Putin’s right-hand man ordered Wagner chief’s death: report

The dramatic assassination of  Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was orchestrated by Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man, a new report alleges.

Putin’s oldest ally, Russian security chief Nikolai Patrushev, ordered Prigozhin’s death in a fiery plane crash on Aug. 23, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed Western intelligence agencies and a Russian intelligence officer.

Prigozhin, 62, was flying to St. Petersburg with nine other passengers when a “small explosive device” placed under the plane’s wing exploded and sent the aircraft spiraling to the ground, the outlet claimed.

The incident came exactly two months after the warlord staged a mutiny that nearly upended Putin’s two-decade stronghold – but the Kremlin repeatedly denied any role in the incident.

Patrushev – a former spy who has known Putin since their KGB days in the 1970s  – had previously warned Putin that Prigozhin was consolidating too much political clout as Russia increasingly relied on the Wagner Group to prop up its military operations in Ukraine, the outlet explained.

Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a fiery plane crash on Aug. 23. AP

Those warnings, however, mostly went unnoticed because of Wagner’s relative success on the battlefield.

Putin, 71, gradually realized the issue in October 2022, when Prigozhin called him to complain about the paramilitary group’s lack of supplies, a former Russian intelligence officer told the Journal.

Patrushev, 72, was present during the call, and used it to encourage Putin to freeze out Prigozhin – a move that prompted a months-long feud that eventually erupted into the June 23-24 mutiny.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev (left) has been Putin’s close ally since the 1970s. POOL/AFP via Getty Images

While Putin luxuriated in a villa away from Moscow, Patrushev roped in Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to negotiate a deal that forced Prigozhin to stand down, the Journal said.

In the tense eight weeks that followed, Prigozhin traveled in Africa – while Patrushev allegedly worked out a plan to eliminate him in August, sources claimed.

“You can see what Putin’s plan was — to keep the dead man walking so they could continue to find out what happened,” Rolf Mowatt-Larsson, a former CIA chief in Moscow, told The Wall Street Journal.

Patrushev had warned Putin that the Wagner Group had too much power, sources said. REUTERS

A few hours after the fiery crash on Aug. 23, a Kremlin official told a European intelligence gatherer “without hesitation” that Prigozhin “had to be removed,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, however, dismissed the Wall Street Journal’s allegations on Friday as “pulp fiction.”

“We have seen this material, but we would not like to comment on it. It is unlikely that such materials can be commented on,” he scoffed.

A woman visits a makeshift memorial for Yevgeny Prigozhin. REUTERS

With Post wires