A private jet, a Brazilian made Embraer crashed over Russia on August 23, killing all 10 people on board and among who is believed to be Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, a staunch ally and one-time close confidante of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. According to various sources, the plane, dropped from the sky while on its flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg and crashed to the ground. Various sources speculated that it was brought down from 28,000 feet by a missile or an explosive planted inside. What is most important is not how the plane was brought down but why and who? Prigozhin was Putin\u2019s \u2018hit man\u2019 who was provided with immense wealth that many Russian oligarchs possess in Putin\u2019s Russia. In return, Prigozhin raised an army of mercenaries to do all the dirty work for Putin so as to not involve the latter or the Russian military lest it attracted global outrage. Prigozhin led his mercenaries-the Wagner group- to fight in Ukraine and they earned notoriety for the horrific crimes. Many hardened and convicted criminals in Russia were given the option to join Prigozhin\u2019s Wagner Group and gain freedom after serving the mercenary group. Prigozhin\u2019s Wagner Group defended Bakhmut against strong Ukrainian counter \u2013offensives while the regular Russian army were hammered by the Ukrainians. This feat may have gone to his head when he began to berate the Kremlin for failing to provide needed ammunition to his group. On June 23, 2023, the Wagner Group, a Russian government-funded paramilitary and private military company, staged a rebellion after a period of increasing tensions between the Russian Ministry of Defence and Yevgeny Prigozhin. An agreement to settle this conflict was reached between the two sides the next day, 24 June 2023. During their campaign, Prigozhin\u2019s armed mutineers shot down at least two helicopters and killed around 15 Russian service personnel, many of them airmen. Since June, Prigozhin managed to remain alive because Putin was biding his time. Putin is known to be merciless towards those openly criticize him and records of known critics being murdered under mysterious circumstances are well documented, Putin is suspected to have settled scores with critics both within and beyond Russian. Many critics of Putin have either been assassinated or imprisoned and tortured. Prigozhin was fooled into a false sense of security when he was allowed to move around even in Russia after the abortive mutiny. Eventually, Putin got his way when Prigozhin met the same fate when his Embraer jet was downed by some missile on August 23. The death of Prigozhin has closed the chapter of another potential rival of Putin but it has only convinced Russians that their country will continue to suffer as the Germans experienced under Adolf Hitler. Putin now has another ally in Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko who shares the same despotic personality. The Ukraine war is likely to widen with Belarus opening another front against Ukraine. Putin has deployed nuclear weapons in Belarus and in the event of either Ukraine of NATO forces counter-attacking the country, it is likely that Lukashenko would most like trigger a nuclear response against Ukraine. Perhaps the assassination of Prigozhin may have just elevated Lukashenko to prominence in the Kremlin as part of Putin\u2019s dangerous and no-holds barred war against humanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A private jet, a Brazilian made Embraer crashed over Russia on August 23, killing all 10 people on board and among who is believed to be Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, a staunch ally and one-time close confidante of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. According to various sources, the plane, dropped from the sky while on its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}