By Ruzeki, Shadow News.
Yevgeny Prigozhin in fatal plane crash, Russian state media and officials report.
According to emergency ministry, all 10 people on the plane, including three crew members, died in the crash.
A private jet alleged to be carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner PMC group launched a failed mutiny in June, has crashed on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg.
The Russian officials said a man with Prigozhin’s name was among the passengers, without elaborating further.
If confirmed, Prigozhin’s death would mark a spectacular end to his career. After playing a prominent role in Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin in June led his paramilitary force on a historic, abortive mutiny march on Moscow.
Viral videos shared on social media channels known to be close to the Russian security services showed graphic images of a crash site in the Tver region north-west of Moscow, near the village of Kuzhenkino.
The footage appeared to show emergency services approaching the burning carcass of a plane. Eight bodies have been recovered from the site, authorities said.
The Russian investigative committee said it had opened a criminal case in relation to the crash. Rosaviatsiya, the Russian aviation agency, said it had launched a commission and was searching for the plane’s black box.
A post by Grey Zone, a Wagner-connected social media channel, claimed Russian anti-aircraft defences had shot down the plane. It said that residents heard “two bursts of characteristic air defence fire” before the crash. “This is confirmed by inversion traces in the sky in one of the videos,” it added.
President Vladimir Putin was speaking at a concert to commemorate the second world war in the Kursk region near the border with Ukraine when the crash was reported.
The US president Joe Biden, who is on holiday in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, told reporters he did not know for a fact what happened but, was not surprised as not much happens in Russia that Putin is not behind.
Prigozhin is a former Kremlin caterer known as “Putin’s chef”, he emerged as one of the most important leaders of Russia’s war effort before souring on the military’s leadership to such an extent that he launched a coup against Kremlin in late June.
Under an agreement with the Kremlin, Wagner fighters decamped for exile in neighbouring Belarus, whose leader Alexander Lukashenko brokered the deal.
Last month, Prigozhin said that Wagner fighters would eventually redeploy to Africa, where the group continues to fight as mercenaries in several conflicts.
Prigozhin appeared in a video on Monday saying that he was in Africa on a mission to make Russia even greater on all continents.
Although Prigozhin appeared to have been reintegrated into the Russian security establishment, most analysts had predicted they expected Prigozhin would face retribution.
According to flight tracking site Flightradar24, the aircraft, an Embraer Legacy, was the same plane that Prigozhin had regularly used to travel around Russia and as far away as Africa.
Recently, the jet had been making trips to Belarus.
When the Embraer jet last broadcast its position, it was flying at 28,000ft near Tver and moving at a ground speed of 513 knots. The route appears to be the aircraft’s normal flight path to St Petersburg, a run it last made on July 6.
Video of the crash and its aftermath posted by social media with ties to Russian security services showed the plane rapidly descending from the sky, before crashing to the ground in a ball of flames.
This developing story shall be updated once new information about the Wagner PMC boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is available.
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