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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Damn that might be a mega window

Damn that might be a mega window

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Rumors are hitting social media that a small business jet that crashed/shot down in Russia had coup and Wagner leader Prigozhin aboard.

If true, that is one way to solve the staying away from windows and avoiding shooting oneself twelve times in the back of your head while having a heart attack problem.

Open thread

Reader Interactions

215Comments

  1. 1.

    cain

    Man, that was dumb to fly your own plane in Russian airspace when you know they are out to get you.

  3. 3.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Let’s hold off on this one. Russia is the breeding ground for unsubstantiated rumors. It’s important to hear this, but I’m not trusting it until there’s more solid confirmation.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    Well, that would be…interesting, now wouldn’t it.

    Also, for those of us who were a little concerned about Illia in the Ukraine update after his odd tweet about Muskrat, he has tweeted many times now since and nothing seems amiss. So I’m assuming the tweet was ironic or whatnot.

    Happy Ukrainian Flag Day to you all!
    I’m so unspeakably proud of how much history has been made under this banner and of how the people wearing these colours defeated the army of doom against all odds.
    Tomorrow is our second Independence Day they said would never happen.
    🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/k4DpQSYdiZ
    — Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 23, 2023

    This vid is so fun to watch knowing how insanely Russian propaganda masturbated at the S-400 Triumph.
    So, here’s your Russian response to MIM-104 – having no idea that a simple Ukrainian drone is hanging above, transferring coordinates, and then comfortably making a kill video. pic.twitter.com/4Jr6CSu6Il
    — Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 23, 2023

    Robotyne now.A Ukrainian flag 🇺🇦 in the contested town’s centre. pic.twitter.com/WhDtGuCYP2— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) August 23, 2023

  8. 8.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @twbrandt: ​Yeah, but literally with one sentence. That’s not much confirmation. I’m not saying this is false, I’m saying that like in an active shooter news situation, we shouldn’t jump too fast.​

    EDIT – Okay, they updated it with a few more sentences.  ‘He was believed to be on the plane.’

  9. 9.

    CaseyL

    Whoa.  That’s… a bit of an escalation from Putin Inc.

    I do wonder who else was on the plane.  It might be one of those BOGO+ bargains.

    ETA: Just saw this on the deadbird site: “…neo-Nazi Wagner leader Dmitry Utkin was allegedly aboard on the plane and is now dead.”

  12. 12.

    Eric S.

    IF TRUE…

    This is a big escalation. Don’t want to risk him surviving the fall from a balcony window so make it from 30,000 feet.

  13. 13.

    Fair Economist

    There’s also a rumor it was actually shot down by Russian air defense.

    He should have gone for the brass ring during the quasi-coup. He had some chance with that.

  14. 14.

    PaulWartenberg

    Prigozhin: “So all I have to do from dying out a vindow is to avoid tall buildings, ya?”
    Putin: “By the vay, private jets have vindows too.”
    Prigozhin: “Vait, vhat?”

  15. 15.

    Anyway

    Wonder if this will suspend or reduce ratfucking in Africa (till the next Erik Prince appears)

  16. 16.

    ETtheLibrarian

    If true, will it matter if it wasn’t shot down? Any of those inclined to support Prigozhin have been trained by living in Russia/USSR to think everything is a plot.

  18. 18.

    MattF

    NYT reports ‘state media’ say so:

    “An investigation has been launched into the crash of the Embraer aircraft, which occurred tonight in the Tver region,” Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency said, according to TASS. “According to the list of passengers, among them is the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin.”

  19. 19.

    Suzanne

    @CaseyL:

    Whoa.  That’s… a bit of an escalation from Putin Inc. 

    My exact thought.
    I almost think Trump would rather be in prison. Harder for Vlad to get at him there.

  23. 23.

    RaflW

    Julia Ioffe is noting that its the 23rd today. A momentous date from just two months ago for comrade Prigozhin.

  28. 28.

    Tom Levenson

    Makes it very clear to any would be Putin successors what needs to happen if/when there’s a next time roll-up on the Kremlin

    And yeah, I’m leaping to the conclusion that Prigozhin is an ex-parrot.

  29. 29.

    Betty Cracker

    Prigozhin was a blood-gargling sociopath, so if this is true, good riddance. But would offing Prigozhin strengthen the position of the murderous psychopath Putin? If so, that’s bad news.

    The best scenario failed to materialize when the Wagner rebellion stop marching toward Moscow. There was a chance then those genocidal pricks would kill each other, which would immediately decrease the evil quotient in the world.

  31. 31.

    RaflW

    @Alison Rose: Has Graham said a g-d damned thing about Tommy Tuberville? Because Lindsey can f. right off with his national security & global defense shtick if he hasn’t (I’m pretty sure he hasn’t). And if he has, it’s not done jack to move the stock-swindling Floridian off the stick.

  32. 32.

    Alison Rose

    #Wagner boss #Prigozhin reportedly dead in a plane crash over Central Russia. My greetings to all who told me “Prigozhin has reached a deal with Putin”. Also best wishes to #Surovikin, who is reportedly fired yesterday, but nobody saw his dead or alive body.
    — Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) August 23, 2023

    Last month, when asked about why Prigozhin was still alive, CIA Director Bill Burns said Prigizhin was not out of the woods yet because “Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback.”

    Damn. https://t.co/WYH0BvUHuh
    — Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) August 23, 2023

  35. 35.

    BeautifulPlumage

    He was just somewhere in Africa yesterday touting Wagner’s “work” down there. Wow.

    On a related note, do we know why the state dept issued a ‘leave now’ warning for Americans in Belarus yesterday ( or Monday)?

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    Never a matter of whether, only a matter of when and where and how. FAFO

    The added indignity of being shot down in Russia riding a Brazilian jet.

  38. 38.

    Alison Rose

    From the NYT live updates:

    Yevgeny Prigozhin’s fate is not known at the moment. On the social messaging app Telegram, an account known to be close to the Russian authorities, Readovka, says that reports of the warlord’s death are “premature.” It adds: “Yevgeny Prigozhin may have been on a different airplane.”

    LOL

  40. 40.

    trollhattan

    @Alison Rose: Putin’s reputed to have a number of doubles deployed here and there to make his actual whereabouts murky. Did Prigozhin take notes?

    ETA BBC notes he “was on the passenger list” and that doesn’t not sound especially conclusive.

  41. 41.

    Immanentize

    I think you are assuming it was Putin too quickly:
    Some other thoughts-+
    If opposition (Ukraine?) drones can get to Moscow, they can reach Tver.
    I know some folks are very pissed about Wagner’s recent action in Niger.
    Just a couple days ago, the US State Department ordered an urgent update travel alert to “leave Belarus immediately.”
    Langley still has reach.

    Just waiting for more (dis)information….

  42. 42.

    Calouste

    @MazeDancer: Yeah, I totally would not be surprised if Prigozhin tried to fake his own death here, but I doubt Putin, who really is the one that Prigozhin should be scared of, would be convinced by it.

  43. 43.

    jimmiraybob

    I don’t want to pile on the poor terrorist leader but I’d be all for shipping the remains to the Hague for positive ID and trial. Mug shot optional.​

  51. 51.

    RaflW

    @Baud: As a Wagner private flight, the answer is asymptotically close to zero.

    eta: As a rich sociopath, perhaps he had a flight attendant on board to serve tea. If so, I’d maybe consider that person to be pretty distant from Wagner war crimes. Anyone else? Naaaah (I don’t grant that the pilot is likely to have been some unawares naif.)

  55. 55.

    dmsilev

    So, possibilities:

    • Putin had him whacked. Very blatantly
    • Someone in the Ministry of Defense ordered the whacking. Hope Putin is ok with it…
    • He wasn’t on the plane, and this was faking his death. Because we’ve had just about every other bad plot twist from low-rent soap operas. Oh, wait, maybe he has a secret twin brother. Or he’ll come back, but with amnesia.
    • Someone else killed him. Ukrainian partisans, pissed-off victims of one or another Wagner atrocity, etc.
    • It was, honestly and truly, an accident. I include this only out of completeness; I think “secret twin brother with amnesia” is more probable.
  59. 59.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​
     I take it you don’t have a social media platform formerly known as Prince account so you’re not worried about poking Elno with stick.

  60. 60.

    Baud

    @dmsilev:

    • Someone else killed him. Ukrainian partisans, pissed-off victims of one or another Wagner atrocity, etc.

     
    Jewish space laser?

  61. 61.

    Origuy

    Someone in Russia got video and posted it. Apparently, there was an explosion and the plane went straight down.

     

    “Katya, I don’t know whether you see this. The plane was flying and then it exploded!”

    Witnesses say that Prigozhin’s plane exploded right in the sky.

    Reportedly, Prigozhin’s closest accomplice Dmitriy was also on board. pic.twitter.com/BDKATIwaeB
    — Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) August 23, 2023

  62. 62.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @dmsilev: I recently rewatched The Death of Stalin, and gosh, things have changed so little in the past 70 odd years…

  63. 63.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Baud: the Nazi top commander Dmitry Utkin was also listed. Certainly not innocent!

    ETA nevermind, CaseyL was already on top of it

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @BeautifulPlumage:

    A comment in the earlier thread said 9 other people were on board. But if it was Prigozhin’s private plane, they might all be confederates.

    I initially thought it was a commercial airliner.

  69. 69.

    RaflW

    @Alison Rose: WaPo this morning reporting that “state news agency RIA Novosti cited ‘an informed source’ who said Surovikin had been ‘relieved of his post’ … marking the first time official Russian sources reported on Surovikin’s status.”

  72. 72.

    RaflW

    @dmsilev: One other slight possibility, which could really just be a variation of your final bullet point, though less ‘accident’ than negligence if so: As a flight of a paramilitary group, perhaps some piece of dangerous Wagner cargo erroneously went off?

  74. 74.

    Suzanne

    @Alison Rose:

    “Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback.”

    After the Salman Rushdie stabbing, I am reminded that some people do not let time stop them from good old-fashioned spite.

  78. 78.

    TaMara

    @Origuy: If the videos I’ve watched are real, they had a long time to think about what was happening on the way down. It looks like the plane was intact, on fire and in a free fall.

  82. 82.

    trollhattan

    @Origuy: Heh, from the same guy’s account.

    Russian “Z-blogger” Markov: “The assassination of Prigozhin and Utkin, the creators of Wagner PMC, is undoubtedly a Ukrainian terrorist attack for Ukraine’s Independence Day tomorrow. All enemies of Russia are rejoicing today. And the murder of Prigozhin is the main achievement of Ukraine this year”

    Stretching the term “murder” but if they wish to claim Ukraine is deft enough to pull this off in the middle of Russia, then Ukraine will be happy to non-deny deny it and bask in the rosy glow.

  85. 85.

    Alison Rose

    prigozhin was really out there looking at every other person putin murked and thinking, “rip to them but im different”
    — b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) August 23, 2023

    Oh well. $250,000 freed up for other use. pic.twitter.com/zFjYsX8rtB
    — Pete Strzok (@petestrzok) August 23, 2023

    (If you can’t see the tweet, Strzok’s has a photo of an FBI wanted poster for prigozhin with a big X over it)

    But also:

    BBC & Sky News also now quoting reports of a mysterious 2nd plane which landed safely. Nothing on Prigozhin’s social media channels. So initial reports still being hedged: https://t.co/YIIlIkvqM3
    — Stephani Shelton (@stephanishelton) August 23, 2023

  88. 88.

    Obvious Russian Troll

    @Suzanne:

    Why would Putin have Trump killed? Trump destabilizes the US by just existing at this point. Trump is a propaganda gold mine for Putin. What would Putin gain by killing him? Concealing the ties that everybody realistically knows about anyway?

    Trump is no threat to Putin, either. If disaster strikes and he wins in 2024, he’s going to be Putin’s ally. He’s going to try to get the US out of NATO.

    Even if Trump flees to Russia, Putin is almost certainly not going to kill him. Trump would be even more of a propaganda gold mine in Moscow. The Soviets kept defectors around just like Putin has kept Snowden around; the Russians still know how to use people like these.

    (Not Trump wouldn’t know who’s boss in Moscow. Putin would make sure of that if Trump even thought of stepping out of line.)

  91. 91.

    Gravenstone

    I was snarking this morning on TPM that Trump joking about fleeing to Russia might just induce Vlad to extend an offer. Then Vlad would arrange to have Trump’s plan shot down on approach…

  95. 95.

    Elizabelle

    @MazeDancer:  That is what I thought, too.  Passengers and crew gonna be crispy critters.  And who is going to be doing the investigation/autopsying?

    Did not believe until heard it was Prigozin’s jet, but still …

  97. 97.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @Suzanne: I dunno … they got to Jeffrey Epstein.

    I did see the news and thought, “windows sure are getting higher in Russia…. bet Balloon Juice is all over this” and, sure enough, the blog did not disappoint.

  99. 99.

    rikyrah

    either this was his ‘ open window’.

    or, as the conspiracy folks say..he  faked his death.

    and, will be on the run for the rest of his life.

    Either way, he knew his days were numbered when the coup failed.

  100. 100.

    bbleh

    “Yevgeny Prigozhin has ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Earth.”

  101. 101.

    Scout211

    CNN reports 4 bodies were found, NBC reports 8 bodies were found at the crash site. Both credit “state media.”  Hmmmm

  102. 102.

    Jinchi

    @Betty Cracker: ​
      But would offing Prigozhin strengthen the position of the murderous psychopath Putin?

    I don’t think it’s worth hoping that these guys will go at each other. Every time one of them is removed from the board, it reduces the incentive for new people to take up a career as a murderous warlord.

  103. 103.

    Tony G

    @CaseyL: I guess I haven’t seen enough Martin Scorsese movies to understand how this works.  I’d been wondering for the past couple of months why Putin hadn’t gotten his revenge on the Wagner leader.  Apparently he was just waiting for the right opportunity.  In the meantime, as I understand it, the Wagner Group is no longer “assisting” the Russian Army in Ukraine.  That might be a plus for the Russians.

  104. 104.

    Alison Rose

    From NYT:

    Russian television has been airing live footage of President Vladimir V. Putin in the Kursk region to honor the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. “I heartily congratulate all citizens of Russia on this event,” Putin says, standing onstage in front of an orchestra.

    “Congratulations to us on our victory over German Nazis so that we could become the world’s leading Nazis.”

  105. 105.

    Jinchi

    @dmsilev: 
    All of these sound like good possibilities.

    Although, I have to say, if Putin has to resort to shooting private aircraft out of the sky in Russia to assert his power, then he’s very weak indeed. Any stable leader could have forced the plane to land and arrested him on the spot.

  107. 107.

    Alison Rose

    @Jinchi:

    if Putin has to resort to shooting private aircraft out of the sky in Russia

    I know you don’t mean to imply that putin did it himself, but I do like to imagine him losing his marbles enough to start firing shots from the clocktower.

  109. 109.

    Alison Rose

    Schrödinger’s prig

    Yevgeny Prigozhin’s fate remains unclear. Several Russian news outlets are reporting, citing anonymous sources, that he was indeed on the plane that crashed. But Grey Zone, a Telegram account associated with Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group, just posted that it remained uncertain whether the warlord was dead or alive.

  111. 111.

    RaflW

    @Gin & Tonic: This one appears to start a few seconds after the explosion (the large puff of smoke is a bit behind the spot where one can start to see the falling, spinning aircraft emerge).

    Plane appeared to be a 29,000 ft from the track log I think I found. A loudish explosion may get people who have a phone in hand to tap ‘record’ pretty quickly after that, for quick thinkers.

    This is a country where a lot of people have continuous dash cams to record the negligent stupidity of their comrades who may well wreck into them.

  112. 112.

    CaseyL

    Had the regular Russian command already taken over Wagner operations? I think I remember hearing Russia was now directing Wagner operations in Syria, while Prigozhin was still running things in Africa.

    I ask because, one, Russian military commanders don’t have a great reputation as effective leaders; and two, it was also my impression that Wagner mercs were personally loyal to Prigozhin and not amenable to transferring their loyalty to anyone else.

    Which leads me to wonder what will happen with the Wagner forces as a whole.

  113. 113.

    p.a.

    tRump (with Sharpie) crosses Russian Federation off list.  Adds second checkmark to KSA.  Adds “?” next to Hungary, with note “they eat beef?”

  115. 115.

    RaflW

    @Jinchi: This, if it all pans out as something other than a true accident, by killing 9 not-Prigozhin people (unlike a classic defenestration), sends a warning to the associates of people who cross Putin that they too can be removed if they are involved in any attempt to remove Vlad or even destabilize his regime publicly.

  116. 116.

    Prescott Cactus

    For sale: Flak Jacket never worn

    and

    For sale:  Swimsuit worn once. Some holes.  Help_me_Papa @ Egypt dot com

    Couldn’t happen to a nicer Vatnicks

  119. 119.

    JPL

    Rudy’s bond is set at 250,000 and he has to come up with ten percent.    Not sure if he’s on his way to the jail or is planning on staying overnight.

    If he is planning on staying, we all know his favorites place.

  120. 120.

    RaflW

    @p.a.: I doubt TFG would take the (rather too small, IMO) risk of trying to overstay/be a long term guest in an EU-Schengen country.

    The EU apparatuses are a bit weak, and have tended to limit any ‘clashes’ with Orban, but they might take rather poorly to having the orange hued vulgarian as a resident inside the common borders.

  122. 122.

    Roger Moore

    @Alison Rose:

    “Congratulations to us on our victory over German Nazis so that we could become the world’s leading Nazis.”

    The Russians tend to see the key trait of the Nazis as being anti-Russian, which is understandable.  The Nazis’ racial theories targeted the Russians for eventual genocide, and they tried very hard to make that genocide happen.  If you look at the Nazis’ victims, they wound up killing more Russians than any other group.  That’s not to say that it’s OK for Russia to let their country be taken over by Fascists, but I can kind of understand how they would focus so much on the anti-Russian aspect that they’d lose sight of the other stuff Fascists tend to do.

  123. 123.

    Anonymous At Work

    Not sure I was the first, but I am claiming that I have been the most frequent user of “Shot self twelve times in the back of head”.

    And let’s spend some time wondering how best to torture a Russian monster in the afterlife.  Warms my heart.

  124. 124.

    wjca

    @Gravenstone:

    I was snarking this morning on TPM that Trump joking about fleeing to Russia might just induce Vlad to extend an offer. Then Vlad would arrange to have Trump’s plan shot down on approach…

    And then claim Ukraine did the deed.  The better to ramp up MAGA opposition to the US supporting Ukraine.

  126. 126.

    sab

    @JPL: Early electronic sparks just doesn’t stir the imagination in the same way.

    Me being a psychological oddity, feelings of living women touches my imagination a lot more than sparks from a zygote, but that is just me.

  127. 127.

    zhena gogolia

    I’m trying in Russian-language sources, but not finding anyone willing to confirm Prigozhin was on board yet. Supposedly Dmitri Utkin too. OMG.

  128. 128.

    Roger Moore

    @RaflW:

    Plane appeared to be a 29,000 ft from the track log I think I found. A loudish explosion may get people who have a phone in hand to tap ‘record’ pretty quickly after that, for quick thinkers.

    Just a nitpick, but it was probably the flash that got people’s attention, not the bang, just like lightning and thunder.  Sound travels about 1 mile every 5 seconds, so noise from an explosion at 29,000 feet would take almost 30 seconds to reach people on the ground.

  130. 130.

    sab

    @zhena gogolia: So possibly those two monsters killed a planeload of their own loyal troopers just to fake their own deaths? Seems like them, but what now? How do you move ahead as a Putin protege when Putin or somebody else just blew you up? How do you plausibly reappear alive?

    Cannot be done is wishful thinking on my part.

  131. 131.

    wjca

    @Dangerman: I wonder if Donald still wants to flee/fly to Moscow?

    I keep wondering why so many people talk about the limited range of Trump’s plane keeping him from reaching Moscow from, for example.  It doesn’t take a lot of low cunning to schedule a rally in Anchorage.  And fly from there to Vladivostok.  Problem solved.

  133. 133.

    cmorenc

    The Prigozhin plane crash has had the timely effect of sharply diverting the MSM from it’s obsession with horse-race-style vapid punditry on tonight’s GOP show pony ,er debate event.  They’ve spent countless hours analyzing GOP candidate strategy and tactics, and virtually nothing on the substance of what any of the GOP candidates particularly stand for – if I hadn’t almost by accident come across a casual mention a few days ago that Vivek Ramaswamy advocates a very pro-Putin solution to Ukraine (give Russia most of it’s gains), and essentially wants to abolish most of the federal government, all I would have known about his is that he’s a tech-bro venture capitalist who’s sort of anti “woke”, whatever that means.

  134. 134.

    Old School

    Yevgeny Prigozhin has learned his lesson.

    by Susan Collins

    — New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 23, 2023

    Today is the day that Vladimir Putin truly became president of Russia.

    — New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 23, 2023

  136. 136.

    divF

    @rikyrah: I really liked that the daughter’s first impulse was to hide her face behind a sheet of paper. Then she thought the better of it.

  138. 138.

    sab

    @cmorenc: Speaking of horse races.  My husband age 71 did well in track in high school and is obsessed with the women in Budapest now.

    Not a track follower myself, I have been watching also, and have also become obsessed. True grit and all that. Really. It looks so painful and they all just keeping charging.

  143. 143.

    Alison Rose

    Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, postedwhat appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to the news of the crash on his Telegram account. Yermak, who frequently uses emojis to convey news and reactions, posted a simple audio link — to the song “Highway to Hell.”

  144. 144.

    JPL

    @sab: Both Clark and Meadows have said they want to delay until after the judge hears their case about Federal Ct.   I’m not sure what the end game is though.  Do they plan on hiding out or will they show up before noon on Friday?

  146. 146.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Now I wonder, was there any sightings of Prigo actually in Moscow where the plane left from? How long was he there before takeoff?

    Still seems hard to disappear, and these guys have egos to feed.

  147. 147.

    HumboldtBlue

    @cain:

    You’d be surprised at the number of people who do just that. Just do a search for plane spotters, there are tons of them.

  148. 148.

    Scout211

    Good, if this is accurate.

    I appreciate that the first question being asked of all the criminal defense attorneys in the Fulton County case is “who is paying you”— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) August 23, 2023

  149. 149.

    JPL

    @BeautifulPlumage: Thank you again for clarifying how the release of mug shots work.   I knew that the jail couldn’t release them, but did not understand how the FOIA played into it.

  150. 150.

    Alison Rose

    President Biden, who is in Lake Tahoe, was asked if he thought the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, was behind the crash. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” he answered. “But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”

  151. 151.

    Matt McIrvin

    We had no idea there was an elevator shaft inside the plane until the pilot fell down it.

  152. 152.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @JPL: They both filed for a restraining order from a federal judge to keep them from being arrested. Clark requested the judge get back to him by 5 pm yesterday, which is pretty gutsy/stupid.

  154. 154.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @JPL: I saw it poking around nitter – one lawyer/journalist posted it Monday in a hint, hint way 😸

  157. 157.

    Ken

    @Scout211: From the replies, it sounds like the press is asking, which is good.

    Can the judge also ask it? With perhaps a followup question, “Are you aware that having a co-defendant paying for your lawyer can be additional evidence for the crimes with which you are charged?”

  158. 158.

    zhena gogolia

    I don’t know what this source is, but I found (quick and dirty translation here):

    Update. The television channel “Tsar’grad,” which takes pro-government positions, reports that the bodies of Prigozhin and Utkin have been “preliminarily identified,” and a genetic analysis will be carried out. The television channel also asserts, referring to a source in the Rosaviatsia commission, that the plane was supposedly “blown up.”

    Обновление. Телеканал «Царьград», выступающий с провластных позиций, сообщает, что тела Пригожина и Уткина «предварительно опознали», будет еще проведена генетическая экспертиза. Телеканал также утверждает со ссылкой на источник в комиссии Росавиации, что самолет якобы «был взорван».

  159. 159.

    Tony Jay

    @sab:

    I hated long-distance running at school. Hated it. The burning pain in every muscle, the lungs turned to acid buboes, the way everything stretches away from you and that last 100 metres becomes a thousand miles. Just horrible.

    By which I mean I am in awe of these people who run and run and run and then, just when they’re feeling every bit as bad as I did running around the school field 40 years ago, only x 1000, they run another few laps of the track then break into a f#€$%#g sprint!

    Amazing. Horrible, but amazing.

    And then there’s the long distance walkers…

  161. 161.

    smith

    @Ken: It would be great if the whole scheme of buying the silence of your co-conspirators could be undermined this way. However, I’m sure the GQP and fellow travelers can easily work out a way to funnel hush money defense funds to them without leaving a trail. Whether they will or not is another matter. It looks like Jenna Ellis may actually be hung out to dry.

  164. 164.

    Anoniminous

    Putting a bomb with a detonator set to go off when a plane reaches a specific altitude is easy-peasy these days.  No need to make it too complicated.

  166. 166.

    Ken

    @BeautifulPlumage: Clark requested the judge get back to him by 5 pm yesterday, which is pretty gutsy/stupid.

    If I recall correctly, he basically said “so I know if I have to make travel arrangements to Georgia”, which moves it toward the stupid side.

  169. 169.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @Ken: yes, so he doesn’t have to make hasty travel plans, which one wag wondered if that meant taking time to put on pants : )

    George Conway replied with flight info from DC to Atlanta for him

  171. 171.

    Alison Rose

    @zhena gogolia: Hmm. See, if the plane was “blown up” then I imagine any bodies wouldn’t be ID’d based on looks but rather dental records or something. Meaning…how the hell do we know who those bodies really are? All very strange.

  172. 172.

    catclub

    @RaflW: perhaps some piece of dangerous Wagner cargo erroneously went off?

    This implies Prighozin either has no chief of personal security, or said person is an idiot to allow dangerous cargo on board with boss.

  173. 173.

    ETtheLibrarian

    I can’t believe this wasn’t a hit by someone, its just too on point for it to be happenstance. Especially when it comes to Putin/Russia.

    Bet he thought he got away with his sort coup and all was forgiven…….unless he wasn’t on the plane and he just pops up magically.

    Will be interesting watching Russia over the next month or so if he was on that plane that went down.

  174. 174.

    Captain C

    @cain:

    If he couldn’t come up with the cash – I assume he’ll ask if the jail cell comes with an open bar.

    The reply is that he can have all the pruno he can make and successfully hide.

  176. 176.

    catclub

    So Prigozhin was exiled to Belarus instead of being under effective indictment in Russia for all his crimes against the Army and shooting down helicopters.  And then he flies into Russian airspace?

  177. 177.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop eating cannolis.

  178. 178.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @zhena gogolia: and that plane has landed back in Moscow.

    Supposedly unrelated, an IL-76 landed in Minsk and is evacuating Wagner folks from Belarus.

  181. 181.

    sab

    OT: We have up the street neighbors. Seem working class. Some work in repair shops. Seem nice. My grumpy  seventy year old husband has clashed with their grandfather. Everyone seemed like nice people. Both old men shrieked and yelled at clouds.  Our dogs pooped on their devIls’ strip. We cleaned it up. They didn’t understand devils strips.  Who does? This is very local opinion.

    Devils strip is the tree lawn. It is partly your’s but also the city’s.  Trespassing rules? Nobody knows. Everyone knows it is both yours and the govt’s. Nobody knows where the line is.  Govt expects you to mow. Don’t poop on it because it is private, but so close to the street and traffic why would you let your tiny kids on it anyway? poop or not. Dog likes it, that’s why.

    Tiny issues but grandfathers in charge of the fight.

    Can people step on your tree lawn grass? Yes? Can you plant fancy flowers on the tree lawn? Yes. Can people stomp on those flowers? Yes. Can their dogs poop their? Yes, but they must clean up. Really? Make them!

  182. 182.

    Roger Moore

    @Alison Rose:

    It’s actually pretty hard to blow a plane up in the sense of doing so much damage that it’s blown into smithereens.  Usually, plane crashes are the result of some apparently minor damage that destroys the plane’s airworthiness.  After that, the plane comes down and breaks up because it hits the ground really hard.  Even anti-aircraft missiles usually work by damaging the plane to the point it can’t fly rather than completely destroying it.  The deaths of the people on board are often more like a really bad car crash (possibly combined with oxygen deprivation) than utter annihilation.

  183. 183.

    Wapiti

    @Roger Moore: If you look at the Nazis’ victims, they wound up killing more Russians than any other group.

    Russians, or Soviets? Ukraine and Byelorussian suffered badly, both civilian and military.

  184. 184.

    Ken

    @zhena gogolia: The New York Times keeps saying they’ve updated, but I don’t see any new information.

    My cynical side observes that if they don’t say that, you don’t click and they don’t get any ad revenue.

    Similarly I fully expect several cable “news” channels will show a couple hours of empty Atlanta courthouse steps tonight, while the chyron screams “BREAKING NEWS — TRUMP IN COURTHOUSE” and the newsreaders breathlessly inform viewers that absolutely nothing has changed for the last hour.

  185. 185.

    BeautifulPlumage

    @zhena gogolia: I’m still watching Aric Toler’s feed for this. He’s also translating posts on telegram channels related to Wagner. Statement from current leadership is (supposedly) soon.

    I am taking this all as conjecture given that it’s so soon and sources are RU.

  186. 186.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Anoniminous: Very nearly as easy to rig a detonator to arm when ascending above a specific altitude and then go off when descending below another specific (maybe the same) altitude. Just sayin’, FWIW.

  187. 187.

    Eyeroller

    @Roger Moore: There’s often/usually a fire, though (which certainly seems to be have been the case here) so victims can be burned beyond recognition.

  188. 188.

    Glidwrith

    @rikyrah: And in the end, he’s neutralized as a leader for the Wagner group and one of the few people effective at carrying the war on the ground. Good news for Ukraine.

  189. 189.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Missed this: ~ 8 hours ago a RU Mi-8 copter pilot defected to Ukraine. As said above, Adam’s post is going to be lit (or super short).

  190. 190.

    trollhattan

    @sab: Second only to the Olympics, the Worlds are the greatest track and field meet of the year. That it’s in Orban’s livingroom, we can’t change.

  191. 191.

    trollhattan

    @BeautifulPlumage:

    “I’m super busy, so here’s a brief roundup.”

    [two-hundred seventy column inches follow]

    “Here’s your daily Patron.”

    God help us if he ever has a slow day. {quipped with nothing but love. The poor man had no idea what he was signing up for in March of 2022.}

  194. 194.

    dnfree

    @sab: That strip of land (usually the strip between the sidewalk and the street if you have a sidewalk) has so many names.  Where we live, it’s called the treebank.  I had never heard that term, growing up fewer than 100 miles away.

  196. 196.

    lee

    @sab: ​
    I’ve always heard it called Devils Strip as well. With all those problems you have noted.

    One townhome close to my dad’s place has those ‘No dog pooping’ signs all along theirs. I wonder if anyone has let them know that dogs can’t read.

  197. 197.

    Jackie

    Rudy Guiliani’s official description per his booking:

    Daily Beast: “He stands 5’ 11” and tips the scales at an imposing 230 pounds, according to booking records, which list his hair color as ‘gray or partially gray.’”

    And… mug shots of Rudy, Powell and Ellis:

    The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office released the mugshot of Rudy Giuliani today.

    They also released the mugshots of Sydney Powell and Jenna Ellis.

  198. 198.

    Jay

    @lee:

    here it’s called a verge.

    The property owner is responsible for maintenance and upkeep, but until recently, had no control of plantings in most areas.

    Pollinator gardens are quite popular right now and work quite well at deterring dog poop, cat poop not so much. Wild lawns* are also becoming more popular, because they are low maintenance.

    • low growing herbs like thyme, oregano, and hardy low growing natives.
  200. 200.

    RaflW

    @Alison Rose: Watching the video that seemed to have the best angle & quality, it looked like the damage was only partial, and that quite possibly the pilots were struggling to try to control it as it dove and alternately fluttered on its way down (ugh. Not sympathetic to the Wagner leaders, but horrific to contemplate the flight crew’s struggle).

    So even with the fire on the ground that I also saw, this isn’t a “smithereens” type crash. The cockpit windows were unbroken, for example.

  202. 202.

    Sloegin

    If Dmitriy Utkin was also on the plane, it’s an added bonus.  Dude was a real piece of work.

  203. 203.

    Bupalos

    @PaulWartenberg: He wasn’t going for the king. He was involved in a dispute with another mafia family that he demanded Putin adjudicate.

    It’s far from impossible that someone other than Putin gave this order, although it’s also probably true that Putin needed Prigo dead. The bottom line is we don’t know, but people think they do, and people make this WAY simpler than it is.

  205. 205.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jay: Recognizing you’re in the quasi-British part of North America, but still – in the You-Kay, “verge” is the term used for what we in the Untied States call the “shoulder” of a road.** But according to the Cambridge Dictionary, it’s “the strip of land that borders a road or path,” so it seems it comes down to the same thing, sortakinda…

    ** One of the many terms associated with driving that are significantly or totally different between the UK and US. Look up “dual carriageway” why doncha.

    “

  206. 206.

    Bupalos

    @Scout211: Get ready to start counting the narratives. The number of competing explanations and accounts of an event after it happens are proportional to the confidence you should have that there’s one answer, that starts with a P.

  210. 210.

    Elizabelle

    The Guardian, with a Reuters report, below. I rather like that Wagner concluded Hell was a likely destination.  The text has a certain roguish charm to it, admittedly for a Bad Person.

    And, who knows what is true on the internets?

    A Telegram channel associated with the Wagner group said Wednesday that Prigozhin has died, Reuters reported.

    From Reuters:

    Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is dead, a Telegram channel affiliated with his Wagner mercenary group reported on Wednesday.

    “The head of the Wagner Group, a Hero of Russia, a true patriot of his Motherland Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin died as a result of the actions of traitors to Russia,” a post in the Grey Zone channel said.

    “But even in Hell, he will be the best! Glory to Russia!”

  211. 211.

    Bupalos

    @Jinchi: That creates politics. People thinking about what is good and bad and what they prefer. That’s definitely not Putin’s style. A crashed plane offers few mental alternatives, and creating confusion and deniability around how it got there deflates it’s political significance further.

  212. 212.

    kalakal

    @Uncle Cosmo: Heh, when I first moved here I got some really strange looks when I arranged to meet some friends on the pavement outside a restaurant. And the other friends I was giving a lift to when I told them “I’d knock them up at 7 o’clock”

  213. 213.

    Bupalos

    A further data point for those that don’t follow the regional situation closely: Lukashenko a few days ago spontaneously gave a ‘reporter’ a long, bizarrely trolling answer to a question that was basically “people say this war is because Putin has gone insane, is putin insane.”

    His response was basically, “no, he’s definitely not insane, we talked about the invasion a couple days prior and he was totally rational, but all like ‘Oh alexey, I’m so scared, you’ll have my back when things go wrong, won’t you??!!’ And I said ‘relax, what are you worried about?’ and he started crying like a little girl so I hugged him… So no, he’s not insane, he just has hormones and can’t make decisions.”

    I mean, I took artistic license, but it was a very odd exchange within the context of what you generally see in this space, and within the framing that Lukashenko is supposed to be the little poodle and Putin the big genius man. Because it was very pointedly inverting that. Also for those that don’t know, Lukashenko appears to have serious talent and some real ambitions.  Another complication on that very confusing territory.

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