MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a private jet that crashed on Wednesday evening north of Moscow with no survivors, the Russian authorities said.
There was no confirmation that Prigozhin was physically on board and Reuters could not immediately confirm that he was on the aircraft.
“An investigation has been launched into an Embraer plane crash that occurred tonight in the Tver region. According to the passenger list, the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin is among them,” Rosaviatsia, Russia’s aviation agency, was cited as saying by the state TASS news agency.
Russia’s emergencies ministry said in a statement that the aircraft travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg had crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver Region.
It said that 10 people had been on board, including three crew members. According to preliminary information, everyone on board had been killed, it said.
Prigozhin, 62, spearheaded a mutiny against Russia’s top army brass on June 23-24 which President Vladimir Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war.
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The mutiny was ended by negotiations and an apparent Kremlin deal which saw Prigozhin agree to relocate to neighbouring Belarus. But he had appeared to move freely inside Russia after the deal nonetheless.
Prigozhin, who had sought to topple Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, on Monday posted a video address that he suggested was taken in Africa.
Unconfirmed Russian media reports said that Dmitry Utkin, Prigozhin’s right-hand man, was also on board and that Prigozhin and his associates had attended a meeting with officials from the Russian Defence Ministry.
Reuters could not confirm that and there was no immediate comment from the defence ministry or the Kremlin.
Soon after the plane dropped out of the sky, a second private jet linked to Prigozhin which also appeared to be heading to St Petersburg, Prigozhin’s home base, turned back to Moscow, flight tracking data showed, and later landed.
The Flight Radar 24 online tracker showed that the Embraer Legacy 600 (plane number RA-02795) had dropped off the radar at 6:11 p.m time. An unverified video clip posted to social media showed a plane resembling a private jet falling out of the sky toward the Earth.
Another unverified clip showed the still burning wreckage of the plane on the ground. At least one body was visible.
Here are some key facts about Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary force, who Russia’s civil aviation authority said was on the passenger list of a plane that crashed north of Moscow on Thursday.
– Prigozhin, 62, soared in prominence after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, where his fighters – including thousands of convicts he recruited from prison – led the Russian assault on the city of Bakhmut in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. Prigozhin used social media to trumpet Wagner’s successes and wage a feud with the military establishment, accusing it of incompetence and even treason.
– In June, Prigozhin led a mutiny in which Wagner fighters took control of the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and shot down several military helicopters, killing their pilots, as they advanced towards Moscow. President Vladimir Putin called it an act of treachery that would meet with a harsh response.
– The revolt was defused in a deal whereby the Kremlin said that to avert bloodshed, Prigozhin and some of his fighters would leave for Belarus and a criminal case against him for armed mutiny would be dropped.
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– Confusion has surrounded the implementation of the deal and the future of Prigozhin. The Kremlin said he attended a meeting with Putin five days after the mutiny. On July 5, state TV said an investigation against him was still being pursued and broadcast footage showing cash, passports, weapons and other items it said were seized on a raid on one of his properties. But in late July, Prigozhin was photographed in St. Petersburg while a Russia-Africa summit was taking place in the city. This week he appeared in a video that he suggested was shot in Africa, where Wagner has operations in several countries.
– Born in St. Petersburg on June 1, 1961, Prigozhin spent nine years in Soviet prisons for crimes including robbery and fraud. Released in 1990 amid the Soviet Union’s death throes, he launched a career as a caterer and restaurateur in his hometown. He is believed to have met Putin, then a top aide to St. Petersburg’s mayor, at this time.
– Leveraging political connections, Prigozhin was awarded major state contracts, becoming known as “Putin’s chef” after catering for Kremlin events. More recently he joked that “Putin’s butcher” would be more appropriate.
– In 2014, Prigozhin founded Wagner, a private military company whose fighters have deployed in support of Moscow’s allies in countries including Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic. The United States has sanctioned it and accused it of atrocities, which Prigozhin has denied.
– Prigozhin has acknowledged that he founded and financed the Internet Research Agency, a company Washington says is a “troll farm” that meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In November 2022 he said he had interfered in U.S. elections and would do so again.
