A top confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to a plan to kill Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
According to a former Russian intelligence officer, Nikolai Patrushev, Security Council secretary for Russia, initiated the operation to eliminate Prigozhin, the Journal said. The plans were later seen by Putin, who did not oppose them, Western intelligence agencies told the medium.
Prigozhin died in a plane crash in August, just months after he and his group of mercenaries launched a short-lived uprising aimed at overthrowing Russia's defense minister.
The Kremlin has called claims that Putin was behind the crash “absolute lies,” but the Journal report provided new details linking one of the Russian leader's key allies to the attack.
While Prigozhin waited for a security check on his plane before takeoff from Moscow in August, a small bomb was planted under the wing, intelligence officials told the Journal. After the plane reached an altitude of about 28,000 feet, the wing exploded, causing the plane to crash and killing all ten people on board, including Prigozhin.
Patrushev is a long-time ally of Putin, having risen alongside him in the ranks of the Russian security services since the 1970s. Although his position at the head of the country's Security Council has little formal power, he often represents Putin in sensitive foreign talks. He is also believed to have orchestrated high-profile assassinations of dissidents and former spies.
Prigozhin was also a close ally of Putin and founded his business empire as a supplier to the Kremlin before becoming a warlord whose private army engaged in mining and mercenary work across Africa. But even before Prigozhin's mutiny, his outspoken criticism of Russia's military leaders during the war in Ukraine began to sour this relationship.
President Biden suspected that Putin was behind the crash on the day of the crash.
“There's not much going on in Russia that Putin isn't behind,” Biden told reporters.
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