A plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary boss, was brought down by a bomb planted under its wing in a plot orchestrated by Vladimir Putin’s oldest ally, according to a new report.
Nikolai Patrushev, a former KGB officer, the powerful head of Russia’s security council, personally oversaw the planning of the operation, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Western intelligence sources and a former Russian intelligence officer.
Prigozhin died when his private jet crashed over Russia’s Tver region on Aug 23, around two months after he led an armed rebellion against Moscow’s military leadership in June, in the biggest threat to Putin’s two-decade rule.
The Kremlin has previously rejected as an “absolute lie” the suggestion by critics and Western countries that Putin had ordered the assassination in revenge for the short-lived mutiny.
Putin had claimed Prigozhin’s jet was destroyed when a hand grenade was accidentally set off on board, while he or his companions were possibly drunk or high on cocaine.
Bomb planted under wing
But now it has been claimed that a small bomb was planted under the wing of the Embraer Legacy 600 plane, while Prigozhin and nine others waited on the tarmac of a Moscow airport for a pre-flight check to be carried out.
No one inside the cabin appeared to notice the device being attached as they waited to take off for St Petersburg.
The jet climbed for about 30 minutes to 28,000 feet before the bomb was detonated and the aircraft crashed to the ground.
All 10 people on board were killed, including Prigozhin, his four bodyguards, three crew members and two other people who were important to the Wagner group.
“He had to be removed,” a Kremlin official told a European intelligence officer with backchannels of communication to the Russian regime after the incident.
Reports of the involvement of Patrushev offer yet more evidence that the assassination plot was coordinated by the Kremlin and had Putin’s blessing.
‘Mistake to have a parallel army’
Patrushev, 72, is considered one of the most influential hardliners in the Russian president’s very tight inner circle. The pair have known each other since the Seventies when they worked together for the KGB in Leningrad – now known as St Petersburg.
When Putin was made prime minister by Boris Yeltsin in 1999, Patrushev took over Russia’s Federal Security Service.
Putin’s close confidant had repeatedly warned that Moscow’s reliance on Wagner in Ukraine had handed Prigozhin too much influence that could one day threaten the Kremlin.
“Everyone told Putin it was a mistake to have a parallel army,” said one former Kremlin official, who had worked with both men.
“When he spits in the face of the military leadership every day you have yourself a problem.”
Patrushev’s warnings, which started in the summer months of 2022, largely fell on deaf ears, while Wagner was making progress on the battlefield in the brutal battle for Bakhmut.
At loggerheads with leadership
Before his death, Prigozhin had been at loggerheads with Russia’s military leadership over supplies of weapons. Tensions eventually boiled over in late June when the mercenary chief marched some of his 25,000 fighters and tanks towards Moscow.
Patrushev stepped in to prevent the challenge to Putin’s leadership from spiralling out of control while the Russian president was at his villa outside the capital by contacting officers sympathetic to Prigozhin as he attempted to reach the Wagner boss.
Five calls to him went unanswered, so Patrushev resorted to contacting the leaders of Kazakhstan and Belarus.
Kazakh president Jomart Tokayev, who has distanced himself from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refused to help. But Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko agreed to mediate between Prigozhin and Moscow.
A deal was eventually struck – the mutiny was called off and Prigozhin agreed to move his operation to Belarus in exchange for immunity.
China’s choice to succeed Putin
Efforts by Patrushev to head off the coup demonstrated his loyalty to Putin, and the aide is seen as Beijing’s preferred choice as Russia’a next leader.
“If Putin had been deposed or killed earlier this year by Wagner Group, I suspect Beijing would have made efforts to install Patrushev as Putin’s replacement,” a former White House official said.
From the end of the mutiny, the Wagner boss was closely monitored by the Kremlin, as he travelled to Africa to keep tabs on his business in the region.
“You can see what Putin’s plan was – to keep the dead man walking so they could continue to find out what happened,” Mowatt-Larssen, a CIA station chief, told the WSJ.
At the beginning of August, Patrushev ordered his assistant to start shaping an operation to dispose of Prigozhin.
Putin was shown the plans and did not object, WSJ reported, citing Western intelligence agencies.
While the mutiny was the end of their relationship, the partnership had started souring before, after Prigozhin directly complained to Putin about the lack of supplies.
‘Pulp fiction’
The Russian president, after the plane crash, described Prigozhin as a man who had made “serious mistakes in his life but achieved the right results”.
The Kremlin on Friday called the WSJ report “pulp fiction”.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, refused to comment but added: “Lately, unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal has been very fond of producing pulp fiction.”
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