Eight dead have been recovered from the plane crash in Russia. Wagner boss Prigoshin is said to have been on the passenger list. A Telegram channel close to the mercenaries reported his death. There is no official confirmation of this.
According to the Russian aviation authority, a private jet crashed in Russia. So far, eight bodies have been recovered from the crash site, the Russian news agency RIA reported. The aviation authority Rosawiazija had previously spoken of ten fatalities. Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, was also on the passenger list for the flight. However, it has not yet been officially confirmed whether Prigozhin was on board the plane.
The Telegram channel “Grey Zone” circulated that the mercenary chief had died in the crash. The Wagner group, and in the past Prigozhin himself, used the channel to spread news. The post called Prigozhin a “true patriot” of Russia who was killed at the hands of “traitors”.
According to the Tass news agency, the Embraer Legacy aircraft was en route from Moscow to Saint Petersburg – the hometown of Prigozhin and the headquarters of the Wagner Group. A few minutes after the plane took off, contact with the crew is said to have broken off. The machine crashed in the Tver region near the town of Kuschenkino. Emergency services from the Ministry of Disaster Management and the law enforcement agencies are already at the scene of the accident. A search is underway. According to the aviation authority, investigations into the crash have already been initiated. Accordingly, three crew members and seven passengers were on board.
US President Biden briefed to crash
The White House said US President Joe Biden would be kept up to date on reports of the crash. Reuters quoted Biden as saying he didn’t know what happened to Prigozhin. However, reports of his possible death did not surprise him. And the US President is said to have added that little is happening in Russia that is not backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
US National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson made a similar statement. The reports from Russia had reached their authorities. “If it’s confirmed, it wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” Watson said.
Recordings are said to have shown Prigozhin recently on an Africa mission
Recently, a video of mercenary leader Prigozhin appeared on the Internet, which, according to his own words, is supposed to show him in Africa, where he and his fighters are involved in a reconnaissance mission. The authenticity of these recordings could not be independently verified. The mercenaries are active in several African countries such as Mali.
Prigozhin called on fighters to revolt
The Wagner troops had previously fought alongside the Russian military in the war against Ukraine and played a key role in the capture of the heavily contested town of Bakhmut, among other things.
At the end of June, Prigozhin called for an uprising against the Russian military leadership, after repeatedly accusing them of failure in increasingly harsh tones. The rebellion of his troops, who invaded Russia across the Russian-Ukrainian border and occupied the southern Russian city of Rostov, was expressly not directed against Putin. At the time, Prigozhin himself stated that his fighters had advanced to within 200 kilometers of Moscow before the Wagner boss himself announced the end of the uprising.
Prigozhin subsequently went into exile in Belarus, allegedly an agreement between himself and the Kremlin. However, the first reports emerged in early July that the Wagner boss and once close confidante of Russian President Vladimir Putin had returned to Saint Petersburg.
From prison to businessman
In Soviet times, Prigozhin spent nine years in prison for robbery, fraud and other crimes. a career as a restaurant owner and caterer in St. Petersburg followed in the 1990s. Putin was one of the guests at his restaurant, and Prigozhin also catered to state institutions – which ultimately earned him the nickname “Putin’s chef.” He is also said to have been the businessman behind the troll factories in St. Petersburg, which tried to influence western countries via social media.
In 2014, Prigozhin is said to have founded the Wagner Group. For a long time, however, he denied being connected to the mercenary troops. He sued anyone who connected him to the Wagner mercenary company and its operations in Africa, Syria and the Donbass. The Russian state leadership also denied for a long time that Wagner fighters were deployed for them. It was not until the end of September 2022 that Prigozhin admitted to having founded Wagner in order to send mercenaries to the Donbass and Arab states, Africa and Latin America. These “boys” have become a “pillar of the fatherland”.