Mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a brief armed rebellion against Russia earlier this year, was on the passenger list of a private jet that crashed Wednesday, killing all 10 people on board, emergency officials said. It wasn’t immediately clear if Prigozhin was on the plane.
The crash immediately raises suspicions since the fate of the founder of the Wagner private military company has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted the mutiny. The Kremlin said he would be exiled to Belarus, but the mercenary chief, whose troops were some of the best fighting forces for Russia in Ukraine, has since reportedly popped up in Russia.
The crash also comes after Russian media reported that a top general linked to Prigozhin was dismissed from his position as commander of the air force.
A plane carrying three pilots and seven passengers that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg went down more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass. It was not clear if Prigozhin was among those on board, though Russia’s civilian aviation regulator, Rosaviatsia, said he was on the manifest.
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Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-appointed official in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in Ukraine, said he talked to Wagner commanders, who confirmed that Prigozhin and a top associate were on board when the crashed plane.
“We have seen the reports. If confirmed, no one should be surprised,” said U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
However, Keir Giles, a Russia expert with international affairs think-tank Chatham House, urged caution about reports of Prigozhin’s death. He said “multiple individuals have changed their name to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, as part of his efforts to obfuscate his travels.”
“Let’s not be surprised if he pops up shortly in a new video from Africa,” Giles said.
Flight tracking data reviewed by The Associated Press showed a private jet that Prigozhin had used previously took off from Moscow on Wednesday evening and its transponder signal disappeared minutes later.
The signal stopped suddenly while the plane was at altitude and traveling at speed. In an image posted by a pro-Wagner social media account showing burning wreckage, a partial tail number matching a jet previously used by Prigozhin could be seen.
Videos shared by the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone show a plane dropping like a stone from a large cloud of smoke, twisting widely as it falls. Such freefalls can occur when an aircraft sustains severe damage, and a frame-by-frame analysis by The AP of two videos are consistent with some sort of explosion mid-flight. The images appear to show the plane is missing a wing.
Russia’s Investigative Committee is investigating the crash, on the charges of violation of air safety rules.
This week, Prigozhin posted his first recruitment video since the mutiny, saying that Wagner is conducting reconnaissance and search activities, and “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free.”
Also this week, Russian media reported, citing anonymous sources, that Gen. Sergei Surovikin was dismissed from his position of the commander of Russia’s air force. Surovikin, who at one point led Russia’s operation in Ukraine, hasn’t been seen in public since the mutiny, when he recorded a video address urging Prigozhin’s forces to pull back.
As the news about the crash was breaking, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at an event commemorating the Battle of Kursk, hailing the heroes of Russia’s “the special military operation” in Ukraine.