Russia’s dead mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin filmed a video reassuring supporters that he hadn’t been “liquidated” just a few days before he was killed in a fiery plane crash just over 30 miles from Vladimir Putin’s Valdai residence.
The video, released by a Prigozhin-affiliated Telegram channel on Thursday, appears to have been filmed on Aug. 19 or 20 while the Wagner Group boss was in Mali, where he was fighting to keep control of operations after his armed uprising in June intensified Wagner’s rivalry with the Russian Defense Ministry.
“For those discussing whether or not I’m alive, how I’m doing. It’s the weekend now, the second half of August 2023. I’m in Africa. Fans of discussing my liquidation, intimate life, earnings or anything else—actually, everything is fine,” he said.
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While the clip is likely to fuel conspiracy theories that the foul-mouthed warmonger’s death was staged—a theory circulated by the families of some Wagner mercenaries who believe the plane crash was a ruse—Prigozhin is wearing the same outfit in the new video as one he had on in a clip published on Aug. 21.
Prigozhin, who famously recruited convicted killers and rapists from Russian prisons to, as he put it, “win this damn war at any cost” for Putin, was buried at an ordinary St. Petersburg cemetery earlier this week after a strangely low-key funeral that only included about 20-30 people and no military honors.
Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin, a co-founder of the group and former GRU officer, was also killed in the Aug. 23 plane crash, but he received a drastically different farewell on Thursday. Despite his well-documented admiration of Nazi Germany and SS insignia tattoos, Utkin was buried at a Moscow area cemetery reserved for members of the Russian military with special merits, according to local reports.
Putin, in his first public comments on the plane crash, lauded the Wagner Group for its “significant contribution” in the country’s war against Ukraine and vowed to “never forget” them. But he seemed to take Prigozhin down a notch, describing him only as a “businessman.”
