Ten killed in private jet crash – Wagner leader Prigozhin 'on passenger list' | Hacker News Reader

Ten killed in private jet crash – Wagner leader Prigozhin 'on passenger list'

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There's footage of a crashing aircraft circulating on Twitter and reddit[0], purportedly of this particular aircraft, and in one of the clips a plume from a missile can be seen. The aircraft depicted is clearly missing some of the vertical stabilizer and other flight surfaces which is consistent with a surface to air missile, which tends to bring down the targets by fragmentation damage (the aircraft doesn't explode in a Michael Bay fireball despite common belief).

Furthermore the abrupt descent shown on the speed data suggests a catastrophic in-flight breakup, rather than something like a multiple engine failure wherein the aircraft would be able to glide, so being shot down or a bomb being detonated on board seem like the most likely causes. My money's on the former.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/RussiaUkraineWar2022/comments/15zam...

There's no way everyone in the free world saw this coming and Prigozhin did not. I'm still scratching my head about what he thought his endgame was going to be after the coup.

Easy: he thought the coup would be the action with the highest chance of success at the point when he had committed himself to going ahead with it.

He was going to lose control of Wagner if the coup didn't succeed, whether or not he tried. So no surprise he made that attempt. You don't get to where he did in life without being bold, taking risks, and being lucky. And it's likely that at the point where he had already committed himself to the coup, it looked more likely to succeed than it does now with the benefit of hindsight.

As for why he kept hanging around Russia... where else is he going to go? He was a wanted man everywhere. Wanted by both the civilized world, and Russia. There are no good options in that circumstance.

Still, if your options are ending up in The Hague or getting fired by your murderous boss, internationally embarrassing your boss in order to get a better severance package seems to be so much, much worse than either option.

But again, we are talking about a literal mafia boss. He probably was dumb enough to think he had actual leverage.

What makes you think a mafia boss would be stupid? Wouldn't street smart be exactly the kind of trait that would put you in the upper echelons of a mafia state such as Russia.

I think there is a lot more to this story than what has come to light. I suspect they were threatening to kill his family and had the means to do so.

> What makes you think a mafia boss would be stupid? Wouldn't street smart be exactly the kind of trait that would put you in the upper echelons of a mafia state such as Russia.

What makes you think a mafia boss would be smart? Their defining features are ruthlessness and brutality, not intelligence or "street smarts". Putin for example is known for bombing civilian apartment buildings to get into power and very publicly poisoning traitors with polonium and nerve agents, not to mention entering a disastrous war and tanking the Russian economy.

Those upper echelons are only there as an accident of history. They were in the right place and the right time to loot the Russian state during privatization while killing, imprisoning, and controlling all their opposition.

> Those upper echelons are only there as an accident of history.

That seems like an awfully bold assertion. Mafia bosses have a different set of rules than most of us, but to think they survive by repeatedly flipping a coin and being lucky is preposterous.

That’s literally how all the Russian oligarchs got their power. By being in the right place at the right time to buy up all the privatized industries for a tiny fraction of what they were literally worth.

Those that flipped tails are dead or in prison.

If you pick 100 people off the street, line them up for a race for a million dollars, and fire a starting pistol... the one who crosses the finish line first doesn't do so by luck.

So you do not believe intelligence played a role? It was inconsequential how smart a person was?

I think you're judging him by values of "normal" people and weigh the average outcomes of choices. But criminals are known as people willing to take risks and would bet on low-probable but very lucrative outcome.

A route in Hague was a guaranteed lifetime sentence, while playing some role in the elites gave some low-probable possibilities.

> Easy: he thought the coup would be the action with the highest chance of success at the point when he had committed himself to going ahead with it.

From some of the post-coup reporting (Washington Post?), there were comments from the US intel community that the coup had much wider support past Wagner, but was set to launch several days later.

Russian intelligence caught wind of it... and decision was made to launch it prematurely.

Granted, the US intel community is far from an unbiased party, but it would explain Prigozhin's calculus is a more believable way.

And oligarchs being upset at Putin for upsetting the business-as-usual applecart for no good reason isn't unreasonable.

It almost certainly wasn't a coup, nor was it intended to be. It was a boyar making a pilgrimage to Moscow to petition the king for help. Specifically, with Shoigu and Gerasimov's takeover of Wagner.

See Mark Galeotti's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Galeotti ) writings. I can't find where he discusses this in his podcast, but https://www.patreon.com/posts/prigozhins-plot-86895135

> When it comes down to it, Prigozhin was not trying to supplant Putin so much as petition him. This formulation was suggested by Anatoly Pinsky in a very interesting article in the War on the Rocks (https://warontherocks.com/2023/07/prigozhin-as-petitioner-ma...). It was disruptive, it may even have seemed dangerous, but the perverse irony is that it came from a place of a kind of loyalty. Prigozhin was not in any way, questioning Putin‘s right to rule; he was simply trying to influence his policies. In the quasi-mediaeval political environment of Putin‘s court, this is not necessarily personal disloyalty. Putin was clearly viscerally angry when he recorded his first message on the Saturday morning. He may also have been scared. But as he came to realise what was going on, he seems to have become less personally affronted. In other words, he not only came to understand what Prigozhin was doing, he excepted in a way, the fundamental systemic legitimacy of what he was doing.

> We do not have to start speculating about compromising material, or that Putin still fears Prigozhin, and his maybe 15,000 - although the figure is likely to be is rather smaller - Wagner fighters. Rather that Putin acknowledges Prigozhin was engaging in the sharp-elbowed politics that he himself has encouraged. After all, we have seen Igor Sechin set up a minister and get him imprisoned, Kadyrov repeatedly blackmail the federal centre for money, and security agencies frame, detain and possibly even defenestrate officers of their rivals. Horizontal conflict is at the heart of Putin's system.

> Of course, Prigozhin overreached. He needed to be punished, he needed to lose the opportunity to repeat this exercise, and he needed demonstratively to be banished from the blessed confines of Putin's circle (not that he was ever that close to the personage in reality). However, so long as he’s useful and so long as Putin accepts that he is true to the fundamentals of today’s neo-mediaeval Russian politics, then there may be a place for Prigozhin after all.

Okay, but as high-minded as this prose is, it ignores a pretty crucial thing - the only reason Wagner existed in the first place was to give some amount of plausible deniability between Russia and their foreign policy interventions. So countries like Germany could have a legal precedent to trade with Russia so long as all of the war crimes were technically off of the books.

So not only was this a huge miscalculation nationally that deeply embarrassed Putin, Wagner was supposed to look independent. So beseeching Putin for help only made it worse.

The irony is that Prigozhin probably thought he had leverage, but the only real thing of value to Moscow about Wagner's sad little army was the independence.

Sure, Wagner being "independent" in Africa was helpful.

The cause of this dispute, however, was the Russian MoD (Shoigu and Gerasimov) had decided that all Wagner employees operating in Ukraine and Russia were going to become part of the regular Russian military. Before Prigozhin's ersatz mutiny. see eg

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-military-trying-to-ta...

Thus there was no remaining pretense of independence, at least wrt Wagner forces operating in Ukraine.

I also don't think it embarrassed Putin, or at least not in the manner that (I suspect) you think. Putin's role is to intermediate disputes between the various competing boyars beneath him. He had let the Shoigu + Gerasimov vs Progozhin dispute fester instead of picking a winner. Hence Progozhin's march. The embarrassment stems from not fulfilling the role that only Putin can play in their political system (ie the final determination of disputes from the various independent actors operating underneath him, including both formal state agencies and oligarchs/informal agencies.)

Also, Prigozhin's post-march endgame was obvious: he continues to operate Wagner in Ukraine, and -- if possible -- removes Shoigu + Gerasimov. With an eye to developing his own independent power base in Russia, which Prigozhin didn't previously have.

If you think the plan to nationlize Wagner wasn't explicitly approved by Putin, I have a bridge to sell you.

Ukraine might blow it up though.

>It was a boyar making a pilgrimage to Moscow to petition the king for help.

There's no way Prigozhin thought Putin didn't understand what was going on. The narrative of "If the honorable <leader> knew how bad things were down here, he would surely fix it" as if the leader hasn't seen the videos we all have seen is stupid, a lie, and was the same lie fed to peons in the Wehrmacht at the end of the second world war when they were starving in their trenches during the desperation of the liberation of Europe.

Whether you believe Putin approved or not, I don't think it matters -- Prigozhin was asking Putin to overrule the MoD.

The honorable leader blah blah petition has occurred throughout Russian history, particularly under the Tsar and even persisting into the Soviet era.

Thank you. I find it absurd that it is viewed as a coup attempt when it seems clearly targeting Gerasimov and Shoigu.

Nevertheless, Putin was clearly not swayed.

> I'm still scratching my head about what he thought his endgame was going to be after the coup.

It isn't a contradiction for smart people to fuck up and do dumb things. Sometimes people just miscalculate and make mistakes.

Through the use of power and connections, some people manage to fix their mistakes and synchophants start claiming it was "4D chess" all along.

Really they just screw up like everyone else, but their resources often allow them to recover.

When they screw up big enough, you're left with "how did they not see it coming" "paradoxical" situations like this.

He also had much more information and experience than any of us. Perhaps his decision wasn't that ridiculous from his point of view even though it turned out the way it did.

Options

Remaining in Bahmut = sure death

Leaving Bahmut = disobeying orders, judged by desertion. He had executed desertors before and had a very public speech than desertors deserve to die and will be executed. result: jail (and death) or death.

Coup = Free card out of the Bahmut tomb, and maybe live for one couple months more as long as he don't try to return to Moscow.

A todo Prigozhin le llega su San Martin I suppose. Africa can breathe with relief today.

Precision: Priogozhin is not yet confirmed dead, he and Utkin(the commander of Wagner, a.k.a code name Wagner) were among the passengers on the list but no bodies identified yet.

There is a second Wagner plane(RA02748) currently circling around Moscow.

There are also unconfirmed videos already appearing of the fall, looks like anti-aircraft missiles.

Well fuck that guy.

Do take a chance to enjoy his mastery of the art of disguise however

https://nypost.com/2023/07/06/photos-show-wagner-boss-yevgen...

If you are going to make a move at a dictator you are either successful or you die.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who is familiar with the situation.

In Russia murdering officials, enemies and people who do not fall in line is quite common.

Prigozhin had high approval among the ultra nationalists. Not sure if offing him will be good for Putin.

You mean the ultra nationalists like Strelkov/Girkin? Seems Putin really cares about what they think.

Update: Senior Wagner personnel have confirmed to Rogov(senior russian person in Zaporozhiye) that both Prigozhin and Utkin/Wagner are dead.

Source: Rogov's telegram.

Lin Biao, the second in command in China back in 1971, allegedly attempted a coup , and when he's defecting to USSR his plane crashed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Biao#%22Lin_Biao_incident%...

I think it's interesting that they killed 9 other people too. Not very clean. Wouldn't they have had many opportunities to kill just him in the past?

He supposedly made a media appearance just the other day. Could that have been the reason they went with this rush job of a murder?

Assuming it wasn't an accident, the collateral damage is a feature, not a bug. Not only will you die if you rebel, but everyone around you will, too - keeps people from getting ideas, and others from following them.

I suspect as part of his "deal" he keeps a huge security entourage that goes with him everywhere. It's probably his own private plane too. He probably had every possibility thought out except for literally getting shot out of the sky by a defense battery: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66599733

Which is a weird possibility to miss. When it comes to Russian crimes in Ukraine, shooting an entire civilian air liner out of the sky is something that is on the table.

Even if he honestly didn't think Putin would shoot him out of the sky, Russian defense batteries are on high alert with the frequent drones, and they've been terrible at FoF already in this war. Honestly, any plane in the sky over Russia is actively at risk of being shot down by accident.

It is likely that most of the passengers were associates of Prigozhin. Killing Wagner top brass would be an advantage for Putin. Putin doesn't care about the optics beyond showing his power.

Also, Prigozhin had a whole mercenary army and would have been protected on the ground. No way that he would accidentally fall out a window.

His second plane flying behind the first turned back to Moscow.

Well. At least it wasn't a slow painful death from Polonium or Novichok.

Small mercies in what appears to be a merciless regime.

Assuming he was indeed on the plane: He lasted longer than I expected.

There's also a small possibility he'd staged his own death. Regardless of that, I shudder at how easily Russia eliminates their own people.

Absolutely. We probably won't know for a long time.

Even the official story seems to be air defense.

[I am not a pilot.]

[ETA: see replies, I've been convinced that air defense is, with the available information at this particular moment, the most likely explanation.]

I've read a few articles and not seen that suggested, but this is a developing story.

WSJ is reporting that this is footage of the crash:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UQAUj914h0

Assuming it's genuine, that looks more like a stall than a surface to air missile to my untrained eyes.

There are clearer videos posted, some showing that it's missing a wing.

Do you have a link?

Try this? https://t.me/pilotblog/6196

In particular, the video with the "112" watermark.

Interesting, yes I see what you mean, and it does look to my (again untrained) eye that these are videos of the same event.

Both the parent article and this one seem to omit the first several seconds of the video, which shows what looks like dissipating smoke clouds above the plane; the woman filming it mentions hearing two explosions and seems to think it's a Ukrainian drone being shot down.

Gotcha. I see the smoke here for just a moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um_awL0T_OY&t=341

More like air offense.

The best part is that it plausibly could have been an accident. Russia has shot down MULTIPLE of their own planes and helicopters, and allegedly russian SAM crews are under trained and very very much on edge, and that was before a drone blew up next to the kremlin and multiple drones exploding in moscow for like an entire week.

How many domestic flights has Russia downed? The plane was like 11 minutes into a Moscow to St. Petersburg leg.

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/ra-02795#31b7cbf...

Not necessarily domestic but Russian Air Defence systems has a rich history of downing passenger planes.

From recent history, Iran downed Ukrainian passenger plane in Tehran using Russian Tor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_International_Airlines...

Russian backed rebels downed Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine using Russia supplied Buk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17

Then there are other incidents during the Cold War.

AUI752 was shot down by Iranians, not Russians. They happened to be using gear bought from Russia, but that's not really important.

MH17 wasn't shot down by the Russian military either, but independent rebels. Basically Russia gave anti-aircraft equipment to disorganized yahoos, who then proceeded to do disorganized yahoo things with it. Surprised Pikachu face.

All of this could have happened with US equipment too; the equipment wasn't at fault, the choices people made were at fault, and those choices weren't (directly) made by the Russian military.

That said, friendly fire has happened in combat zones (e.g. [1]), but this is ... kind of normal and happens in any armed force, and Prigozhin's plane wasn't anywhere near a combat zone. It's still possible it was mistaken for a drone or missile (especially as there have been missile attacks), but I don't know ... seems a little to coincidental it just so happens to be Prigozhin's plane, especially with the history of people inconvenient to Putin falling out of windows, down stairs, ending up with radioactive material in their possession without their knowledge, brutally accidentally cutting of their own head while combing their hair, etc.

[1]: https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/07/russia-shot-down-it...

Russian weapons taking down civilian aircraft all the time V.S. Western weapons not doing this despite its much widespread use(check out the number of US bases) can be an indication of weapon design issues or limitations.

It's not true that AUI752 or MH17 was done by choice, it's very unlikely that those who destroyed these planes wanted to kill bunch of civilians in a very high profile fashion to spice up their already precarious situations.

It's probably not the case with the Wagner situation because there's a motive and symbolism but I also wouldn't omit the possibility of it being a "happy accident" for Putin. An oopsie by overly alert operator expecting yet another drone attack.

This has happened to the U.S. with Iran Air 655. Ultimately shooting at an aircraft based just on a radar blip is inherently error prone. The biggest difference probably is that the U.S. relies more on fighters for air defense and usually the rules of engagement require a visual confirmation, which is very unlikely to mistake an airliner for a military jet.

Did the plane "crash" due to a collision with a missile?

"Earlier, a Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone reported that the jet was shot down by air defences in Tver region, north of Moscow."

Unconfirmed, but seems very plausible.

Sabotage? Attack? This seems awfully convenient for a state notorious for its detractors falling out of windows or drinking radioactive tea.

Assuming he actually was aboard.

Apparently an accidental collision with a missile.

Secret service was photographed in the ground. I am sure they happen to have dental records with them.

Disgruntled RU AA operator pulling trigger cause Wagner toasted his friend's helicopter during mutiny is poetic justice.

Finally I will never again be fed with the content by the creepiest and weirdest social media influencer.

Something happened to Kadyrov?

oh god, forgot about that one

Kadyrov is Putin's b**h. He's safe for now.

their relationship is more complicated. Some might argue Putin is Karydov's b**h, seeing as how the federal government is paying large amounts of money to keep formal control over Chechnya and Kadyrov's clan happy.

Looks like there a Twitter/X video supposedly showing it:

https://twitter.com/echofm_online/status/1694390751839314029

On the left the unusual cloud looks very much like the contrail of a missile like object flying mostlt vertically.

But his jet would be too high for a manpad, and a fighter jet would have likely fired from above cloud cover and missile wouldn't have left a contrail. There is some separation between left suspect cloud and the start of the jets con/smoke even. The visible jets con/smoke is wobbly which makes it seem like the was jet hit and then started tumbling before it breaks apart at quite low altitude. Whatever happened rapidly made the jet enter unstable flight.

Is it likely the plane was shot down if so likely a shoot and scoot system like pantasir S1, or the cloud is nothing and it was a small bomb on board.

I put my money on faking his own death.

Mostly uninformed hot take.

The chances that this is an accident are pretty low. Putin wanted to get as little blowback as possible from knocking him off, since he's widely popular. I'm sure he didn't think twice about murdering 9 other innocent people at the same time.

Presumably 8, because judging by the statements, Dmitry Utkin - his right-hand man - was on board. He is a hardened criminal, a murderer and a lover of Nazi symbols on his body.

You should also mention Utkin's callsign: Wagner.

I don’t think many on a Wagner private aircraft are “innocent”. Maybe not even the pilot or stewardess, if there was one.

As with other suspected recent Russian / Putin assassinations, the very audacity is a key component. "We'll blow your plane out of the sky and send nine others to their graves" is a strong message, much as polonium tea, street gunnings, and killing journalists in their homes have been.

> murdering 9 other innocent people

Everybody in that list were high ranks in the Wagner group. All supporting if not directly commiting many atrocities and war crimes in Sudan, Syria or Ukranie. We talk of a group executing people with hammers or cutting their hands and beheading them while recording all, and sending the video to all the contacts in the phone of the victim.

Calling them "innocent people" is extremely generous.

The most interesting part is how carefully the killer assured to behead the top of the group at the same time in one single hit.

Can we fix the title? I don’t know if the bbc changed it after this was submitted but he’s not confirmed dead only presumed and the linked article title says as much.

He was supposedly in Africa several hours before this so it’s still suspicious

BBC changed the title. Source on "He was supposedly in Africa several hours before"?

Don't have a great one. I know he said he was in Africa[1] a few days ago and in a thread on this topic on reddit I saw people discussing some video he had released a few hours before but they didn't link it. They were also speculating if it had been recorded long before he has supposedly showed back up in Russia on that plane or not.

[1]https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/21/europe/russia-yevgeny-prigozh...

Unless it's a different video than the one I know about, it was released on Monday.

Analysis of unconfirmed open source media suggests either a SAM or air-to-air missile was used to bring it down due to a pattern of small, inward puncture marks indicative of a blast-frag proximity warhead. A bomb on-board would've created outward, localized, and larger mushrooming deformation.

At the same time, the head of Russia's aerospace forces, Sergei Surovikin, was fired for being too close to Prigozhin. It's still unclear if he's on an actual vacation, in hiding, detained, disappeared, or dead.

"On the passenger list" is interestingly different from "on the plane"...

[Edit: According to https://www.yahoo.com/news/yevgeny-prigozhin-killed-plane-cr...:

> The Wagner mercenary boss was on board the aircraft when it came down, authorities have said.

So, he was on the plane. (Or Russia is lying about it.)

I’m scratching my head wondering why there was a passenger list at all for a private flight, and beyond that, why he would put his name on it if he were actually on the flight, given he uses doubles and disguises and fake names. Was he over-confident and sloppy?

I was just reading the New Yorker's profile and history of Prigozhin/Wagner group: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/07/inside-the-wag...

Please fix the title: Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin presumed dead after Russia plane crash

Unfortunately HN doesn't give you very long to change the title, and news orgs commonly rewrite headlines as time goes on. The submitted title was copied as it appeared at the time of submission.

FWIW, every attempt at confirming this is coming to the same conclusion: that Prigozhin was on the plane.

This wreaks of foul play. Have they confirmed it was an anti-aircraft missile that brought down the plane and not a bomb? Why the delay killing him? Why was Prigozhin even in Moscow I thought he was exiled? Wasn’t he just in Africa and made a video yesterday?

Plenty of speculation that Putin bumped him off, but it could very well be the other extreme: Prigozhin knew Putin wasn't going to let him live, regardless of any "deal", and so he faked his death?

Both are just ass-pulls without further information.

If he was smart enough to fake his own death, he probably would have done it in Ukraine, rather than staging the coup at all.

The assumptions for my wild ass theory are that he thought the coup was going to succeed. Remember, he drove something like a thousand kilometers towards Moscow, AFTER it was clear what he was doing. There are videos of Rosgvardia soldiers just standing by and letting his column through. He was attacked by helicopters, and shot at least one down, so it was going pretty well. IMO he honestly should have just gone through with it, but that's only because I hold no value in his life or Putin's.

After it failed, I assume he knows Putin was going to at least try and kill him. That's why I think he would try to fake his own death.

But eh, that's just as likely to me as some other crazy 3D chess.

He personally was never actually in the convoy. So it was hard to believe he was every that invested in its success.

What makes you say that?

Mussolini was in Milan, and stayed in Milan, when he ordered the coup march to Rome.

Mussolini lead his coup from >100-600km away from the march, why would the leader of Wagner need to be in the convoy?

>After it failed

but thats the thing - the coup didnt fail. Dude was ~one hour from entering Moscow and taking it over with minimal opposition lacking heavy weapons. He chose to stop, he alone decided against toppling russian government and becoming the new tzar.

Smart people don't always get everything right. With the information he had at the time, and the situational awareness he had at the time, he might have had reason to believe the coup could have succeeded -- or at least was the best out of bad options.

There's no reason why someone might have failed at a coup but also succeeded at faking his own death to avoid repercussions.

Not saying that's what's happened here, but I think your reasoning against it is flawed. People are complex, and do smart things in some situations, and dumb things in others. And sometimes the dumb things aren't obviously dumb until after the fact.

what are the odds this is a faked death so prigozhin can chill on a beach island somewhere?

I had been floating around this theory that the original Wagner "mutiny" was actually a maskirovka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception) and was being coordinated together by Putin and Prigozhin.

This complete speculation and mostly goes against the traditional narrative (i.e. Putin's legacy is now staked on the Ukraine invasion) but it would have accomplished the following, basically giving them more options and room to maneuver (both on the battlefield and in the political sphere):

a) Allow Russia to disengage/extricate itself from Ukraine with a plausible/save face reason ("internal security reasons") b) Let them re-position Wagner forces to Belarus or along other boarders c) Lull Ukraine/the world into a false sense of security d) Purge/re-organize their military high command

I wonder if this plane crash is part of it?

This plane crash would put the lie to that theory.

Not necessarily, he may have outlived his usefulness. Assuming Putin and Prigozhin knew; now only Putin knows.

Yes, because Prigozhin would be so incredibly stupid as to not have foreseen that possibility and taken out some insurance because of that.

Well, he was stupid enough to take a "deal" from Putin and then not disappear from the face of the earth. What he was doing hanging out still in Russia after his coup attempt is just... insane.

He was also stupid enough to get in a private plane and fly over territory that has Russian SAMs. With the crap going on in Moscow from those drones, and the absolute inability for Russian air defense to de-conflict an airspace, pretty much nobody should feel safe in a plane in the air in Russia.

I don't think he had a whole lot of options on that. But on the insurance bit he did and if there was any kind of pre-arrangement I would expect it to come out. And if it doesn't we can put that conspiracy to bed.

Completely hearsay at this point, but a telegram channel linked above is saying that wagner has a contingency plan that will be "activated" following confirmation of prigozhyn and other leader's death. Maybe another move towards Rostov. Again, hearsay, but last time it was pretty spot on

I would be surprised if that weren't the case, but then again, it may have been arranged but it won't be acted upon. It will be an interesting time in Russia in the next couple of months, but this sort of domino stone kicking could well have unintended consequences.

I don't think that would matter. The truth is so muddied that it's hard to know what to believe. Which, in war and propaganda, is usually the point.

It is unbelievable to me that he would've betrayed Putin and not expected something bad to happen.

But it is not so unbelievable that he never betrayed Putin and his expectations were irrelevant, because he was following a path with no forks or alternatives.

Stop buying into the "Putin is a master planner" bullshit. Putin is an average human who got high off his own supply and started believing his own rumors.

Wagner mutinied because Putin barely has control over anything anymore, and Prigozhin was getting a little fame, and had a legitimate army at a time where Russia couldn't even defend it's own territory from a raving band of humvees, real mad max shit.

The Wagner mutiny was not some plan. At least not for Putin.

>Stop buying into the "Putin is a master planner" bullshit.

Getting up in the morning and following dictatorship 101 rules like the day before is not being a "master planner".

Authoritarian rulers fear coups. They use paramilitary entities to keep the regular military under control. When they fear an imminent coup, they continue to use such entities, because it is the real military which could have enough popular support to succeed.

The simplest possible explanation for the publicized events is that Prigozhin never stopped doing his job, never changed his role, nor failed to follow orders. A not-so-public, but not completely hidden purge occurred. And when Prigozhin was done, he exited stage left.

That seems to me the correct application of Occam's razor in this case. Everything else, in my opinion, is the wild speculation without evidence.

Just the text length of the parent post is shorter, so their explanation is better by definition according to Occam's razor (only joking).

a) Russia has not disengaged

b) While some Wagner troops relocated to Belarus, Russia has been visibly neutering them and discrediting them. Coupled with apparent conflicts of Lukashenko not wanting to fund them

c) Ukraine is at war

d) they did not purge or reorganize their high command. They doubled down on the same dumbasses

So… no

Or it is exactly what it looks like. War was going like shit, Prigozhin got very angry and went off half cocked with no exit strategy, Putin did what Putin does and eliminated him (and what literally everyone who isn't using motivated reasoning to manufacture 4D chess situations expected). Putin blundered into a shitty war, Prigozhin blundered into a shitty aborted coup. Even if you think they're both somehow hyper-intelligent individuals, situationally there's nothing preventing smart people from fucking up and miscalculating badly, that isn't a paradox needing resolving. People do dumb shit. All of them.

Musk bought twitter, Lee Sukbae and Kim Ji-Hoon didn't know half as much about superconductivity as they thought, Stockton Rush made a submersible out of composite, Putin declared war on Ukraine, Prigozhin tried a coup.

> I had been floating around this theory that the original Wagner "mutiny" was actually a maskirovka (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception) and was being coordinated together by Putin and Prigozhin.

Considering how many planes, helicopters and other various bits of equipment were destroyed I doubt it.

Those couple days represent some of the worst days in the Russian air forces history for loses.

Shocking. Not that it happened, but that it took this long.

Wow! Did not see that coming at all. Former friends of Putin should avoid high elevations and food.

If true, the only surprise is why it would have been a surprise to him. I couldn't figure out why he felt so free to travel in Russia.

My guess is that he knew he was a dead man walking, wherever he was; he was just living out his last days/weeks recognizing that he was beyond saving.

He was going to military conventions trying to re establish Wagner as a local power in Africa…

It's like a really unsympathetic retelling of the myth of Icarus.

The only surprise for me is that it took two months since the attempted coup.

Hypothesis: he just faked his own death, to allow him to operate in Africa for a few years unnoticed. Of course, if his dental records are matched to a corpse later today, this will be a short-lived hypothesis.

That depends who is doing/reporting the matching. This could very well be an Epstein-like situation where we'll simply never know the verifiable truth.

...and hospital windows.

And tea.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qMFFlF0xdI8

And umbrellas.

Apparently his second plane is flying at the moment?

Sounds like a coincidence waiting to happen.

Amongst other coverage and reports, from other HN submissions:

- Prigozhin on Manifest of Plane That Crashed in Russia <https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/plane-carrying-wagner-owner...>

- Wagner Chief Prigozhin Reported Dead After Russian Forces Shoot Down Plane <https://www.newsweek.com/yevgeny-prigozhin-dead-plane-shot-d...>

- Yevgeny Prigozhin on Manifest of Plane That Crashed in Russia <https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/yevgeny-prigozhin-plane-cra...>

- Wagner’s Yevgeniy Prigozhin believed to be aboard crashed plane in Russia <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/23/yevgeniy-pri...>

- Russian officials say Prigozhin was on passenger list of jet that crashed <https://www.npr.org/2023/08/23/1195466126/russia-wagner-prig...>

- Russian Wagner chief Prigozhin listed on board plane that crashed in Moscow <https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news...>

- Wagner Chief Prigozhin Listed Aboard Crashed Jet, Reports Say <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-23/prigozhin...>

- Wagner boss Prigozhin listed as passenger in fatal plane crash <https://www.axios.com/2023/08/23/wagner-prigozhin-plane-cras...>

- Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin on passenger list of crashed plane <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-66599774>

- Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin dies <https://abcnews.go.com/International/wagner-group-leader-yev...>

- Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin listed as passenger on plane which crashed <https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/aug/23/russia-uk...>

- Prigozhin Listed as Passenger on Plane That Crashed, Killing All Aboard <https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/08/23/world/prigozhin-russ...>

- Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin killed in plane crash with nine others <https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/23/wagner-mercenary-boss-yevgen...>

- Yevgeny Prigozhin was passenger on crashed plane, Russian officials say <https://www.ft.com/content/812c9da3-80f2-4fe1-8fad-0b4441d19...>

- Wagner boss Prigozhin killed in plane crash in Russia <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66599733>

- Wagner chief among passengers on crashed plane – officials [RT] <https://www.rt.com/russia/581729-wagner-chief-plane/>

There's one further which is an opinion piece from a few weeks back, well before the present news: "Prigozhin will either be dead or there will be a second coup" <https://www.ft.com/content/03f220e1-6a7e-4850-bf4e-4b0f521d8...>.

To which one is strongly tempted to respond: "why not both?"

https://archive.is/mh2eT

Anyone else get endless captchas these days with archive.is? Tried several browsers including no adblocking and such to no avail.

Yes.

It's possibly Cloudflare-related:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37148681>

Oh yeah good catch, I use AdGuard and thought I had it set to an internal DNS resolver for it's upstream but nope, it was CloudFlare and fixing it fixed the Archive issue. Thanks.

I think pretty much everyone who is familiar with the backstory here knew this was coming in some form. I'm honestly surprised it took this long for him to have a tragic accident involving anti aircraft missiles, a bomb, sabotage, or something similar.

I guess the only question left is if he was really on the plane or is faking his death to avoid possible repercussions. Guy has to have a lot of money and safe houses etc to hide in.

I'm curious why he didn't see it coming and finish his push to Moscow. He was dead the moment he started down that path and could have only saved himself with a coup.

He was hopelessly underpowered to take and hold Moscow in any meaningful sense. That’s not a credit to Russia. He just didn’t have the firepower.

As someone else mentioned, Moscow wasn't defenseless and they would never have successfully held any part of the city. IMHO he understood that even before the 'march on moscow', the russian defense establishment was already plotting his demise and the dissolution of his private army, and he had no good solutions. This was a guy who would be looking out for radioactive milkshakes for the rest of his life no matter what.

You come at the king, you best not miss.

Wonder if he faked his death. Seemed like dead man walking for how many RU aviators Prigozhin killed.

The pilot must have accidentally left the plane mid-flight. Happens to the best of us.

Update: the latest news is that the plane had an accidental collision with an missile.

What are the odds!?

autopsy showed he was full of polonium and shot himself twice in the back of the head before jumping out of a plane that accidentally collided with a missile

At the very same time it is very surprising, and yet it was so very expected.

I wouldn't think that he uses his real identity for travel.

Talk shit, get hit? (with a surface to air missile)

At least he didn't get thrown out a window;)

They didn't really need to kill the other 9

private plane with 7 passengers? chances are they were all wagner + wagner crew

They have killed around 100k innocent Ukrainians, I don't think they care much.

That's a strange title.

Russian warlord Prigozhin who challenged Putin 2 month ago is dead (together with 9 others) after his plane was shut down in Russia by a rocket (most likely an execution ordered by Putin).

We have seen those titles everywhere. This one was interesting! (Flightradar context)

The rocket thing is unconfirmed - it was too high for most AA systems except buk/s-300/400 class as the flightradar data suggests and at least from some pics of the wreck that are circulating online you can’t see the damage that you’d expect from such massive missile.

why does it have to be AA? why not air-to-air?

Yes it could be air to air but then someone would see a second plane. Device that was planted onboard seems way easier tho

Oh also you’d see very characteristic tail wing damage and pics show it nearly intact on the ground

Would you though? An F-14 could fire missiles from 40 miles out. I would only imagine Russians having something similar.

i would think they would want a visual to exclude any sort of mistake but maybe I'm overthinking it...

The altitude was trivially in range of Pantsir systems, of which Russia has many. The Pantsir-fired missiles are fragmentation weapons that basically shoot out metal rods like a hand grenade, and take the target down by catastrophically damaging the control surfaces and engines, rather than turning it into a fireball.

Panstir range is very short - wikipedia says 20km. It would need to be deployed at exact right spot. Why risk it when you can take it out with s-300 from a comfortable distance?

Depends on the version. Newer models double that range, but either way 30000ft is only about 10 km, so if you control Rosaviatsiya you can just instruct ATC to send the aircraft over a particular area where you've pre-positioned your asset.

Anyways I'm not saying it wasn't an S-300 but Pantsirs are easy to deploy. It's a single truck.

We'll probably never know the truth.

I’m def leaning towards a planted device. Any kind of aa system needs involvement from mod and there are many sympathizers and the kill chain will be long. Planting a device in a parked plane sounds like something fsb can pull off on their own without too many people involved

The footage I've seen pretty clearly shows a missile plume.

I'm no expert but that plume could just as well be from explosion and there are no contrails visible. Also another point - SBIRS would likely detect the launch if it took place so we may actually know if us intelligence decides to leak that (which I'd expect they would).

Planted device would have caused a lot more damage. These planes fly high and are pressured. Seems like only another wing was damage and ripped off in this case.

That’s not sus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vIBijzg4w

He lost his mind in Bakhmut...

When 'accidentally' falling off a hi-rise balcony doesn't send the appropriate message...

So Putin has just very publicly demonstrated that assassination is a justified use of conflict resolution to the world (and Ukraine).

With this event being, what, the tenth time?

Prigozhin's no Jamal Khashoggi... this outcome for him seems nowhere near uniquely Russian, having attempted a failed coup d'etat.

> Putin has just very publicly demonstrated that assassination is a justified use of conflict resolution to the world

To an armed insurrection? It's sort of the default.

Isn't sort of the default a trial? Especially if the leader has an absolute power over the police and the courts?

> Especially if the leader has an absolute power over the police and the courts?

He doesn’t. If he had, Prigozhin wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did. Putin needed to know that when he gave the kill order, it would be obeyed. The entire Russian state is in such embarrassing shambles that this isn’t an order he could confidently issue without serious concern that it would circle back on him. Hence the stab in the back; Moscow couldn’t survive a serious trial, a fact almost evidenced by the success of Wagner’s march.

I don't see how MoD's inability to scramble enough units in the area to stop the march is related to level of Putin's grip over the judges and legislators.

> Putin's grip over the judges and legislators

Judges and legislators don’t keep dictators in power, armies do.

Wikpedia lists, by my count, 115 assassinations since Putin effectively assumed power in 1999:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_and_Russian_ass...>

Several of those are in Arabic / Islamic states (Syria, Afghanistan, etc.), but numerous others have occurred in Russia itself, in former Soviet states, and in independent and Western states including the UK, Turkey, and Germany. A large number appear to be political rather than military targets, notably of journalists and opposition politicians.

Good riddance if true.

Putin has the sense of drama.

He's the mafia boss but with the actual nation state resources. (we can thank him for not spreading polonium across all of London this time)

Whether the information is confirmed or not, it's honestly scary. He Protec but He Also Attac, and he never forgets.

Could be a co-incidence, but two months ago was June 23rd - the withdraw from Ukraine and start of the advance on Moscow.

There was a moment everyone thought he chilled and became civilized, or that he is only a puppet of oligarchs... but he really seems to be literally the cruelest alpha mafia boss.

> Putin has the sense of drama

Putin was literally unable to resist the Wagner's march on Moscow. He had to negotiate a cease fire. The dramatic move would have been eliminating Prighozin then, not two months later.

revenge is a dish best served cold.

Putin's shored up on the internal police structures w/ heavy equipment (ie can't happen again re march on Moscow), purged on the military hard line that aligned to prighozin.

then applied the coup d'état, no need to rush.

prighozin was already being called a dead man walking on state tv.

> prighozin was already being called a dead man walking on state tv

The same state TV where the war has been going great, mind you. Putin had to do this. But dramatizing it as anything but a weak leader having to consolidate control before being able--not willing, able--to retaliate is pure theatre.

he also promised them amnesty if they backed down. This is another case in point that his word means absolutely nothing and any negotiation with him is pointless.

"they expect one of us the the wreckage, brother"))))

Coincidence?

It was unimaginable to me that Putin could let Prigozhin live after what he did. Brace for the conspiracy theories though that he faked his own death.

Already happening. I thought that guy in the checkout line at the 7-11 looked familiar...

probably fell out the window

... that is one thing you could do, if you were currently trying to convince Wagner mercenaries to join Russian MoD-controlled "PMCs" to replenish forces.

"Only in Russia" is become cliché at this point.

Putin had nothing to do with this, I'm sure...

nah

We can take bets, but I guess a spark plug must have gone jammed after clogs weren't oiled, so the diesel wouldn't ignited and the plane crashed.

indeed, the mechanics was on vacation in the UK to check out cathedrals in small towns.

These plane things are terribly unreliable.

Do private planes just crash or can it glide to a landing ona road

they usually do

but for unknown reasons, the passengers refused to glide and decided to plunge the plane to wilfully die.

now, since they wilfully died, there is no reason to trigger further investigations.

And supreme leader Putin will seek damages from the families of the passengers, as they destroyed his plane.

That depends on the kind and severity of the failure. You could have a full electrical failure and the plane would still fly. But when you miss a wing the rest doesn't really matter any more.

Usually, after they are shot down by air defense missiles, what’s left just crashes.

Perhaps some private planes (Cirrus) are better equipped to survive losing a wing, since they have rocket-deployed parachutes.

Somewhat boring video of the parachute in action ("boring" being a synonym for "an amazing triumph of safety engineering"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBCUQlF3MMU

14m video essay about the system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT58pzY41wA

(Reporting says this was an Embraer, this is strictly a tangent.)

Diesel engines don't have spark plugs.

Planes rarely have diesel engines as well.

I also am unsure how you are supposed to "oil the clogs" to prevent "jamming"

It's satire. It's not supposed to be any more accurate than the suggestion the mechanic was touring cathedrals.

An expected outcome he should not have stopped his advance on moscow

I think it's fair to say the expected outcome of that scenario is also prigozhin's death...

Why? What was going to stop him from getting to Moscow? He was tearing through the country virtually without resistance.

but an "honorable" one as all of the warrior movies would have us believe. this is just chicken shit assassination.

Thats was not a certainty and going out guns blazing is more in line with the character he built up

[I deleted my comment]

He was good at politics, until he wasn't

Saw this quote on the xitters...

BREAKING: A business plane carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Wagner Group, accidentally fell out of a window in the sky.

According to Russian state media, he didn't fall out of a window, it was a special landing operation.

That’s actually very humane treatment for an enemy of Putin’s. I’m surprised he wasn’t Novichokked.

Novo is for the blatant assassinations. Proghizin had some actual power so this is Putin providing an opportunity for that power base to come back quietly.

Shooting someone down with air defence isn't a blatant assassination?

Nope, Russian air defense has been shooting down their own planes for awhile now.

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