A plane crashed in Russia on Wednesday evening. Among the victims of the accident are Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, and another of the commanders, Dmitry Utkin, the Russian Federal Aviation Agency Rosaviacia said. Prigozhin’s death was also confirmed by the Gray Zone telegram channel associated with the Wagner family. A total of ten people died when a private plane crashed. The cause of the accident is under investigation.
A plane crashed in Russia, the crew died. The head of the Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin is said to be among the dead Photo: CTK
The plane was flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The crash occurred after approximately thirty minutes of flight in the northwest of the Tver region near the village of Kuzhenkino. According to the Gray Zone Telegram channel, which is close to to the Wagner group local residents heard two shots before the plane crashed. The plane was supposed to be shot down. This information cannot yet be verified.
“The Embraer plane was flying from (Moscow airport) Sheremetyevo to St. Petersburg. There were three crew members and seven passengers on board. All perished,” the press department of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Affairs said.
The Russian state agency Rosaviacia announced that it had already started an investigation into the disaster. “We have started an investigation into the crash of the Embraer plane. There was also a name on the passenger list Yevgeny Prigozhin,” TASS quoted the Russian Federal Aviation Agency as saying.
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It was not clear for a long time whether Prigozhin was really on board. The Fontanka server, among other things, stated that he was traveling on a crashed plane and died, citing its sources, according to which there were also the commanders of Wagner’s group.
Vladimir Rogov, the Moscow-appointed head of the occupation administration in Ukraine’s Zaporozhye region, wrote in a telegram that his sources from within Wagner’s group confirmed the death of Prigozhin as well as one of the commanders, former Russian GRU military intelligence officer Dmitry Utkin.
Prigozhin’s death was later confirmed by the Gray Zone telegram channel associated with the Wagner family. He stated that his death was the result of the “actions of the traitors of Russia”. The Russian Federal Agency for Air Transport Rosaviacia published the identity of the ten victims of the accident on Wednesday around ten o’clock in the evening – among them were the names of Prigozhin and Utkin.
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However, the readovka.news portal wrote in a telegram that, according to one of its sources, it is premature to talk about Prigozhin’s death, because the businessman could have been on board another plane. For safety reasons, he said, he often stated that he was flying in one of his machines, but then got into another.
According to the RBK news agency, the governor of the Tver region, Igor Rudenya, took the investigation of the accident under personal control. According to the RIA Novosti agency, the rescue services said that so far they have found the bodies of eight people at the scene.
A plane crashed in Russia, the crew died. The head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is reportedly among the dead Source: ČTK
Moderator Xenija Sobčaková stated on the social network that the crashed plane probably belonged to Prigozhin. The Russian-language BBC server wrote that the head of the Wagner family owns an Embraer Legacy 600 machine with the marking RA-02795, and according to the Flightradar server, the plane with this number took off from Moscow in the afternoon. Around 3:11 p.m., it disappeared from the radar over the Tver region at an altitude of 8,500 meters.
The plane, which at that time had been in the air for less than half an hour, started burning after hitting the ground.
Armed campaign on Moscow
Prigozhin, whose fighters from the Wagner (in the Russian transcription Vagnerov) group took part in the toughest battles during the Russian military campaign in Ukraine, attempted an armed rebellion against the Russian army command and the Ministry of Defense at the end of June this year.
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In a flash operation on June 24, he occupied army facilities and an airport in Rostov-on-Don in southwestern Russia. Subsequently, several thousand mercenaries with tanks, armored vehicles, anti-aircraft guns and civilian trucks set out for Moscow, but that very day Prigozhin the process stopped.
The head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin:
The Kremlin subsequently announced that the Wagners i their boss they will not be prosecuted, but will go to Belarus. Since then, their fate is unclear. This week, Prigozhin released the first video since the uprising, in which he suggested he was in Africa. However, it is not clear when and where the footage was taken.
2023-08-23 20:44:00
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