French government spokesman Olivier Veran said on Thursday that there are “reasonable doubts” about the “circumstances” of the plane crash that is believed to have killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group that sparked the June uprising in Russia, reports said. AFP and Agerpres.

While US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that “very little happens in Russia without Putin’s involvement,” Veran told public broadcaster France 2:

“In principle, this is an authentic truth. We still do not know the circumstances under which this accident occurred. We can have reasonable doubts.”

According to Veran, Yevgeny Prigozhin is first of all “Putin’s dirty work”.

Prigozhin died on Wednesday evening after the plane in which he was traveling with six other passengers crashed in the Tver region. The Russian authorities announced that all the dead bodies of the people who were on board had been found.

“What he did is inseparable from Putin’s policy, which placed the responsibility for carrying out these abuses on the head of the Wagner group. Prigozhin leaves mass graves. He leaves behind a mess in most of the globe, I mean Africa, Ukraine, Russia itself,” the French official insisted.

In June, Yevgeny Prigozhin led a rebellion against the Russian General Staff and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, leading his men to briefly seize military posts in southern Russia before marching on Moscow.

Vladimir Putin called him a “traitor” without naming him. Prigozhin abandoned the rebellion after Belarusian dictator Oleksandr Lukashenko reached a deal with the Kremlin in which Minsk offered him asylum.

On the same topic:

• “Such a plane does not fall catastrophically from the sky”: what an aeronaut says about the crash of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane

• Death, impeachment and arrest: events that strengthened Vladimir Putin’s power in a month

• “I think Wagner’s group has a lot to worry about, too.” Yevgeny Prigozhin died. What we know so far, what could be next