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A plane said to be carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, a notorious warlord whose Wagner group staged a failed mutiny in June, has crashed on a flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg, according to Russian officials. .
According to the Russian Satellite News Agency, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations stated that all 10 people on board were killed, including 3 crew members. Among the passengers was a man named Prigozhin, Russian officials said, without elaborating.
If confirmed, Prigozhin’s death would mark a spectacular end to his career. After playing a major role in Vladimir Putin’s sweeping invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin led his paramilitary forces in a historic but aborted mutiny against Moscow in June.
Videos shared on social media channels known to be close to Russian security services showed images of the crash site near the village of Kurhenkino in the Tver region, northwest of Moscow. The video appears to show emergency services approaching the burning wreckage of the plane. Authorities said eight bodies had been recovered from the scene.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case over the crash. Russia’s aviation agency, Rosaviatsiya, said it had launched a commission that was searching for the plane’s black boxes.
A post on Grayzone, a social media channel linked to Wagner, said Russian air defenses shot down the plane. Before the accident, residents allegedly heard “two typical anti-aircraft fires”. “This is confirmed by inversion marks in the sky in one of the videos,” it added.
News outlet Mash on the social media app Telegram said locals heard two loud bangs before the crash.
According to reports, the crash occurred when Putin was speaking at a concert commemorating World War II in the Kursk region near the Ukrainian border.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who is on vacation in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, told reporters he “didn’t really know what happened” but was “not surprised.” He added: “Putin is behind a lot of what’s happening in Russia.”
A spokesman for the US National Security Council said: “If it is confirmed, it should not surprise anyone. The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now – it seems – that is.”
A Western official said they had been told the plane was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile system but could not confirm whether Prigozhin was on board, adding: “Putin does not take prisoners.”
Prigorzhin, a former Kremlin caterer dubbed “Putin’s cook,” became one of the most important leaders in Russia’s war effort and later became so disaffected with the military’s leadership that he died in A coup against the military took place in late June.
Although Wagner’s men effectively took control of two large cities in southern Russia and shot down two helicopters and a plane en route to Moscow, killing at least 13 soldiers, Putin appeared to forgive them.
Under an agreement with the Kremlin, Wagner went into exile in neighboring Belarus, where Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko brokered a truce.
Prigorzhin said last month that Wagner’s forces would eventually be redeployed to Africa, where the group continues to fight as mercenaries in several conflicts. He said in a video on Monday that his mission in Africa was to “make Russia stronger on all continents”.
While Prigozhin appears to have reintegrated into Russia’s security establishment, U.S. officials say they expect him to face retaliation.
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum last month, CIA Director William Burns said that “Putin usually thinks revenge is best eaten cold”. “Putin is the ultimate advocate of revenge, so I would be surprised if Prigorzhin escapes further punishment.”
According to flight-tracking website Flightradar24, the plane was an Embraer Legacy jet that Prigorzhin regularly traveled around Russia and even as far as Africa. Recently, the plane has been flying to Belarus.
When the Embraer jet last broadcast its position, it was flying at an altitude of 28,000 feet near Tver and moving at a ground speed of 513 knots. The route appeared to be the plane’s normal flight path to St. Petersburg, where it last flew on July 6.
Video of the crash and its aftermath posted on social media with ties to Russian security services showed the plane rapidly descending from the sky, accompanied by smoke resembling an anti-aircraft defense launch, before plummeting to the ground in a fireball.
Video posted on a Wagner-linked Telegram channel showed a plane crashing into the sky near the village of Kurenkino © The Telegraph / @grey_zone / AFP / Reuters
Video posted on a Wagner-linked Telegram channel showed a plane crashing into the sky near the village of Kurenkino
However, Marsh also reported that security services were investigating the possibility of a “terrorist attack on board” as another potential cause of the blast.
Earlier on Wednesday, reports emerged that the Russian military had fired the head of the Aerospace Forces, Sergei Surovikin, a prominent general believed to be close to Prigozhin, amid a crackdown on potential Wagner sympathizers. duty.
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti quoted “informed sources” as saying Surovkin had been “removed from his post” and replaced by the chief of staff of the Aerospace Forces, Viktor Avzarov. After the failure of the mutiny, Surovkin did not appear in public.
Additional reporting by Chris Cook
