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Wagner Boss Prigozhin Listed Among Passengers In Plane Crash. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired August 23, 2023 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:30:00]
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And it clearly shows that the authorities are fully aware and fully across these very dramatic developments that we're seeing unfold in Russia right now.
Look, one of the great unanswered questions about the episode of Yevgeny Prigozhin and with the Wagner Group that he leads, in June, when they staged that attempted uprising, an attempted coup that got to the outskirts of Moscow.
One of the questions was, how was it that Vladimir Putin, given his record of dealing ruthlessly with his critics, allowed Prigozhin to live? How come he allowed him to go into exile in Belarus and maintain control over the Wagner mercenary group that he runs?
I mean, look, I don't want to get into cliches, but clearly the leader believes revenge is best served cold. I'm not suggesting for a second, at this point, that the Kremlin had anything to do with the downing of this aircraft.
But it's highly suspicion that that aircraft carrying 10 people, not just Yevgeny Prigozhin but other senior officials as well, has now officially crashed.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: There has been a U.S. intelligence view or Western intelligence view that Putin emerged stronger from this coup, this attempted coup based on the view that he tried and failed.
And now giving the opportunity to go on a hunt, in effect, to those who are not loyal to him. There is a saying, if you take a shot at the king, one best not miss.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: One does not miss. And I think that's part of the reason why -- listen, we do not know exactly what has happened here. We know Yevgeny Prigozhin is on the passenger list of this plane that's gone down north of Moscow.
And we also knew the status quo that kind of kumbaya status quo following that short-lived coup in June seemed very odd. And there was a --
SCIUTTO: And temporary.
KEILAR: And temporary. It seemed very questionable about how long it was going to hold.
I want to bring in David Sanger with "The New York Times" to talk about this.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, to be clear, who are just refreshing the memory about him, one of Vladimir Putin's arguably biggest enemies here recently, David. What do you make of this? And what questions does this reporting raise
for you?
DAVID SANGER: CNN POLITICAL & NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, Brianna, to begin with, we've all got the caution that what we have right now is a name on a list.
We don't have a confirmation of the fact that this is on a state-run news organizations and being reported by organizations that are obviously under Putin's control, certainly suggests that there will be a confirmation that could be following here.
The mystery from the start has been that Putin met with Prigozhin shortly after the uprising. He then went to Africa, an area where Putin clearly needed the Wagner Group to be doing his bidding.
And yet, all through all of this, we have been hearing from U.S. officials, sometimes publicly, that they would not be taking out life insurance on Prigozhin.
(CROSSTALK)
SANGER: In fact, Jim, you and I were at an Aspen security forum a month ago where we heard Secretary of State Blinken say almost jokingly that he was concerned that Moscow had an open windows policy.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
SANGER: So certainly, American officials have been looking for this.
And I think the big question is, did Putin need just a month or two to sort out how he would replace the role that the Wagner Group played for him and that Prigozhin played for him and then move on to both dismantle it, as he's been doing, and then deal with Prigozhin?
SCIUTTO: No question. And to your point, enormous influence in the Russian military and in the Russian military's primary operation right now, which is, of course, the invasion of Ukraine.
Much of those Wagner forces left in recent months. They played a major role in the fighting of Bakhmut.
But going back, the reason he's called Putin's chef is not because he was his private chef, but because he had some of the biggest military contracts in that country, including feeding the troops.
But also, as I mentioned, he ran the IRA, that research agency that was so highly involved in the Russian misinformation campaign, the 2016 campaign. We're also by Cedric Leighton, CNN military analyst.
[13:34:59:]
What is the effect on Russia's military without the Wagner Group specifically in Ukraine? Wagner forces were some of the most brutal but also some of the most effective there.
COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, that's exactly right, Jim. One of the key things about this is this is going to have real impact if it is, indeed, Prigozhin on this plane that crashed north of Moscow.
That's going to have a profound impact on Russia's ability to fight the war in Ukraine. You'll remember the center of attention, almost the center of gravity of the Russian war effort was, for many months, for about 10 months, centered on Bakhmut.
And the person and the forces that were actually running that show for the Russians, that was Prigozhin. And he was responsible, in his own brutal way, for that one Russian bright spot, from their point of view, in that war effort.
Well, what's happening now, if he has, indeed, been killed in this plane crash and the Wagner Group is being decimated, by all accounts, in many respects, that could have a significant impact on the ability of the Russians to carry out their war effort.
And I think it would potentially have some negative impact, especially on their ability to carry out the operations on the northeastern part of the Ukraine and on the eastern front especially.
KEILAR: I also wonder, Colonel -- I mean, let's look at the big picture of where Vladimir Putin is in this war. We are seeing these drone strikes in Russia. Ukraine doesn't always claim responsibility for them but it appears Ukraine is taking the war to Russian soil.
You have General Surovikin being stood down here just within hours of news that this plane, where you have Prigozhin on the passenger list, has crashed.
And even as we are asking questions, and some of this appears a little bit muddy, I wonder, at a time where maybe some folks are looking at the mounting death toll, wondering if Vladimir Putin may have some vulnerabilities.
If they might send a message to anyone who might be considering internally exploiting those vulnerabilities.
LEIGHTON: Yes, I think so, Brianna. And one of the key things about this is I think we're seeing potentially a power struggle. And the historical analogy might be what happened in China with Mao and the guy who was challenging Mao's --
(AUDIO PROBLEM)
LEIGHTON: -- out of the sky.
SCIUTTO: Oh, we lost --
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: You're back. You're back, Cedric. Sorry, we lost you for a moment there.
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: Complete the thought.
LEIGHTON: Yes, so basically, just like what happened in Mao's China, this might be what is happening to Prigozhin and his organization, the Wagner Group.
And given that very fact, we're seeing an internal power struggle in Russia unfold right now and Putin is trying to assert himself is what looks like at the moment.
SCIUTTO: All right, Nick Paton Walsh, who remains in Ukraine now.
Notable as we look, Nick, at the reporting as it was TASS. And as you noted, this is Russian state media with enormous influence and control by the Russian state.
It says the Embraer Legacy private jet, corporate jet, if you want to call it that, registered to him, was at a cruising altitude to the Tver region after department the Moscow Airport before a data transmission of speed and altitude stopped, which would seem to speak to a sudden loss of the aircraft.
Are you hearing any reaction where you are in Ukraine to this news?
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Still, frankly, digesting news.
One soldier on the front texting me, saying, "Maybe it is time finally for good champaign."
Remember, this is not a man who stood up to Putin. Essentially, he got into a fight with the Russian top brass and led an armed rebellion to try and remove them, to suggest that the war here in Ukraine should be prosecuted in a more brutal, in his eyes, more successful fashion.
So there will be no tears shed here at all if, indeed, he has died.
I should point out, we don't know that at this point. We know he's on the list. And frankly, if you were Yevgeny Prigozhin now, you probably would not think about popping up in public any time soon. Keep a low profile to see what on earth could potentially happen.
To add to that, took, we actually don't know if, indeed, this plan was shot down or brought down deliberately, who was behind that.
Remember, too, we've been reporting on Ukrainian drones being in Russian air space, too. So a lot of unanswered questions.
[13:39:51]
One, though, that may not be so hard to answer is the impact on the war on Ukraine. Wagner's presence, I think it's fair to say, most Western officials suggesting they've been reduced, replaced by Russian regulars, possibly put more into Belarus.
Their role is kind of a vanguard, the sort of championed warriors, brutal, awful, frankly, as they were on the battlefield. That's been somewhat reduced, despite the peak in their credibility they got in the eyes of the more extreme Russians for the move they made toward Moscow.
So I'm not entirely sure this doesn't necessarily register a change in the battlefield. But it will remind people of the vulnerability that Putin faced on that weekend had one of his closest people essentially ended up, perhaps without realizing it, leading an armed march against the Kremlin.
He may have thought he was going against the Russian military but he, clearly, disagreed with Putin on route and he kept going before changing his mind.
And it will, of course, also remind people, too, that Putin has potentially, if, indeed, it turns out that Prigozhin here was somehow killed, possibly chosen the ultimate sanction against someone in his inner circle.
All of those are questions to answer. But essentially here, it's a reminder of that moment of weakness Putin had but it's also, too, possible one that suggests it should be memorable of the chaos that's been surrounding the Kremlin's inner circle over the past weeks -- Jim?
KEILAR: And, Nick, you're raising such important questions there about what know for sure here. We know he's on the passenger list. And TASS, Russian state media, is reporting this.
So we know, as is so clear, that media outlets controlled by the Russian state, by Vladimir Putin are telling us almost as much as Yevgeny Prigozhin is dead, that he was on this passenger list. They're certainly raising that specter and that message is being sent is very clear.
So I want to bring David Sanger back into this conversation.
When you look at the war here, David, and Vladimir Putin's calculus and his long-term plan, that he wants to keep going, he wants to see what might happen, certainly in America moving towards this next election.
And we've reported this out at CNN and I know you have at the "Times," that maybe he is going to see, he hopes, American support and that alliance between America and Europe be cracked a little bit depending on the outcome of the election. He's really trying to hold things together. And I wonder how you see
some of these latest developments, including this reporting from Russian state media playing into that.
SANGER: Well, Brianna, you're exactly right. The calculus for Putin at this point is to play for time.
There are three ways he would win. One is that the Ukrainians run out of ammunition. That day has been put off now by the U.S. giving cluster munitions and NATO coming up with some more.
The second would be a crack among the Europeans, who, of course, have done better than we expected without Russian oil and gas at the levels that they had been before.
And the third is that President Trump or someone with President Trump's views that the United States should not be a part of this war decides to pull out.
All of that just requires that Putin hold the line. And there are many American officials I talked to who believe that Putin thinks that's entirely doable.
He maintained a low-level war between 2014 and the full invasion of Ukraine -- this was after he invaded Crimea -- and sustained that at relatively little cost. If he could do the same here, he might well be able to just outlast the United States and the NATO allies.
Now Prigozhin was getting at a separate issue, which was whether or not Putin's military leaders were prosecuting the war correctly. And he was willing to put up with that until it got to the point of an armed uprising.
Now, even if this was an accident, and perhaps it was, it will be hard for people to believe this wasn't Putin securing his base.
SCIUTTO: If this is the day that Prigozhin died, if he was, indeed, on board this plane, it would have taken place two months to the day after he attempted that coup against the Russian president. That on June 23rd. CNN covered that extensively.
At the time, there was genuine believe, there were general questions about whether he was carrying out a genuine and credible threat to the Russian president's power.
And in the two months since then, there's been an enormous amount of, not just speculation but Western assessments of not just Putin's strength but the future, as you say, David Sanger, of Prigozhin himself.
[13:44:59]
With U.S. officials speculating in public as to, whether, well, in the words of Antony Blinken, they should stay away from windows or balconies. If you're just joining us now, Russian Emergency Services are saying
the Embraer aircraft belonging to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, came down near a village in the Tver region, to the northwest of Moscow.
There were 10 people on board, including three crew members. According to preliminary information, all on board were killed. This, from the Russian Emergency Services. They say they're conducting search operations.
We should note, as we said earlier, that Russian State media, TASS, is reporting that, among those on the passenger list was Yevgeny Prigozhin. That doesn't prove he was on the plane as a passenger but state media is reporting that he was on that passenger list.
But Fred Pleitgen is with us. He has spent a lot of time in Russia covering not just the Prigozhin attempted coup but the Russian leadership.
In your experience, Fred, when Russian state media puts out a report like this, including details about the emergency response, that presumes Russian government involvement in the coverage of that story, doesn't it?
FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it certainly seems to indicate the Russian government know a lot more than we're learning at this point in time.
And I think that Nick also pointed out that Russia has been very, very fast to come out with detail about what is likely going on.
Including some recent things that I've just seen right here, that they've already, apparently, recovered four bodies from that crash. That there were three pilots on board and seven passengers. And everybody on board has been killed.
We have to keep in mind, also that that crash site in the area of Kruzankanov (ph) is north of -- in the northern part of Tver Oblast, a little about two-thirds of the way from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
That's all a pretty remote region. It's very difficult to conduct any forensic work very quickly and to sift through debris that quickly.
So certainly, information definitely coming out very fast in all of this. Of course, it's far too early to see what exactly happened.
But certainly, right now, I'm sort of speaking to folks inside Russia and some of them are saying that they believe that this plane was taken down.
Of course, not that they'll say who was responsible for taking this plane down but that's, certainly, things that people are saying. They don't believe something like this could be an accident or would be an accident, especially if the plane was at cruising altitude.
So certainly, a lot of things that are very intriguing about what's going on.
But one of the things that seems to be transpiring, when you look at some of the messages coming out from Russian state media, but also quite frankly from social media channels affiliated with Yevgeny Prigozhin and his company, they're saying they can't get in touch with him, they're having difficulty, that they're not able to reach him.
State media coming out very quickly with a lot of the details. That certainly does seem to indicate that they know or that they believe that Prigozhin might very well have been on that plane.
And one of the other things, Jim, that I think we also need to talk about as well, there were seven passengers apparently on that plane. Were any of Yevgeny Prigozhin's very important deputies on that plane?
Talking about (INAUDIBLE), who was a very important person in setting up Wagner, giving it the name, running the operations in Syria, and to a great extent running the operations in Ukraine, and now being tasked to run the operations in Africa as well.
How many of them, if, indeed, if it's his deputies, how many of them were on that plane, how big of a blow is that to the organization? And will that mean the organization itself is going to change?
But one of the things that one of the sort of Russians that I was speaking to says, look, right now Wagner is completely changing at this point in time.
It's going from an organization that was running those operations in Ukraine, those really tough battles in Ukraine, to going back to essentially conducting what they called counterterrorism in Africa.
They're right in the middle of a huge change. What is this going to mean for that? And what is this going to mean also, of course, for Russian influence now in Africa as well as the companies making that transition.
Just a couple of days ago, we saw Yevgeny Prigozhin on the ground in Africa saying his forces were starting to take charge there doing what he called counterterrorism operations. What's going to happen now?
So certainly, a lot of open questions and a lot of information also coming out very, very quickly, surprisingly quickly from Russian state media.
SCIUTTO: And from state media.
And we should note, to Fred's point, we do, I believe, have some new video coming in. Well, this is of the apparent crash scene. You could see the burning wreckage there.
Again, we should note, this is the apparent crash scene of where the private jet belonging to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner chief, went down outside of Moscow in Russia's Tver region.
[13:50:05] And as we noted, Russian state media reporting that Prigozhin was on the passenger list of that plane.
Brianna, to Fred's point, we've witnessed, in the weeks since the attempted coup, two months ago to the day, Wagner effectively being put in its place to somewhere degree.
Forces removed from Ukraine, downsized in terms of their operations. And there was some reporting about some its business operations as well, because it was a big money earner --
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: -- we should say, for the Russian president. It's a big money earner. And some of those being downsized as well related to, perhaps, the position of Yevgeny Prigozhin in the Russian power structure.
KEILAR: That's right. When Yevgeny Prigozhin appears in this very recent video talking about how Wagner is going to make Africa more free, we should be clear this is also about earning a lot of revenue.
Which was part of the question about, what was Putin going to do with the Yevgeny Prigozhin problem in the wake of that coup, because Wagner is incredibly important.
But I think we should also note General Surovikin, who suffered incredibly in stature when it came to Vladimir Putin in the wake of that coup, we actually have not seen him since the June mutiny, I don't believe, even though he was stood down here just in recent hours.
And so you have all of these developments. And listen, we don't have all of the facts pinned down here. But what we do have is Russian state media saying this crash that you are looking at, which appears to be the apparent crash scene of this Embraer jet, that Yevgeny Prigozhin is on the passenger list.
You have a lot of developments at once that are playing out very poorly for enemies --
SCIUTTO: Yes.
KEILAR: -- real and perceived or perceived of Vladimir Putin, and that is going to be raising a lot of questions.
SCIUTTO: Which he has a long history of not hesitating to kill, and not just on Russian soil but off Russian soil. He tried to kill Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: -- with radioactive plutonium. Tried to kill Alexei Navalny on a plane over Russia. He somehow survived. There was a shooting at Boris Enlav (ph) outside the Kremlin as well.
Putin has been known to do this before. And of course, if you look, sadly, at the pictures of that crash scene, that is not a crash, that you would expect anyone to survive.
And Russian state media is reporting now they have recovered four bodies from the wreckage.
KEILAR: Of 10, they are saying. Ten, seven passengers, three crew members.
I want to go to General Wesley Clark, retired General Wesley Clark joining us now.
Sir, what do you think as you hear of this development?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Hard to believe it's a real accident. You know, maybe they couldn't get Prigozhin close enough to a window. Maybe he knew the methodology. But eventually, if you cross Vladimir Putin, it seems that your days are numbered.
We'll never get to the truth of this. He's not going to admit it. Maybe they'll say it's a mechanical failure. But it's a lesson.
What it does say, Brianna, is also that those who were speculating that this rebellion that Putin led -- that Prigozhin led against Putin might have been just a fraud, just an effort to see who was disloyal. Maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was a double play by Putin. We just don't know.
He did get Surovikin out. He got 15 other Russian generals identified as being disloyal.
He displayed Wagner to Belarus, He's got the Belarus dictator, Lukashenko, now on the hook to help him, putting more Russian forces into Belarus. And now he cleans the slate with the Prigozhin crash.
It's a remarkable set of intelligence operations as it's unfolded.
SCIUTTO: No question. As we look at this, I'd spoken to U.S. officials in the wake of Prigozhin's failed coup against Putin, who had what you might call a surprising view, but that Putin, they theorized, would emerge from this stronger.
In that, one, the coup didn't work and, two, giving the opportunity to smoke out any potential rivals or those disloyal to him.
As you see the events today -- and again, with the proviso that we don't know for certain he was on that jet. We do know that Russian state media is reporting he was at least on the passenger list.
Do you see a stronger Putin emerging from all of this?
CLARK: I see the end of a potential rival. And we know that Putin is very insecure. So if Prigozhin did have popularity, there's no threat from Prigozhin now.
But I think the message to the West is that Putin's very much in command. And there were some who were saying that Putin -- you know, this Prigozhin crew, things were shaky. He's still got the levels of power.
[13:55:11]
And so this should tell those in the West, who are making the assessment, that Putin is still in charge, he's going to stay in charge, and he'll do anything necessary to remain in charge.
KEILAR: Questions, of course, General, of how worried Putin was in the wake of that coup. And certainly so much speculation, including from the Ukrainian defense minister and, honestly, countless others about what that coup meant.
All of this talk about, does this show that Putin is weak? And you can only imagine how that was received by Vladimir Putin.
CLARK: Right. But I think that, Brianna, if you look at the inside intelligence speculation on this, people would say he engineered perhaps the whole thing.
He got rid of Prigozhin. He found the disloyals. He redeployed forces out and into Belarus. He brought in Lukashenko closer. And at the end, he got rid of Prigozhin, a rival.
So maybe it was just happenstance, maybe he's just taking advantage of circumstances, but it all has a smell, to me, of a very sophisticated Russian intelligence operation.
KEILAR: And --
SCIUTTO: Again, we just have some new video. This is video we showed you before. We have another clip of video, again, purporting to be from the crash scene. There you see it.
By the way, if you follow that --
(CROSSTALK)
KEILAR: This is the new video right here.
SCIUTTO: It's a new video that appears to show the plane summarily --
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: -- falling from the sky. Listen, if that is, indeed ,the jet involved here, that does not happen to planes flying level at altitude by accident.
KEILAR: Because the flight data showed -- and listen, this is the information -- that the Embraer Legacy registered to Prigozhin was at cruising altitude over this Tver region after departing from Moscow Airport before data transmission of speed and altitude stops.
SCIUTTO: Yes. I did just reach out to a senior European official for reaction. My sense from reaching out to U.S. and European officials is they are still assessing what they know here.
But one of them just said to me, when I asked for significance, "Revenge is a dish best served cold."
Those are not undue comments because we had heard an enormous amount of speculation from U.S. officials prior to today's events that Prigozhin might not be safe.
And the U.S. secretary of state, as David Sanger was referencing a few moments ago, said that in so many words just last month.
So the question about Prigozhin's safety and the safety of his group going forward had been ones that U.S. and Western officials publicly raised very hard questions about.
And now we are seeing a crash scene here, which Russian state media is reporting is a jet that had on its passenger list, the leader of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Our Nick Paton Walsh remains in Ukraine.
Nick, I wonder if you're hearing more reaction to this there.
PATON WALSH: Yes, look, no surprise, Jim, indeed, if this is the case. In fact, even the possibility there might be the case is leaving troops on the front line in a state of giddy joy, frankly, but doesn't distract from the larger challenges they're facing.
It's important to point out how little really we know about the fate of Prigozhin at this point apart from him being on this list.
It's important also to remind viewers that Russian state media isn't always part of some nicely joined-up lots with the Kremlin. They may be reacting to the information as best that they had been given it.
It may not necessarily mean that we're hearing all the stuff that Prigozhin is necessarily on that plane.
Important to point out, too, this is not a moment of Putin suddenly looking OK again. He's been through the rockiest period of his entire time in power in the Kremlin.
Because of what Prigozhin did and the fact some may say that he feels he had to, indeed -
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: Yes.
PATON WALSH: If this was the case of what we're seeing right now, the fact that he had to move against Prigozhin in this way, is again possibly a sign of him feeling threatened.
We know so little about what happened at this point. But it's really important to remind people how we've seen Russia as this wonderfully joined-up orchestra, forgive the pun or reference to how Wagner referred to themselves, but messy, un-joined up.
And we might be seeing some of that now, given we, frankly, don't know what's happened to Prigozhin or, indeed, what caused this plane crash. Catastrophic, though, as you say, Jim, it appears to have been in the skies over Tver.
[13:59:55]
SCIUTTO: Well, let's know one more thing. We do know, this just in to CNN, and that is that the transponders of a Prigozhin-linked plane stopped transmission at 6:13 p.m. local time. This, according to flight tracking data.
