Prigozhin most likely dead, and an explosion may have downed his plane, U.S. officials say
Prigozhin most likely dead, and an explosion may have downed his plane, U.S. officials say
WP gift article expires in 14 days.
Being a pilot for important people like that has gotta suck.
I was kind of thinking something similar. How close would you be willing to physically get to him knowing that at any moment there might be an assassination attempt?
Close enough to spit on him then run away like a coward
Money
'Live updates' seems a little... unnecessary and even distasteful in this context, but ok.
I was wondering when he'd die though, there was no chance he was going to live a long life after the whole convoy to Moscow thing.
Permanently Deleted
Conspiracy theory ahead: I think the whole mutiny was planned to involve atomic weapons, which would have given Wagner a waaaaay bigger bargaining chip.
Between the southern headquarters and Moscow is a nuclear storage site. To arm the warheads one needs a code which is only known to three people: The president, the minister of defence and the chief of the armed forces. It just so happened to be that the latter two where expected at the southern headquarters at the day of the mutiny. Except they were nowhere to be found, possibly tipped off by someone.
Now Wagner had a problem: They failed to capture the codes but couldn't simply back down without some form of deal. So the convoy to Moscow went ahead anyway to put pressure on the government.
They initially succeeded as in they secured an exit strategy via presidential pardon but lacking the nukes, there is no chance of any meaningful retaliation by Wagner. This means the pardon was easily "rescinded".
I guess Putin checked off "downing plane" off his assassination bingo card
There was that whole https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17 thing. Not sure how people forgot about this.
That one was on his terrorisms bingo card. Not quite the same as assassination.
Pretty sure Poland already blamed Putin for downing a plane with a bunch of their top government officials some years back.
Bomb on board works plenty well.
There's a questionable outlet on Twitter that claims the flight attendant noticed "Unusual Repairs" before takeoff.
Ok...yeah yeah.... moving on..... yawn