Russian To Final Judgment

Vladimir Putin wasn't going to leave Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin around as a loose end much longer, not after Wagner's putative revolt against Putin's rule earlier this summer was shut down in under 24 hours and as widely expected, apparently that loose end got snipped Wednesday.

 

Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list of a plane that crashed in Russia's Tver region on Wednesday, according to the press service of Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency.

Ten people were killed in the crash near the town of Kuzhenkino, including Prigozhin.

"An investigation has been launched into the crash of the Embraer aircraft, which occurred tonight in the Tver region. According to the list of passengers, among them is the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin," the department said in a statement.

Among the 10 dead were three crew members and seven passengers. The seven passengers were identified as Sergey Propustin, Evgeniy Makaryan, Aleksandr Totmin, Valeriy Chekalov, Dmitriy Utkin, Nikolay Matuseev and Prigozhin.

The crew was identified as Cmdr. Aleksei Levshin, co-pilot Rustam Karimov and flight attendant Kristina Raspopova.

The Federal Air Transport Agency said the plane was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a statement, "The demonstrative elimination of Prigozhin and the Wagner command two months after the coup attempt is a signal from Putin to Russia's elites ahead of the 2024 elections."

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the plane crash in Russia, according to the White House.

Biden told reporters he didn't "know for a fact what happened, but I'm not surprised."

"There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer," he told reporters in Lake Tahoe, where he is on vacation.

 

I mean it's possible that Prigozhin is still alive somewhere, but I'm pretty sure whatever plans Putin has for him at this point, he wishes he had been killed in a plane crash if that's the case. 

Russian officials are basically going SURE IS A SHAME HE'S DEAD, ALEXA PLAY BACK IN THE USSR right now, and I strongly doubt we'll ever really know what happened.

But Putin knows, and brother, he's not telling.