This is the best summary I could come up with:
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner paramilitary chief who launched an armed mutiny in June, was on a private jet that crashed in the Tver region near Moscow, killing all 10 onboard, Russian officials have said.
Rosaviatsia, the Russian aviation authority, said Prigozhin was one of the passengers listed in the manifest as being onboard the Embraer business jet that crashed on Wednesday evening.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but Prigozhin’s longstanding feud with the military and the armed uprising he led in June would give the Russian state ample motive for revenge.
Prigozhin, an ally of Vladimir Putin’s who amassed a fortune from state contracts, later went on to establish troll factories and a paramilitary army that became an important extension of Russian power abroad.
But a longstanding conflict with the top brass of the defence ministry only grew worse in Ukraine, where he feuded over ammunition and strategy, claiming his irregular fighters were being sacrificed to protect regular Russian troops.
Where’s the fucking ammo?” he screamed in one social media post, calling out defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the general Staff Valery Gerasimov while lobbying for more shells to be delivered to his troops fighting near Bakhmut.
The original article contains 517 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I have two hypothesis to what might have happened:
- Putin got to him, but instead of falling out of a window he fell from the sky
- Prigozhin stages his own death so he could escape with at least some of his money to somewhere in Africa or South America
I’m in the option 2 camp. While it is entirely possible that he really did die I’m skeptical and think this is some sort of plan of his. I don’t mean to sound conspiratorial but it’s so hard to believe anything reported by Russia
they already found his body, both ru authorities and wagner says that prigozhin and utkin are dead
If it’s #2, I wonder if he’ll still be watching over his back for ice picks for the rest of his life.
putin got him, 100%. both wagner and ru mod have reported that priggo is dead, and you don’t just randomly fire a SAM at a civilian jet
look at what happened to any other nationalist critic of kremlin: tatarsky is dead, girkin is in prison, surovikin is under “house arrest”, now prigozhin and utkin are also dead, and some others, like rybar, were told to toe the line or else and they complied
you don’t just randomly fire a SAM at a civilian jet
this one was 100% intentional. these two other were also intentional, just misguided, it takes several steps to fire a SAM, it does not happen through an accident (bar missile defence, but there are few civilian planes with size of missile, travelling at the speed of missile)
There’s a whole list of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents
#3 Prigozhin was not on board, Wagner command knows, so no uprising, and Putin looks like he had him assassinated. Optics preserved
…
I might need some sleep
some more ideass:
- Prigozhin was already dead when he was put on the airplane
- Russians procured 10 more random dead bodies to throw on the airplane
- completely fake story, Prigozhin is detained in prison somewhere
I know you’re just spitballing but putin wouldn’t go through that much effort. I think he’d much rather just kill him for real. Prigozhin filmed the Africa video earlier, then returned to Russia for some reason, and released the video claiming to be in Africa as misdirection. Putin got some good intel on Prigozhin’s plane and took the opportunity to shoot it down and stop the next rebellion before it starts
This one took a little longer than expected.
I’m sure it will be determined that it was Ukrainian ‘terrorists’ who were responsible and not at all the guy with a history of killing people who challenge his authority.
Oh, I’m sure the Russian apologists on Hexbear are already refining their script.
rot in hell