MOSCOW: Russian patriotic bloggers on Friday poured scorn on President Vladimir Putin‘s intimation that mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plane was blown up with hand grenades while those on board were high on cocaine and alcohol.

The private Embraer jet on which Prigozhin was travelling to St Petersburg crashed north of Moscow killing all 10 people on board on August 23, including Dmitry Utkin, co-founder of the mercenary Wagner group, four bodyguards and a crew of three.

Putin said Thursday fragments of hand grenades were found in the bodies of the dead and that investigators had ruled out any external impact on the plane such as a missile.
However Putin said investigators had been wrong not to have carried out alcohol and drug blood tests, given that five kg of cocaine had been found by the Federal Security Service at Wagner premises in St Petersburg earlier this year. Wagner communications channels were silent, but some supporters and patriotic bloggers expressed disbelief.
“So a short summary: the most combat-ready unit in the history of modern Russia was commanded by alcoholics and junkies” said the Children of the Arbat pro-war Telegram channel.
Prigozhin, who banned his men from using alcohol and drugs on pain of severe punishment, died two months after leading a brief mutiny against Russia’s defence establishment that posed the biggest challenge to Putin’s rule. Western diplomats say Putin ordered the killing of Prigozhin after the humiliation of the mutiny.
The Kremlin has dismissed that allegation as a lie and said the official investigation has not yet been completed.
“The version about a self-detonation is laughable and a farce,” said the Southern Front Telegram channel. The Grey Zone Telegram channel, which has been unofficially associated with Wagner, carried a post from a war blogger who said the cocaine that Putin referred to was in fact bundles of washing powder made to look like drugs.
Vladimir Pastukhov, a political analyst, said he believed Putin did not expect people to believe the version of events he had hinted at, but was signalling that Prigozhin and his associates had been “executed by the book” for their mutiny.