The leader of the Wagner Group mercenary front that marched his forces on Moscow just months ago was believed to be among 10 individuals who died in a plane crash Wednesday, according to Russia’s state news service.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led the failed revolt in June, was listed among 10 names on the private plane’s passenger list, according to the report from Tass, which cites the country’s aviation authority. All 10 people aboard the flight were killed.
Yet official confirmation that Prigozhin was among them was slow in coming.
Before the crash, Prigozhin – who had seemed to largely disappear from public view after he was permitted under a deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to take refuge in his country in the wake of the mutiny – was widely believed to be in Africa. He released a recent video in which he can be seen armed in a desert landscape among troops, suggesting the Wagner group had returned to its roots of advancing Russian interest by trading securing guarantees for developmental rights.
“Wagner is conducting reconnaissance and search operations, making Russia even greater on every continent – and Africa even more free. Justice and happiness for the African nations,” he said in the video posted this week to his Telegram channel.
President Joe Biden, who was quiet on the rebellion as it unfolded, said what many were likely thinking when asked about the reports on Wednesday.
“I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised,” Biden said.
Asked if he thought it was the work of Russian President Vladimir Putin – whose enemies regularly fall victim to fatal accidents or mysterious attacks – Biden responded, “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind. But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”
Prigozhin appeared to maintain a precarious position within Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, seemingly allowed to remain at the head of his forces and secure billions of dollars in government contracts despite his aborted rebellion against Moscow in June, when a column of some 25,000 Wagner troops loyal to him conducted a stunning about-face and marched along with fighting vehicles and heavy weaponry toward the capital.
Progozhin, who had been increasingly vocal about his dissatisfaction with Russia’s generals as well as the lack of resources supplied to his forces, said publicly that the move was in retaliation for a Russian attack on his forces, although U.S. intelligence indicated that Wagner troops had been amassing near the Russian border for some time. The troops – who were called upon to do some of the heaviest fighting in the ongoing war in Ukraine – marched on the southern Russian metropolis of Rostov-on-Don, seizing the headquarters building of the Russian command overseeing the war. Russian officials sought the arrest of Prigozhin and moved on his convoy. Skirmishes ensued, yet Russian troops reportedly cheered and waved the mercenaries through checkpoints while some even joined the column of Prigozhin’s men that began making its way to Moscow.
As quickly as it materialized, the threat dissipated, and Prigozhin issued a statement saying his mercenary front had achieved its ambition of seizing the Kremlin’s attention and was returning to the front lines. An arrest order was withdrawn and Prigozhin was permitted under a deal brokered by Lukashenko.
Reports later emerged of meetings between Prigozhin and Putin, and the mercenary leader was subsequently seen in St. Petersburg, where he was permitted access to his vast sums of money that had been seized by the government. The status of Wagner was less clear, with some troops joining regular Russian forces in Ukraine, some remaining in Belarus and some believed to have returned to operations in Africa.
Wagner first emerged as the armed extension of Putin’s foreign ambitions for the developing world, particularly to help secure areas in which Russia could prospectively exploit mineral rights and other commercial enterprises – regardless of the tactics required to achieve the goals. Prigozhin, a catering tycoon and Wagner's chief financier who spent time in prison in Russia’s immediate post-Soviet era, parlayed contracts to feed Russia’s troops into a security company of his own.
His mercenary front rose to the public’s attention by carrying out highly deniable paramilitary operations in far-flung regions of the world aligned with Russia’s foreign policy. Wagner’s presence in Mozambique, Libya, Central African Republic and Mali resembled a business conglomerate, trading natural resource access for private military services with a penchant for human rights abuses. That expeditionary mission began to change into more of a special operations force with ultimate deniability when Putin, finding difficulty masking the high Russian death toll during the Syrian civil war, employed them to prop up the regime of Bashar Assad during the civil war and simultaneously execute a multinational war against the Islamic State group.
。 Sophie 编译 据当地议会证实，奥克兰和惠灵顿的12岁以下儿童免费乘坐公共交通和25岁以下乘客半价优惠将于4月30日结束。
B |
在此之前，新政府削减了去年7月首次推出的这些优惠的资金。不过，这一变化不会影响由地方议会直接资助的现有优惠，包括对大学生和中学生的优惠。
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这也不会影响前政府引入的其他Community Connect优惠，交通部长Simeon Brown选择保留了它。
两个地方议会都将在5月1日之前对青少年票价做出调整。
奥克兰交通局（AT）表示，5至12岁儿童的免费乘车和13至24岁乘客的半价优惠都将结束。
这些变化预计将影响约20万注册AT HOP卡用户。
同时，在惠灵顿，MetLink表示，5至16岁的儿童和青少年，或者年龄再大一点但还在上中学的人，将支付成人票价一半的费用。
17岁至24岁的人的乘车票价将恢复全价，除非他们有资格获得其他高等教育或Community Connect的优惠。
惠灵顿5岁以下的儿童可继续免费乘车，在奥克兰，如果有另一名乘客陪同，5岁以下儿童也可以免费乘车。
惠灵顿交通委员会主席Thomas Nash表示，整个地区的人们都会感受到这一变化。
他说：“我不想结束这些优惠——我们知道它们对人们产生了很大的影响。”
“我们希望维持现有的服务和可靠性，但如果我们想要扩大网络，我们自己就无法承担优惠的成本，特别是在新政府公共交通资金不确定的情况下。”
“每年需要有1000多万纽币的资金，这就得再提高我们目前提议的19.8%的地税涨幅。”
在奥克兰，AT集团增长和优化部门经理Richard Harrison表示，许多25岁以下的人将有资格获得其他优惠，如针对儿童、中学生、大学生和Community Connect的优惠。
“我们会自动将乘客转换到最有利的优惠上。
C | 但是，仍会有乘客需要重新申请优惠，尤其是那些接受高等教育的乘客。”
“今天我们将直接联系受影响的乘客，告知他们如何申请新的优惠，如果他们符合条件的话。”
Harrison说，AT的团队确实调查了继续提供优惠的可能性，但由于成本高达6150万纽币，没有中央政府的支持，这是不可能的。
在12月的迷你预算中，联合政府通知地方议会，将在90天内停止为这些优惠提供资金。它还告诉地方议会，它将帮助支付从票价收集系统中取消两种基于年龄的优惠的费用。
