Russians quiz aircraft engineer over Wagner chief ’s jet crash death
AN ENGINEER who carried out last-minute repairs to the doomed plane belonging to warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin is being interrogated by the Russian authorities, it was claimed last night.
Experts believe the arrest could be part of a disinformation operation to find a scapegoat and sow confusion over an explosion which destroyed the private jet.
The Embraer aircraft carrying the founder of the Wagner mercenary group and nine others plunged to the ground last Wednesday soon after taking off from Moscow. There were no survivors.
Kremlin chiefs hit back at claims that President Vladimir Putin ordered Prigozhin’s assassination in revenge for his rebellion in June, when Wagner troops marched to within 120 miles of Moscow.
A channel on the Telegram social media site – believed to be linked to Russian security services – yesterday claimed aircraft engineer Sergey Kitrish had been under interrogation since the crash.
‘He constantly worked with Prigozhin’s aircraft and it was he who carried out the last repairs to replace the landing gear brake and turbo cooler,’ reported the channel VChK-OGPU. ‘He was interrogated and now the fate of Kitrish is being decided.’
But Michael Clarke, visiting professor in the war studies department at King’s College London, last night said: ‘Whenever there is an event like this, Russian security services always pick somebody up and arrest them within 24 to 48 hours.
‘They want to create this image that they have got whoever did it – and they never have. Putin gets the benefit of looking like the Godfa- ther and everyone thinking “that’s the boss reasserting himself”... They know we don’t believe it but they don’t care because they have to have a cover story.’ It came as speculation mounted yesterday over the security arrangements put in place to protect the aircraft ahead of its flight. A female business executive, said to be a prospective buyer of the jet, and her colleague were allowed to tour the empty aircraft for around an hour at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, it was claimed.
Alexandra Yulina, 37, the boss of VIP airline RusJet, was falsely registered as a passenger and allowed on to the plane hours before it took off, the same VChK-OGPU Telegram channel claimed. There is no suggestion that Ms Yulina nor RusJet were involved in the explosion which downed the aircraft.
Initial US intelligence suggests the Wagner mercenary boss was killed after a bomb or some other form of sabotage destroyed the plane. Prof Clarke, however, believes a missile strike remains the more likely explanation.
He highlighted how an explosion taking place at 28,000ft would cause catastrophic damage because the aircraft’s cabin would be pressurised. Video footage, however, shows Prigozhin’s jet plunging to earth with its fuselage largely intact.