Regional governor says one person was killed by shrapnel from a drone in Belgorod, south-west Russia
Less than 10% of Russian believe their president Vladimir Putin was behind the death of the Wagner mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, an online survey by a thinktank for the Sunday Times suggests.
The poll, conducted by the Open Minds Institute in the hours following the plane crash that killed him, indicates that 28.4% believe the crash was staged, while, 28.3% put it down to technical difficulties or an error by the pilot. Some 2% of Putin supporters believe he was responsible. The number of respondents to the poll was unclear.
Two per cent of regime supporters blaming Putin for Prigozhin’s death seems like a very low number. I think they do not dare to imagine Putin doing this because it will just completely destroy their picture of reality.
We mourn for all those who died in the catastrophe, for all the fighters of Wagner, who have died during the [war]. One can forgive mistakes and even cowardice, but never betrayal. They were not traitors.
If you look at the whole situation more carefully, Prigozhin didn’t betray Putin, he was not a real traitor because he didn’t go to the Ukrainians and Nato. He was not a real traitor, he was a [political] problem.
I thought Prigozhin and Putin might have made a new deal and that Prigozhin might last for some time because he found some new usefulness for Putin. But what it seems to me is that Putin was taking his time to assess the damage and assess everything.
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