analysis
The head of the Wagner mercenary group, Prigozhin, is probably dead. According to the Russian aviation authority, he was on board a plane that crashed in the Tver region. The number two in the Wagner group, Utkin, is said to have been one of the inmates.
A few hours after a plane crash in the Russian region of Tver, the country’s aviation authority officially confirmed that the head of the Wagner mercenary group was also on board the plane. His deputy and co-founder of the Wagner Group, Dmitri Utkin, was also one of the passengers. The aviation authority had previously spoken of only ten passengers on board: seven passengers and three crew members. It is believed that none of the occupants survived the crash.
It quickly became known that Prigozhin’s name was on the passenger list for the private jet flight. The Telegram channel “Grey Zone” was the first to spread that Prigozhin 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. Contact with the crew is said to have broken off a few minutes after the plane took off. The machine crashed in the Tver region near the town of Kuschenkino. According to the aviation authority, investigations into the crash have already been initiated.
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. Before confirming that Prigozhin was on the plane, Reuters quoted Biden as saying that Prigozhin’s death would 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.
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.
As of 2012, Prigozhin is said to have been involved in founding 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”.