CNN –
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “must have killed” Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and said there could be no peace talks with Putin over Ukraine.
In a Saturday Chron editorial, Johnson speculated about Prigozhin’s final moments, just days after a plane believed to be carrying the Wagner boss en route to St Petersburg in a field northwest of Moscow had crashed.
It’s not yet clear what caused the plane crash, but US and Western intelligence officials who spoke to CNN believe it was intentional.
“It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds between the explosion aboard the otherwise reliable Embraer Legacy 600 business jet and the moment when the Russian thug lost consciousness during his dizzying acceleration to Earth. and yet I am sure that in that moment he knew with perfect clarity what had happened,” Johnson wrote.
“He knew whose hidden hand was sending him 28,000 feet down to be burned with the rest of his Wagner groupmates in a fireball in the countryside of the Tver region north of Moscow – and then further down, of course, to the shadow to donate.” Prigozhin: down, down to Hades and the Tatar pit below.”
He went on to say that the man allegedly “behind the assassination of Prigozhin” was “the same man who authorised, for example, the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and Sergei Skripal in the UK”.
“As the detonation sucked the air out of the plane cabin, I’d bet the last thought in the doomed dome of Prigozhin’s skull was ‘Putin!’ was followed by one of the many obscenities the former jailer and hot dog vendor was so fluent in,” Johnson wrote.
The plane crash that is believed to have killed Prigozhin came exactly two months after the Wagner boss launched a short-lived uprising in Russia.
Experts doubt that the Wagner group can survive without Prigozhin.
The Kremlin said Friday that all necessary investigations, including genetic testing, were underway to determine whether Prigozhin died in Wednesday’s crash. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov vehemently denied claims that Russian authorities could have been involved. “It’s all an absolute lie,” he said.
On Thursday, Putin said he had known Prigozhin “for a very long time” and called him “a talented man, a talented businessman.”
In his editorial, Johnson called it a “high of conceit” that Prigozhin believed Putin would forgive him for challenging his government.
“As we watch the terrifying footage of this plane spiraling toward Earth, we witness something historic. This is the violent liquidation of his enemies by an existing head of state – on TV. “I can think of no other example of such blatant and unrestrained cruelty on the part of a world leader – not in our lifetime,” Johnson wrote.
“The mask is now completely removed. “Putin is exposed as a gangster, and his absurd televised ‘homage’ to the dead Wagner people is straight out of the pages of ‘The Godfather,'” Johnson concluded.