I dont see putin authorizing killing two commercial pilots when he could have just shot who he wanted or easily imprisoned them for treason ect.

I especially don’t see him doing it now, on the cusp of reinvigorated action in the Sahel region. Wagner humiliated France; and to me, it makes the most logical sense that the State Department would want to decapitate that dragon before the same could happen to them-- which all things considered, it still could if the next few links in the chain of command under Prigozhin are still intact, and move on the same accord that he would’ve.