What we know about Prigozhin’s ‘last flight’ – a visual guide
The aircraft on which Yevgeny Prigozhin was travelling had long been linked with the Wagner group. An Embraer Legacy 600 jet, the flight tracking service FlightRadar identified it as being in regular use in recent months, flying from both St Petersburg and Moscow.
According to some reports, the Wagner party on board had been attending a meeting with officials from Russia’s defence ministry.
The aircraft, manufactured in 2007, fell under US Treasury sanctions in 2019 when it was listed under a prior registration, M-SAAN, according to a US government press release.
It said that by October 2018, Prigozhin’s employees had arranged for the purchase of the private jet M-SAAN, which was registered to the owner Autolex Transport, a company cited in the release for materially assisting the Wagner chief.
Flight data reviewed by the Guardian showed the jet – tail number RA-02795 – was logged taking off from Moscow at 5.46pm local time (15:46 BST), and climbing to a cruising altitude of 28,000 ft, outside the range of many small anti-aircraft missiles.
Thirty-three minutes into the flight, while about a mile south of the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region, the aircraft rapidly lost altitude and lost contact. Amateur footage showed what appeared to be the jet falling from the sky. Villagers on the ground reported hearing a loud metallic bang and seeing the jet land in several pieces in a field.
Weather conditions during the short flight were reported to be good.
What caused the crash?
Prigozhin supporters claimed on pro-Wagner messaging app channels that the plane had been deliberately downed. Some suggested it could have been hit by an air-defence missile, or targeted by a bomb on board. These claims could not be independently verified. Numerous opponents and critics of Vladimir Putin have been killed or gravely sickened in apparent assassination attempts.
Eyewitnesses and experts who have reviewed video footage of the incident describe a break up in mid-air associated with some kind of explosion, either originating within the jet, suggesting a bomb or catastrophic failure, or from outside, suggesting a missile strike.
Footage of the incident is inconclusive, even broken down frame by frame. In one video, vapour resembling a missile contrail may be visible, and some eyewitnesses on the ground spoke of hearing two explosions.
What is clear is that the blast was powerful enough to separate one wing section wing of the jet from the fuselage. Low-quality images of the wreckage of the aircraft on the ground suggest there may be holes in parts of the fuselage.
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Kuzhenkino resident Vitaly Stepenok, 72, described what he saw. “I hear an explosion or a bang … and I looked up and saw white smoke. One wing flew off in one direction … and then it glided down on one wing. It didn’t nosedive, it was gliding.”
Western sources, including the US president, Joe Biden, have pointed to Putin’s potential role in the incident. . The French government’s spokesperson, Olivier Véran, told France 2 television:
“We don’t yet know the circumstances of this crash. We can have some reasonable doubts.”
Russia’s aviation authority offered no comment on the reason for the crash and said it had created a special commission to investigate “the circumstances and causes of the accident”.
What are the chances it was an accident?
There has only been one recorded accident involving an Embraer Legacy 600, and that involved a mid-air collision which the jet survived. There have been no recorded accidents involving mechanical failure.
There were unconfirmed reports that the aircraft had undergone repairs just before its last flight. Because of sanctions, Embraer, the Brazilian maker of the Legacy 600, said it had stopped providing support for the aircraft in 2019.