley, who worked for the leader, said , to the WSJ mercenary in a “think tank.”
Putin’s plan would be to leave Prigozhin in apparent freedom while he sought more information about his collaborators in the mutiny and the Wagner group, whose fighters had been invited to leave for Belarus or join Moscow’s regular army Close.
“In early August, while most of Moscow was on vacation, Patrushev, in his office in the city center, instructed his assistant to continue preparing an operation to eliminate Prigozhin.”said a former Russian “secret” official, quoted by the WSJ. ‘Later Putin saw the plans and did not object’according to western information agencies.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s funeral took place in a small private ceremony on the outskirts of his hometown of St. Petersburg, without the presence of Putin, who described him as “a talented man who did a lot for Russia but made mistakes.”
Source: DN
