8月24日，在俄罗斯圣彼得堡，俄罗斯《生意人报》网站和俄罗斯1频道的手机和电脑屏幕上显示了瓦格纳集团雇佣军头目叶夫根尼·普里戈津在飞机失事中丧生的消息。(美联社)
一对情侣在临时纪念碑前自拍也没有叶夫根尼·普里戈津和德米特里·乌特金，后者是瓦格纳公司的幕后负责人，据称曾在俄罗斯军事情报部门任职，时间是2023年8月24日。(法新社)
一名男子在临时纪念碑前献花也没有叶夫根尼·普里戈津和德米特里·乌特金，后者是瓦格纳公司的幕后负责人，据称曾在俄罗斯军事情报部门任职，时间是2023年8月24日。(法新社)
华盛顿:美国一份初步情报评估得出结论，俄罗斯雇佣军领导人叶甫盖尼·普里戈任(Yevgeny Prigozhin)被炸死的飞机失事是由爆炸故意造成的。周四，俄罗斯总统普京赞扬了这位对其23年统治发起最大挑战的人。一名描述了初步评估的美国和西方官员表示，初步评估确定普里戈津“很可能”是目标，爆炸符合普京“长期以来试图压制批评者的历史”。这些官员要求匿名，因为他们没有被授权发表评论。他们没有提供爆炸原因的任何细节。外界普遍认为，爆炸还杀死了普里戈任的几名副手，目的是为挑战这位俄罗斯领导人权威的兵变报仇。五角大楼发言人莱德将军说，有关地对空导弹击落飞机的新闻报道是不准确的。他拒绝透露美国是否怀疑有炸弹。情报评估的细节浮出水面，普京向据报道在飞机上的人的家属表示哀悼，并指出普里戈津犯了“严重错误”。据俄罗斯民航局称，这架载有瓦格纳军事公司创始人和其他六名乘客的飞机周三从莫斯科起飞后不久坠毁，机上有三名机组人员。救援人员发现了10具尸体，俄罗斯媒体援引瓦格纳的匿名消息人士的话说，普里戈津已经死亡。但是还没有得到官方的证实。
President Joe Biden, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said he believed Putin was behind the crash, though he acknowledged that he did not have information verifying his belief. “I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised,” Biden said. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.” The passenger manifest also included Prigozhin’s second-in-command, who baptized the group with his nom de guerre, as well as Wagner’s logistics chief, a fighter wounded by US airstrikes in Syria and at least one possible bodyguard. It was not clear why several high-ranking members of Wagner, including top leaders who are normally exceedingly careful about their security, were on the same flight. The purpose of their joint trip to St. Petersburg was unknown. At Wagner’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, lights were turned on in the shape of a large cross, and Prigozhin supporters built a makeshift memorial, piling red and white flowers outside the building Thursday, along with company flags and candles. In this first comments on the crash, Putin said the passengers had “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine. “We remember this, we know, and we will not forget,” he said in a televised interview with the Russian-installed leader of Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin. Putin recalled that he had known Prigozhin since the early 1990s and described him as “a man of difficult fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life, and he achieved the results he needed — both for himself and, when I asked him about it, for the common cause, as in these last months. He was a talented man, a talented businessman.” Russian state media have not covered the crash extensively, instead focusing on Putin’s remarks to the BRICS summit in Johannesburg via video link and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Several Russian social media channels reported that the bodies were burned or disfigured beyond recognition and would need to be identified by DNA. The reports were picked up by independent Russian media, but The Associated Press was not able to independently confirm them. Prigozhin supporters claimed on pro-Wagner messaging app channels that the plane was deliberately downed, including suggesting it could have been hit by a missile or targeted by a bomb on board. Sergei Mironov, the leader of the pro-Kremlin Fair Russia party and former chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament said on his Telegram channel that Prigozhin had “messed with too many people in Russia, Ukraine and the West.” “It now seems that at some point, his number of enemies reached a critical point,” Mironov wrote. Russian authorities have said the cause of the crash is under investigation. Kuzhenkino resident Anastasia Bukharova, 27, said she was walking with her children Wednesday when she saw the jet, “and then — boom! — it exploded in the sky.” She said she was scared it would hit houses in the village and ran with the children, but it ended up crashing into a field. “Something sort of was torn from it in the air,” she added. Numerous opponents and critics of Putin have been killed or gravely sickened in apparent assassination attempts, and US and other Western officials long expected the Russian leader to go after Prigozhin, despite promising to drop charges in a deal that ended the June 23-24 mutiny. “It is no coincidence that the whole world immediately looks at the Kremlin when a disgraced ex-confidant of Putin suddenly falls from the sky, two months after he attempted an uprising,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while acknowledging that the facts were still unclear. “We know this pattern … in Putin’s Russia — deaths and dubious suicides, falls from windows that all ultimately remain unexplained,” she added. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also pointed the finger: “We have nothing to do with this. Everyone understands who does.” Soon after the plane went down, people on social media and news outlets began to report that it was a Wagner plane. Minutes after Russian state news agencies confirmed the crash, they cited the civil aviation authority as saying Prigozhin’s name was on the mainfest. Prigozhin was long outspoken and critical of how Russian generals were waging the war in Ukraine, where his mercenaries were some of the fiercest fighters for the Kremlin. For a long time, Putin appeared content to allow such infighting — and Prigozhin seemed to have unusual latitude to speak his mind. But Prigozhin’s brief revolt raised the ante. His mercenaries swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot. They then drove to within about 200 kilometers (125 miles) of Moscow and downed several military aircraft, killing more than a dozen Russian pilots. Putin first denounced the rebellion as “treason” and a “stab in the back.” He vowed to punish its perpetrators, and the world waited for his next move, particularly since Prigozhin had publicly questioned the Russian leader’s justifications for the war in Ukraine. But instead Putin made a deal that saw an end to the mutiny in exchange for an amnesty for Prigozhin and his mercenaries and permission for them to move to Belarus. Now many are suggesting the punishment has finally come. The Institute for the Study of War argued that Russian authorities likely moved against Prigozhin and his top associates as “the final step to eliminate Wagner as an independent organization.” Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin turned political consultant, said by carrying out the mutiny and remaining free, Prigozhin “shoved Putin’s face into the dirt front of the whole world.” Failing to punish Prigozhin would have offered an “open invitation for all potential rebels and troublemakers,” so Putin had to act, Gallyamov said. Videos shared by the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone showed a plane dropping like a stone from a large cloud of smoke, twisting wildly as it fell, one of its wings apparently missing. A free fall like that typically occurs when an aircraft sustains severe damage. A frame-by-frame AP analysis of two videos was consistent with some sort of explosion mid-flight.