Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list of a jet that crashed killing all on passengers board, Russia’s civil aviation authority has said.
Earlier, Wagner-linked Telegram channel Grey Zone reported the Embraer aircraft was shot down by air defenses in the Tver region, north of Moscow. The jet, which was flying from Moscow to St Petersburg, was carrying seven passengers and three crew.
Russian emergency services on 24 August, then confirmed that bodies of all ten people on board the Embraer jet had been recovered.
According to data obtained from Flightradar24, the executive jet showed no signs of trouble until a sudden drop in its final 30 seconds of received altitude tracking data.
Attention is now focused on what cased the crash.
According to authorities, those on board included Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and his second-in-command Dmitry Utkin – the man who gave the group its name.
The Wagner group allegedly gained its name from Utkin, coming from his military callsign of “Wagner”.
Prigozhin led a failed mutiny against the Russian armed forces in June. Many Russians were unsurprised when the news of Prigozhin’s reported death broke yesterday.
When Prigozhin launched that failed mutiny two months ago, he also challenged the authority of Vladimir Putin himself. And that is something the Russian President does not forget easily. Many people are thus concluding for themselves that this was a targeted ‘kill’ for revenge.
Grey Zone, Wagner’s telegram channel, said local residents heard two bangs before the crash and saw two vapour trails.
Tass news agency said the plane caught fire on hitting the ground.
The aircraft had been in the air for less than half an hour, it said.
Flight records
Speculation on Telegram channels suggested the crashed plane was an Embraer Legacy jet with the serial number RA-02795. Tracking data on FlightRadar24 – a popular flight tracking website – does not show where it departed from.
Earlier today it appeared near Moscow, where it climbed to an altitude of nearly 29,000ft (8,800m) before the data showed it suddenly dropping, ending up at 0ft.
The plane is registered to Autolex Transport, which the US government has linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin. However, the plane’s flight records are now partially inaccessible through FlightRadar24.
But there are records that the flight has made several journeys to and from Moscow and St Petersburg in recent months. The plane has also been pictured by local media in Belarus, where the Wagner group is now thought to be based.
None of the social media accounts believed to be linked to Prigozhin have so far made any claims as to whether he is dead or alive.
Some accounts are saying that another business jet owned by him was also in the air at the time of the crash, also having departed Moscow.
Wagner-linked channel Reverse Side of the Medal is saying that this second jet has turned around and is flying back to Moscow.
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