Putin Hints Wagner Plane Carrying Prigozhin Was Destroyed by Grenades

By Staff, Agencies

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at the Valdai Discussion Club, making some bombshell comments on Thursday, ranging from internal affairs to “building a new world.”

"Fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of the victims of the air disaster. There was no external impact on the plane,” Putin stated for the first time about the investigation into a Wagner plane being destroyed in Russian air space.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and his crew, including the mercenary group’s second-in-command, were killed in a plane that crashed between Moscow and Saint Petersburg in August, two months after he led a brief mutiny against Russia's top military brass.

The Kremlin has dismissed suggestions that it orchestrated the crash in revenge for Wagner's march on Moscow, but critics and Western countries have suggested foul play.

As Moscow grows more isolated over its invasion of Ukraine, and faces unprecedented sanctions, Putin also accused the West of “fencing itself off from us and creating a new Iron Curtain.”

"We are tasked, essentially, with building a new world," the Russian president had claimed was Russia's mission of invading Ukraine, adding the West was aiming for global "hegemony.”

"The West always needs an enemy," he added.

Putin also commented on Canada's former parliament speaker, after the legislature celebrated a Ukrainian World War II veteran who had fought for the Nazis, while Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky visited last month.

"If the speaker of the Canadian parliament says that during World War II this Canadian-Ukrainian or Ukrainian-Canadian Nazi fought against the Russians, he cannot help but understand that he fought on the side of Hitler," Putin said.

"Let's assume he doesn't know this," the Russian leader added. "But if he doesn't know that Hitler and his minions fought against Russia during the war, then he's an idiot.”