The Wagner Group will become an even bigger threat now that it is likely to come under Russian President Vladimir Putin's control following the presumed death of its boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki suggested on Thursday (August 24). Russian authorities said mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a private jet that crashed on Wednesday evening (August 23), killing all those onboard.
"The Wagner Group comes under Putin's leadership. Let everyone answer the question for themselves - will the threat be bigger or smaller? For me, that's a rhetorical question," Morawiecki told a press conference in Warsaw.
'The Wagner Group, which is under direct guardianship, direct supervision of Putin and his people, will be used more than before or at least to the same extent as until now as a tool for provocation, blackmail, attacks and all kinds of actions to disrupt the security policy and destabilization of countries bordering Russia and Belarus," the Polish prime minister added.
Crash investigators on Thursday picked through the wreckage of a jet said to have been carrying Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin that crashed with no survivors, two months after he led a mutiny against the army leadership.
Investigators opened a criminal probe but there was no official word on what may have caused Wednesday evening's crash, or even official confirmation of Prigozhin's death beyond a statement from the aviation authority saying he was on board.
The Kremlin and the Defence Ministry also made no comment on the fate of Prigozhin, 62, head of the Wagner mercenary group and a self-declared enemy of the army top brass over what he said was its incompetent prosecution of Russia's war in Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin made a virtual statement to a summit of the BRICS nations in South Africa which his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was attending. Neither referenced the plane crash in which 10 people were said to have been killed.
State media gave the disaster low-key coverage.
The Embraer Legacy 600 EMBR3.SA executive jet, which had been flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg and was reported to have also been carrying senior members of Prigozhin's team, crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region north of Moscow.
A Reuters reporter at the crash site on Thursday morning saw men carrying away black body bags on stretchers. Part of the plane's tail and other fragments lay on the ground near a wooded area where forensic investigators had erected a tent.
The Baza news outlet, which has good sources among law enforcement agencies, reported that investigators were focusing on a theory that one or two bombs may have been planted on board.
Unnamed sources told Russian media they believed the plane had been shot down by one or more surface-to-air missiles. Reuters could not confirm either account.
Residents of Kuzhenkino said they had heard a bang and then saw the jet plummet to the ground. The plane showed no sign of a problem until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data.
One villager, who gave his name as Anatoly, said: "It wasn't thunder, it was a metallic bang - let's put it that way."
Mourners left flowers and lit candles near Wagner's offices in St. Petersburg.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, Reuters
Źródło zdjęcia głównego: TVN24