Wagner Chief Came Back From Deathbed In 2019, Will He Do It Again?
Is Yevgeny Prigozhin About to Make Another Comeback from the Beyond?
After an apparent plane crash north of Moscow on Wednesday, the Russian mercenary leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been assumed dead.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had faced a brief uprising led by Prigozhin a couple of months ago, expressed his condolences to the family during a televised speech on Thursday. Putin remembered Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, as a "skilled individual who also committed errors."
Considering Prigozhin's history, one might approach news of his demise with a hint of skepticism.
Why? This isn't the first instance of Prigozhin being pronounced dead in a plane crash.
In 2019, the Russian warlord was declared dead after a military aircraft crashed in Congo with eight people aboard. Astonishingly, he reemerged alive and unharmed just three days later.
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Sources close to Prigozhin revealed that while the ill-fated plane was linked to him, he typically traveled in a different aircraft.
Keir Giles of Chatham House cautioned that while a passenger named Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the plane, multiple individuals have adopted that name as part of Prigozhin's strategy to obscure his movements, as reported by Daily Mail.
Furthermore, speculation abounds about a second aircraft spotted on flight radar, zigzagging over the same region where Prigozhin's jet crashed. This plane had ties to Wagner.
Following the crash, the second plane reportedly turned back to Moscow and subsequently landed, as indicated by flight tracking data.
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Though Russian authorities claim that Prigozhin was one of the 10 victims in the plane crash, official confirmation of their identities is still pending.
Britain's Ministry of Defence stated on Friday that conclusive evidence of Prigozhin's presence on the plane is lacking, but it is "highly likely" he perished.
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