By EFE
Aug 25, 2023, 23:40 PM EDT
The Kremlin came out today in defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin, unanimously considered by the independent press and the opposition the main suspect after the plane crash of the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgueni Prigozhin.
“It’s all a lie,” said the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitri Peskov, in his first telematic press conference after a hiatus of almost three weeks.
Putin had already broken his silence the day before, conveying his condolences for the ten killed in the air disaster and praising the figure of Prighozin, despite having accused him of treason just two months ago, when he revolted against the Kremlin.
Whitewash Putin’s image
Peskov accused the West, which supports Ukraine in the war with Russia, of engaging in “speculation” and presenting the facts from “a certain angle.”
“When addressing this issue, you have to base yourself on facts,” he said, while acknowledging that these, for the moment, “are not many,” because there is an investigation underway. And he paraphrased Putin by assuring that the investigation will conclude “in the not too distant future.”
The President of Belarus, Alexandr Lukashenko, tried to lend a hand: “I cannot say who did it. I’m not going to play lawyer even for my older brother. But I know Putin (…) That’s why I can’t imagine that Putin did it, that Putin is guilty”.
Lukashenko stressed that Putin is a “calculating person, very calm and even slow when it comes to making decisions on less complex issues”, noting that, in case it is confirmed that it was a murder, the work had been “unprofessional and excessively crude”.
The West is clear
Meanwhile, official US sources informed the Wall Street Journal that the catastrophe was, in fact, an assassination, but not with a surface-to-air missile – something that the Pentagon has also ruled out – but rather sabotage with a bomb placed in the aircraft.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, also acknowledged that he had not been surprised by the news, and made his opinion clear about the main suspect. “There’s not much going on in Russia that Putin isn’t behind,” he said.
Although the great concern of the West is what will happen now with the Wagner group, which for weeks has been instructing Belarusian military units near the border with Poland and which has also resumed its operations in the Sahel, in Africa.
The spokesman of the Ukrainian Border Service, Andri Demechenko, assured on television today that the number of Wagnerite mercenaries in Belarus has not stopped decreasing in the last 48 hours.
In this regard, Lukashenko assured that “Wagner is alive and will live in Belarus no matter how much some do not want it.”
He played down satellite images showing the dwindling Wagner camp in the Mogilev region, insisting that the group’s “core” would remain in Belarus.
“In a few days, everyone will be here, about 10,000 people,” he stressed, noting that some Wagnerites are currently “on vacation.”
Keep reading:
– Drone hits a Moscow building while two others are intercepted by air defense
– US issues urgent alert for US citizens to leave Belarus immediately
– Video captures the moment a Russian missile hits a theater in Chernihiv, Ukraine, leaving 7 dead and 144 injured