The possible death of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash would not be a surprise given his falling out with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a senior White House official said Wednesday.
“We have seen the reports” of the crash, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
“If confirmed, no one should be surprised,” she said.
“The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now — it would seem — to this.”
The White House said President Joe Biden had been briefed on the incident, in which a private aircraft plunged to the ground northwest of Moscow.
Prigozhin, who made his privately-controlled Wagner army an elite fighting force in the war on Ukraine but also created enemies in the regular Russian military, was on the aircraft’s passenger list, according to Russian state media.
The crash came two months after he launched Wagner on a short-lived rebellious march on Moscow, aiming to force the removal of the country’s military leadership.
