Vladimir Putin says he has sent his condolences to the family of Yevgeny Prigozhin after the Wagner Group leader was presumed killed in a plane crash.
The Russian president said Prigozhin was a talented businessman who he had known since the 1990s.
The president described Prigozhin as “a person with a complicated background who made serious mistakes in his life” - but noted that he was also a successful entrepreneur.
No tears, though … 
An explosion onboard a plane presumed to be carrying the Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin probably brought down the aircraft on Wednesday, the New York Times has reported
OTOH:
If Russia’s propaganda machine seemed caught off guard by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny, its reaction to his death in a plane crash has been far more disciplined. Across the state apparatus, the narrative is clear: The crash is likely a technical affair and Prigozhin is, indeed, dead. Nothing much to see here. It took less than two hours after the plane disappeared from flight radars for Russia’s federal aviation agency to confirm the crash and announce the St. Petersburg warlord as having been among those on board.
The government’s disciplined message stood in marked contrast to the rumours washing around online.
The GreyZone Telegram channel linked to Wagner was first to report on Wednesday that a second plane belonging to Prigozhin was intact and circling above Moscow, eventually landing at Vnukovo airport, fuelling suspicion Prigozhin might have escaped death.
“A burnt-out plane provides a suitable opportunity to disappear forever, one of many spare passports on hand. No bones for ravens to pick at, limbs reduced to ashes, the trail gone cold,” independent political analyst Yekaterina Schulmann wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
Prigozhin - a lover of the theatrical and a Houdini-style master of trickery and deceit - offered myriad reasons to suspect a final twist in an eventful life. After finally stepping out of the shadows as the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, his public performances became increasingly dramatic, erratic and surreal.
Law enforcement official raiding his St. Petersburg mansion uncovered fake passports and photos of Prigozhin in a variety of wigs, adding to earlier reports he had several lookalikes on his payroll whom he took on his travels to confuse potential enemies.
So, if you see any of these men, they are all one and the same … and best avoided … 
Nothing surprises me with these people…one thing is sure though people died on that plane whoever they were.
“Right now, of course, there are lots of speculations around this plane crash and the tragic deaths of the passengers of the plane, including Yevgeny Prigozhin. Of course, in the West those speculations are put out under a certain angle, and all of it is a complete lie,” Peskov told reporters during a conference call.
Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he … 
Shall we ever know the truth Summer…However, the Russians are complete amateurs when it comes to black ops stuff that the American special services, CIA and FBI among others, get up to, or have done in the past…Even our own security forces…And they can control the media that you and me read. That’s even worse!
I’m trying to remember the last time the US poisoned someone in the UK with a radioactive compound… and in doing so poisoned an innocent bystander. Putin oversees a frighteningly dangerous and careless security service - whom he publicly praises for their murders.
So you think the media in Russia are free from interference?
10 bodies and flight recorders found after crash, Russia says, and DNA testing is being carried out on the bodies to determine their identities.
Do you think the western media would report it if they did Lincs…?
And you know this as a fact because?
Absolutely not Scot, but we believe ours is…
Can I just say, oh come on and get a grip. There is a world of difference between media manipulation (sometimes effective, often not) in the west and Putin’s direct control of Russian media. There is plenty of well documented information on this, and on how Putin uses his security functions to kill off people he doesn’t like. Putin was a KGB agent and was in fact based in London for some of his career. The KGB (now FSB) report directly to him. He uses them for misinformation (clearly this works based on your comments) and for direct actions. Fact.
Putin is a ruthless dictator and controls everything.Power the UK PM can only dream of.(and Trump 
)
“Live by the sword, die by the sword”
I’m not convinced.You wouldn’t risk all of the gang in one plane?
Putin and his ruthless security forces are very experienced in removing people they do not like.
August 2020, opposition leader Alexei Navalny fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. The plane landed in the city of Omsk, where Navalny was hospitalized in a coma. Two days later, he was airlifted to Berlin, where he recovered.
In 2018, Pyotr Verzilov, a founder of the protest group Pussy Riot, fell severely ill and also was flown to Berlin, where doctors said poisoning was “highly plausible.” He eventually recovered
Prominent opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza survived what he believes were attempts to poison him in 2015 and 2017. He nearly died from kidney failure in the first instance and suspects poisoning but no cause was determined. He was hospitalized with a similar illness in 2017 and put into a medically induced coma. His wife said doctors confirmed he was poisoned. Kara-Murza survived, and his lawyer says police have refused to investigate. This year, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The highest profile killing of a political opponent in recent years was that of Boris Nemtsov. Once deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, Nemtsov was a popular politician and harsh critic of Putin. On a cold February night in 2015, he was gunned down by assailants on a bridge adjacent to the Kremlin
In 2006, Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, a former agent for the KGB and its post-Soviet successor agency, the FSB, felt violently ill in London after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210, dying three weeks later. He had been investigating the shooting death of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya as well as the Russian intelligence service’s alleged links to organized crime. He died in hospital.
Another former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, was poisoned in Britain in 2018. He and his adult daughter Yulia fell ill in the city of Salisbury and spent weeks in critical condition. They survived, but the attack later claimed the life of a British woman and left a man and a police officer seriously ill.
Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta whose death Litvinenko was investigating, was shot and killed in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on Oct. 7, 2006 — Putin’s birthday. She had won international acclaim for her reporting on human rights abuses in Chechnya.
Yuri Shchekochikhin, another Novaya Gazeta reporter, died of a sudden and violent illness in 2003. Shchekochikhin was investigating corrupt business deals and the possible role of Russian security services in the 1999 apartment house bombings blamed on Chechen insurgents.
This last murder is particularly telling. The apartment bombings in Moscow were carried out by the FSB and blamed on Chechen terrorists to build public support for the military actions (read invasion, near genocide, torture and pillage) in Chechnya. Calling this terrorism also allowed Putin to claim he was supporting the west in the fight against Islamic terrorism - when he of course was the terrorist. The corrupt business dealings was the forced collapse of Yukos, massive progressive oil company, the murder or imprisonment of its executives and the handing over of a major slice (estimated to be worth $200m) of the re-created company to Putin.
Yes, all the bad things said about Putin are just western controlled media propaganda and lies.
Thanks Lincs, to avoid straying too far off topic I started a new thread to discuss Putin…See you there?
Russia has informed Brazil’s aircraft investigation authority that it will not probe the crash of the Brazilian-made Embraer (EMBR3.SA) jet that killed mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin under international rules “at the moment”.
Brazil’s Center for Research and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (CENIPA), in the interests of improving aviation safety, had said it would join a Russian-led investigation if it were invited and the probe held under international rules.
Russia’s aviation authority was not obligated to say yes to CENIPA, but some former investigators said it should, as the U.S. and other Western governments suspect the Kremlin of being behind the Aug. 23 crash of the Embraer Legacy 600, which has a good safety record.
U.S. aviation safety consultant and former investigator John Cox said an internal Russian investigation would always be questioned without the participation of Brazil, the country where the plane was manufactured.
Some 802 Embraer regional jets with 37 to 50 seats, built on the same platform as the Legacy 600 corporate aircraft, are in service, underscoring Brazilian interest in the probe.
Embraer declined comment.
Russia’s secrecy is indicative …
Do we have any evidence apart from that of “Russian Officials” that any of this happened at all?
