A Suspicious Worldwide Mystery, Hidden in Plane Sight
The Yevgeny Prigozhin plane crash
A private plane belonging to the Russian state-funded private military company (PMC), the Wagner group, has mysteriously met its mayday on August 23rd, 2023. Barring federal nondisclosure, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is all but confirmed as one of the plane’s ten apparently unlucky victims.
But the question itching the inquisitive minds of the international world, propped up by the disturbing commonality of such incidents, is simple. Was it just bad luck? Or an assassination attempt gone right?
After all, Prigozhin was no friend of the Russian state. Doubtless, for decades Prigozhin was one of Putin’s closest allies. He was a supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on top of being Putin’s friend and chef. But that longstanding status quo was transfigured by an attempted coup d’etat the Wagner kingpin spearheaded against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s government exactly two months prior to the former’s demise.
June 23rd, 2023: rising tensions between the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Wagner group culminated in a rebellion. Prigozhin was a long-time detractor of the military for its failures in invading Ukraine. Regardless, the insurrection was short-lived, and many of its participants were granted amnesty. Even Prigozhin, following a discussion with Putin, was ostensibly cleared of criminal charges.
If that seems like a light response for an attempt at establishing a military monopoly in Russia, it is perhaps recompensed by the assassination of the strongman-cum-chef two months later. Though it is now too early to decisively say it was a state killing, evidence suggests the accident was more of an incident. Plane crashes are incredibly uncommon. On top of that, the man who tried to supplant the Russian military complex was a passenger on the jet. Blind logic might lead one to conclude it was an unfortunate coincidence. However, a spokesperson for the United States Pentagon, based on evidence from the ruins, says the plane plunged because of explosives on board.
But why else should we conclude this was intentional on Putin’s part, to remove a high-profile political figure?
Foremost is that Russia has a really well-established precedent for suspicious incidents far too common to be accidents. In the past year and a half alone, dozens of Russian and Russia-aligned businesspeople have passed under questionable circumstances. The list itself is horrifying. With reasons like suicide, hanging, beating, strokes, full-family homicide, heart attacks, shamanic toad poison, car collisions, falling out of windows, slipping off of cliffs, illness, drowning, phantom leukemia, accidental self-immolation, and even straight up suddenly dying, not to mention a helicopter crash, all targeting high-profile elites, it is no wonder people suspect Prigozhin’s death to be an assassination. Prigozhin is not the least high-profile Russian to randomly fall out of the sky, far from it, and the extreme commonality of elite businesspeople dropping dead suggests assassination.
Furthermore, plane crashes have always been a risky endeavor for world leaders. Summarized by journalist Emma Graham-Harrison on The Guardian, important politicians die from plane-related incidents disturbingly often. In 1994, Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana was shot down in a plane, resulting in the ethnic genocide of 800,000 Tutsis, an ethnic group in Rwanda. In 1961, the United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane was struck down while traveling to negotiations in the Congo. Two decades later, Portuguese Prime Minister Francisco Sá Carneiro was a passenger on a plane that crashed into a building. Investigations yet another two decades later concluded the plane had been sabotaged.
Mystery often shrouds aviation-related deaths, an oft-cited reason for the desirability of taking down planes to kill important people. However, there are examples of plane crashes in suspicious circumstances that investigations concluded were not assassinations. Polish President Lech Kaczyński died in a crash-landing at a Russian airport in 2005. Iraqi President Abdul Salam Arif, an opponent of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party prior to his seizure of power, died in a helicopter crash in 1966. These final examples counterbalance the theory that Prigozhin was assassinated. If these crucial figures died benignly, it remains possible that the Wagner commander did too.
Nevertheless, I think the Pentagon’s analysis of the crash is inescapable. In the short time frame, it is difficult to say with any confidence, but Prigozhin probably was assassinated, given the rebellion, the mysterious deaths of other high-profile Russians, and the desirability of plane assassinations.
Events like these that occur under suspicious circumstances are a reminder to us to critically think about the things that happen in our world. Putin seems to be actively eliminating opposition and strengthening the Kremlin. While it may not affect us now, I can say with confidence that developments like these are going to culminate in a vastly different international state of affairs.. Whether we like it or not, we are part of a global community. Events like these can and will affect you, and forming beliefs about them is critical. And in these circumstances, I urge everyone to avoid just jumping on the bandwagon of the leading theory. Just by reading a little and thinking a little, we can create informed opinions that help us better engage with our community and the world at large.