The Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times condemned President Joe Biden and other Western leaders for implying that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin orchestrated a plane crash believed to have killed Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) leader Yevgeny Prigozhin this week.
The Times, citing Chinese Communist Party-approved “experts,” claimed in an article on Thursday that suggesting Putin ordered the demise of the plane, which also reportedly carried other senior members of the paramilitary organization, was part of a “wave of public opinion and cognitive warfare” intended to confuse Russian nationals out of supporting their autocratic leader.
“While the results of the investigation are still not clear, the US and its allies pointed the finger at Putin, which is aimed at discrediting him at home and disrupting Russia’s internal unity and stability,” one such “expert” told the outlet.
China Daily, another government newspaper, also accused the United States on Friday of trying to “intensify the volatility in Russia’s ‘internal affairs’ by suggesting that Putin would eliminate Prigozhin,” potentially inciting violence on the part of disaffected Wagner mercenaries.
Russia’s aviation agency Rosaviatsiya announced on Wednesday that it had detected the crash of a private plane carrying ten people that day in Tver, a region north of Moscow. Prigozhin and reported Wagner PMC founder Dmitry Utkin, along with several other Wagner officials, were on the flight manifest, according to the agency. Russian officials announced that all individuals on board the plane were dead but did not identify Prigozhin, specifically, as having passed away. A Kremlin spokesman insisted on Friday that the Russian government would not declare him dead until DNA testing on the bodies proved that the people on board matched the list of names on the manifest.
The wreckage of a plane is seen at the crash site near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, on August 24, 2023. Russian state-run news agencies on August 23, 2023, said that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group that led a mutiny against Russia’s army in June, was on the list of passengers of a plane that crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region (OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP via Getty Images).
Asked to comment on the crash on Thursday, Biden told reporters that he could not comment in detail because the 80-year-old had been “working out for the last hour and a half” but suggested that Putin killed Prigozhin, anyway.
US President Joe Biden rides his bike through Cape Henlopen State Park in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on September 19, 2021 (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images).
“I don’t know for a fact about what happened, but I’m not surprised … there’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind but I don’t know enough to know the answer,” he said.
The Kremlin has denied playing a role in the crash.
The Global Times defended Putin from Biden’s comments even while insisting that the crash was likely not an “accident.”
“Experts believe that although the existence of Prigozhin posed risks to all parties, the US and its allies are using the incident to launch a wave of public opinion and cognitive warfare against Russia in order to create more chaos and instability,” the Chinese government outlet asserted.
While the “experts” ceded that “there was little chance that Prigozhin’s death was just an accident,” they, nonetheless, condemned Western leaders for saying the same thing.
“While the results of the investigation are still not clear, the US and its allies pointed the finger at Putin, which is aimed at discrediting him at home and disrupting Russia’s internal unity and stability,” one such “expert” told the newspaper. “This is cognitive and information warfare against Russia launched by the West.”
The “finger pointing” was necessary, the analysis continued, because “the Kremlin needs more trust from Russian society,” and rumors that Putin is involved in yet another assassination will erode that trust.
China Daily suggested on Friday that Biden’s remarks were intended not to split the Kremlin from the Russian people, but from Wagner itself.
“By trying to drive the wedge between the Putin regime and the Wagner Group deeper, the US will hope to help its proxies in the Ukraine conflict,” the propaganda outlet argued, “and intensify the volatility in Russia’s ‘internal affairs’ through stoking Prigozhin’s death into a ‘backyard fire’ of Moscow, if not a fuse of systemic crisis in Russia, while claiming a high moral ground to justify its move as an effort to end the Ukraine crisis early.”
US President Joe Biden, left, shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Mariinsky Palace during an unannounced visit in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Feb. 20, 2023 (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool).
China Daily condemned America for allegedly embracing “schadenfreude” over Prigozhin’s reported death and warned that such sentiments were “nothing but a miscalculation as that will serve no parties’ interests, including those of the U.S.”
The plane crash occurred exactly two months after Prigozhin led an invasion of Russia from neighboring Ukraine, where his forces were accused of a wide array of atrocities against civilians while aiding the formal Russian military in its full-scale invasion of the country. On June 23, Prigozhin issued a message accusing the Russian Defense Ministry of attacking and killing Wagner fighters to undermine the success of his illegal army. In response, he led a “march for justice” into Russia in which Wagner forces took the border city of Rostov-on-Don and nearly reached Moscow with little resistance, embarrassing Putin.
Fewer than 24 hours later, the communist dictator of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, announced that he had intervened and ended the “march for justice.” Russia would drop criminal charges against Prigozhin for “armed uprising” in exchange for him fleeing to Belarus and ceasing his assault on the government. While Prigozhin repeatedly insisted he was not leading a coup against Putin and only opposed Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to support Putin’s efforts, the episode proved alarming to Russia’s allies.
Members of the Wagner group look from a military vehicle with the sign read as “Brother” in Rostov-on-Don late on June 24, 2023. Rebel mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin who sent his fighters to topple the military leaders in Moscow will leave for Belarus and a criminal case against him will be dropped as part of a deal to avoid “bloodshed,” the Kremlin said on June 24 (Photo by Roman ROMOKHOV / AFP) (Photo by ROMAN ROMOKHOV/AFP via Getty Images).
China, a top Russia ally with friendly ties to Ukraine, had long expressed “concerns” about the invasion. Its media described the “march for justice” event as lamentable for Putin and challenging to the belief that he retains full control of his country. One Chinese “expert” told China Daily at the time that Wagner’s existence itself was a hallmark of the “inherent contradictions” in the Putin regime and suggested it called into question Putin’s ability to govern.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, center left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, center right, enter a hall for talks in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, June 5, 2019. Amid the soaring tensions over Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin is heading to Beijing on a trip intended to help strengthen Russia’s ties with China and coordinate their policies amid Western pressure (Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool, File/AP).