On August 23, 2023, an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet crashed near Kuzhenkino in Tver Oblast, approximately 100 kilometres north of its departure point in Moscow. The private aircraft was flying between Moscow and St Petersburg when it crashed in the Tver region, north of Moscow. The jet was carrying seven passengers and three crew. A celebrity in the aircraft who got killed was Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin. The crash coincided with the same day that senior Russian general Sergei Surovikin was reportedly sacked as air force chief. But Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone reported the jet had been shot down by the Russian military, though it provided no evidence to support its claim.
As leader of the Wagner Group, Prigozhin emerged as a key player in Russia’s full-scale war with Ukraine in 2022. Wagner fighters led the Russian onslaught in key areas of the war, including the city of Bakhmut. But, as the fighting raged on, he became increasingly critical of Russia’s senior military officials for what he saw as a failing attempt to achieve the aims of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. The Wagner mercenary group had an estimated 25,000 fighters, active in Ukraine, Syria and West Africa, where they gained a reputation for horrendous brutality.
But, in a sudden turn of events, Prigozhin headed a quick mutiny on 23-24 June, moving his troops from Ukraine, seizing the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, and threatening to march to Moscow. The move came after months of tension with Russian military commanders over the conflict with Ukraine that started in 2014.
However, the sudden mutiny was settled by a deal which allowed Wagner troops to move to Belarus or join the Russian army. Sudden turn of events culminating in the plane crash, sparked rampant speculation of foul play from the Kremlin, as retaliatory punishment for showing the audacity to launch a mutiny.
On October 5, 2023, another controversy broke out when Russian President Vladimir Putin, surrounded by oligarchs and apparatchiks at a meeting of the Valdai Club in the Black Sea city of Sochi, suggested, “The head of the Investigative Committee reported to me just the other day that hand grenade fragments were found in the bodies of those killed in the plane crash.” In an apparent explanation for the crash, Putin said that 5 kilograms of cocaine had been found among Prigozhin’s stacks of cash, weapons and fake documents when police raided the Wagner Group’s St. Petersburg headquarters. “Unfortunately, no tests were carried out for the presence of alcohol and drugs in the victims’ blood,” he said. “In my opinion, it would’ve been important to do that analysis.”
About Prigozhin, his former ally, Putin said “He was a man with a complex fate. [Sometimes] he made mistakes; and [sometimes] he got the results he wanted — for himself and in response to my requests, for a common cause.”
But critics were quick to find fault. “Revenge”, commented CIA director William Burns, “is a dish Putin prefers served cold” – or words to that effect. According to journalist Ilya Zhegulev, on Putin’s association with Prigozhin, “Putin does not like people with an impeccably clean reputation, because they are difficult to control. From this point of view, Prigozhin was an ideal candidate.” Vladimir Pastukhov, a political analyst, said he believed Putin did not expect people to believe the version of events he had hinted at, but was signalling that Prigozhin and his associates had been “executed by the book” for their mutiny.
Throughout history, soldiers have used drugs, sometimes to enhance fighting abilities, or to stay alert for long periods or to withstand the extreme psychological pressure and trauma they are confronted with, during every minute of the battle. The current conflict in Ukraine is no different. Ukrainian soldiers captured by Russia revealed shocking usage of amphetamines during sabotage operations. A drug ring known as Khimprom, which is a Ukrainian–Russian outfit, reportedly plays a major role in trafficking synthetic drugs and precursors to the front line. Among these is Alpha-PVP – street name ‘flakka’ – a highly dependency-forming drug of the synthetic cathinone class, a category of stimulants referred to as new psychoactive substances. Alpha-PVP is not new to the region. Until around five years ago, it was smuggled into Ukraine from Western Europe by post in small parcels of up to 5 grams. It was also marketed on the Russian dark web.
More recently, Khimprom installed manufacturing laboratories to boost the availability of flakka in Ukraine. In July 2019, Ukraine’s security service, SBU, dismantled a drug laboratory near Kyiv capable of producing 200 kg of the substance per month. Since the 2019 lab bust, Ukrainian authorities have reported an increasing number of improvised kitchen-type micro-labs and flakka storage facilities across the country. SBU estimates indicate that they seized over 50 kilograms of flakka, almost 10 kilograms of amphetamine, 500 litres of precursors and drug manufacturing equipment.
Russian investigators found Opioid drugs and Ephedrine substances T-Fedrine, Triphedrine, Methadone, Codepsine, and Codeterp at positions abandoned by Ukrainian military personnel, according to the chief of the Russian Army’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force. The residents of Kharkiv testify that they have witnessed fighters of the nationalist battalions in the city behave ‘inappropriately’ and ‘have wild eyes’. The ‘combat drug’ particularly Captagon, which contains Amphetamine, was regularly used by the Daesh terrorists (Islamic State terrorists) to induce feelings of bravado ruthless aggressiveness, and tremendous energy.
The truth behind the Embraer Legacy 600 business jet crash will never be known. Whether cocaine-intoxicated passengers played with live grenades, or an unidentified missile did a neat job, no one can tell. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, a passenger airliner crashed and burned in Eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. All 298 people on board, most of whom were citizens of the Netherlands died in the crash. Dead men tell no tales.
The 1966 Air India crash that killed Indian nuclear pioneer Homi Bhabha as also the 1950 Air India flight 245, a Lockheed L-749A Constellation, named ‘Malabar Princess’, that had crashed at exactly the same spot on Mont Blanc, killing all 48 people on board, or the 23 June 1985, Air India flight from Toronto-Montreal-London-New Delhi-Bombay, that exploded off the Irish coast, killing all 329 people on board. Explosions in the skies on aircraft never have witnesses, and dead men never tell the truth, it will forever remain in the skies.
The writer is a retired officer of the IRS and the former director-general of the National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes & Narcotics. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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