The Russian president Vladimir Putin has suggested that the plane crash who killed Wagner’s mercenary leader in August, Yevgeny Prigozhinwas caused by hand grenades that detonated inside the plane and not by a missile attack.

The private Embraer plane in which Prigozhin was traveling to St. Petersburg crashed north of Moscow on August 23. All ten people on board died. Among these were two other prominent Wagner members, Prigozhin’s four bodyguards, and three members of the crew.

Putin suggests the plane was blown up from within. “Were found grenade fragments on the bodies of those killed in the accident,” he said at a meeting of the Valdai Debate Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

“There was no external impact on the plane; “This is already an established fact,” he emphasizes, thus dismissing claims by unnamed US officials who said shortly after the accident that they believed that had been knocked down.

However, it has not provided more details about how one (or several) grenades could have been detonated on board. He has said he believes that the researchers they were wrong by not having carried out alcohol and drug tests on the bodies of the victims killed in the accident.

HePrigozhin mutiny It posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s government since the former KGB spy came to power in 1999. Western diplomats say it exposed tensions over Russia over its “special military operation” in Ukraine.