Fragments of hand grenade were found on the bodies of Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and other passengers, said Russian President Vladimir Putin about the deaths of the mercenary group chief and other key members who died in a flight crash recently.
Talking at Valdai Discussion Club think tank in Sochi, Putin said, “I know there is probably a question that is begging to be asked about what happened to the company's leadership. We know about the plane crash.”
Suggesting that the flight crash was caused by an internal explosion, Putin said, “The head of the Investigative Committee briefed me just the other day. Fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of those killed in the crash. There was no external impact on the plane, and this is an established fact, the result of an examination that was conducted by the Russian Investigative Committee," TASS agency reported quoting Putin.
Moscow had earlier denied any role in Prigozhin’s death. Earlier, US Intelligence reported that the plane crash presumed to have killed Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was “intentionally caused by an explosion”. US authorities had said that a surface-to-air missile that originated within Russia shot down the private jet with Prigozhin onboard.
However, suggesting that those died could have been under the influence of liquor or drugs as the deceased bodies were not subjected to those tests. “The investigation is ongoing, but, regrettably, no tests were carried out to determine whether alcohol or drugs were present in the blood of the deceased,” Putin reported. "In my opinion, a test of this kind should have been carried out, but it wasn’t," TASS quoted Putin as saying. Putin said during raids at Wagner offices by the Federal Security Service, five kilograms of cocaine along with ten billion rubles were seized.
A flight carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin and other key members of the mercenary group got killed in a flight crash on August 23. An Embraer private jet travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed in the Tver region.
