The United States has no confirmation that Prigozhin’s plane was shot down by a missile

The US Department of Defense believes that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner PMC, most likely died during the plane crash. However, there is no confirmation of reports that the business jet was shot down by a missile.

Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, spokesman for the Pentagon, spoke about this at a briefing on August 24:

“I won’t go into the details of how we gather information, other than our initial assessment, based on a variety of factors, is that he was most likely killed.”

He noted that the Pentagon “at the moment does not have any information” indicating that Prigozhin’s plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. Ryder called the reports circulated in the media in this regard “inaccurate”, writes Deutsche Welle.

Russian President Vladimir Putin actually acknowledged the death of Prigozhin, offering condolences his relatives and relatives of all those who died in the plane crash. At the same time, he stressed that the expertise in the case of the crash of Prigozhin’s business jet would take time. At a meeting with Denis Pushilin, Putin indicated that the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation had begun a preliminary investigation.

According to CNN, US intelligence is in the early stages of its own investigation into the causes of the plane crash. At the same time, according to Reuters sources, the US authorities consider the version of the surface-to-air missile the most plausible. Although it is emphasized that these are preliminary conclusions that are still being studied.

This, according to Reuters, was told by two American officials. According to them, the missile was fired from Russian territory. The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, stressed that this information is still preliminary and is being verified.

Earlier, the Gray Zone telegram channel associated with the Wagner PMC reported that the plane could have been shot down by a missile. A missile hit, as one of the versions, was also considered by military experts. Referring to sources, Russian publics write about the chassis laid in the compartment explosive device, which caused an emergency with Prigogine’s plane. In this case, according to experts, an explosive depressurization occurred and everyone on board instantly lost consciousness. This may explain the fact that the pilots did not report an emergency.

This version is supported by the fact that, according to preliminary data, an explosion occurred in the chassis area, which caused the wing to detach. It hit the stabilizer, which caused the business jet to rapidly gain altitude, and then went into a tailspin. At the same time, the tail section of the aircraft fell five kilometers from the fuselage.

The same sources report that Prigozhin’s personal pilot Artyom Stepanov, the former founder of the MNT Aero company, which owns the crashed jet, became a suspect in blowing up Prigozhin’s plane. He had access to the plane, and before the explosion he went to Kamchatka and … “got lost.”

It is possible that two explosive devices were planted on board: one in the bathroom area, the second in the landing gear compartment. But the version about the anti-aircraft missile, which is given, in particular, by Telegram channels associated with the Wagner PMC, according to Baza, is not a priority, since there is little external damage on the details of the crashed aircraft.

Interlocutors of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal suggested that the cause of the disaster was a bomb explosion on board the plane. As the NYT clarifies, other versions were also studied, in particular, about falsified fuel.

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