“There was just a bang”

The plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile from Russia, Washington thinks

The announcement comes as US intelligence believes the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile fired from Russian territory, several US government officials told Archyde.com. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said that this assessment was only at the preliminary stage and was still subject to verification.

Ukraine is not involved in the death of the leader of the paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigojine, for his part declared on Thursday Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, quoted by the Interfax-Ukraine agency.

“We are not involved. Everyone knows who is involved,” the Ukrainian president told reporters.

“There was just a bang”

Residents of the village of Koujenkino, where the plane crashed, say they heard an explosion before seeing the private jet fall like a dead leaf.

The aircraft, an Embraer Legacy 600, was traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg with ten people on board, including three crew members, when it disappeared from radar screens over the Tver region. The names of Evguéni Prigojine and Dimitri Utkine, founder of the group Wagner, were on the passenger list, according to Russian civil aviation. The Russian authorities have not officially confirmed their death, announced in particular but the channel Telegram Gray Zone, communication channel of the group of mercenaries. A Archyde.com reporter present at the crash site on Thursday morning saw the rescue services take away bodies in black body bags, while forensic scientists continued their investigations around the partly charred wreckage of the plane.

Koujenkino resident Vitali Stepenok, 72, told Archyde.com he heard “an explosion, or a bang. Usually when there’s an explosion on the ground, there’s an echo, but there was just a bang. I looked up and saw white smoke. »

“A wing went off in one direction and the fuselage fell like this,” he continued, mimicking the scene. “The plane didn’t nose dive, it went into a spin while gliding. »

The description of the scene corresponds to a video filmed by a resident, broadcast by social networks. Several sources close to Wagner accuse the Russian military of shooting down the plane with a surface-to-air missile, which Archyde.com was unable to confirm.

Vitali Stepenok, he went by bike to the crash site, regarding twenty minutes from his home.

“Everything was on fire. People were milling around the plane. They extracted a body, human remains (…) I mightn’t do anything. I saw the license plate number, told them and it was over. »

Another villager, who said his name was Anatoli, clarified that the explosion heard in the sky of Koujenkino was “not thunder. It was a noise, let’s say, metallic. I’ve heard this kind of noise before. »

The crash came two months following the group’s mutiny Wagnerduring which Yevgeny Prigojine had briefly defied the Kremlin by demanding the resignation of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Chief of the Defense Staff, whom he accused of incompetence in Ukraine.

Russian security services said they had opened a criminal investigation to establish the cause of the crash.

(with Archyde.com)

“There was just a bang”

The plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile from Russia, Washington thinks