In reality, however, there was a far more important story that was coming out of South Africa. In fact, Putin had a far more important job to do on that day due to his desire to make progress in stripping the United States of its dollar hegemony. Putin was engaged by videolink in the discussions taking place in Johannesburg regarding expanding the so-called BRICS monetary union, in part to include measures that would diminish the dominance of the dollar in the world economy. That objective would have been damaged severely if Putin had been implicated in the spectacular public assassination of a rival on the same day as the BRICS meeting that would have been not only an embarrassment but also very damaging vis-a-vis his credibility as a statesman. If Putin had really wanted to kill Prigozhin, there were less politically damaging ways to do so and as of this writing the cause of the airplane crash remains unknow. By one theory, the death of Prigozhin was carried out by an airplane bomb planted by US or British intelligence working with Ukrainian agents inside Russia to discredit the Russian leader, knowing that even if he were innocent he would be blamed for the killing, which is precisely how the story has been developing in the US and Europe.