The head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozin, was reportedly killed after his plane crashed near Moscow on Wednesday, August 23. According to local media reports, none of the 10 people on board the private Embraer legacy business jet survived the crash.
According to Sputnik, the plane going from Moscow to St. Petersburg was carrying seven passengers and three crew members when it crashed in Russia’s Tver region, about 300 km away from Moscow.
Russia’s federal air transport agency confirmed that the founder of the Wagner paramilitary company, along with several top officials including its co-founder Dmitry Utkin and deputy head Valery Chekalov, were on board the flight, RT reported.
Russian authorities have recovered eight bodies from the crash site so far, but were unable to identify them as they were badly burnt. However, Reuters reported that the telegram group associated with Wagner, Grey Zone, pronounced that Prigozin was dead.
The reasons for the plane crash are not yet clear and the Russian aviation agency has started an investigation, TASS reported.
Billionaire businessman Prigozhin (62) had founded the Wagner militia in 2014. Wagner group mercenaries have been involved in different conflict zones across Africa and Asia, including the Central African Republic, Libya, Western Africa, and Syria.
The Wagner group was also involved in Russia’s months-long battle to control Bakhmut in the Donbass region earlier this year. Though it was instrumental in Ukraine’s defeat, Prigozhin had criticized the Russian Ministry of Defense over alleged lack of supplies of weapons during the battle.
Prigozhin led the Wagner group’s short-lived mutiny against the Russian government shortly after the battle of Bakhmut in June this year. The mutiny was put out within hours following mediation by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Putin had called the mutiny a possible coup attempt and treason and had warned of severe action against the persons involved.
Ever since the end of the mutiny, there were various speculations about Prigozin’s whereabouts and Wagner’s activities until last Monday when Prigozin released a video claiming he was in Africa where Wagner had started recruiting again to fight against terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, among others.
