Jet believed to be carrying Wagner boss Prigozhin crashes in Russia

A private plane carrying Wagner mercenary group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has been downed by Russian air defences, taking the lives of all on board, Moscow officials said Wednesday night.

“According to the report of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, in the Tver region, close to the village of Kuzhenkino, an Embraer Legacy private jet flying between Moscow and St. Petersburg was downed,” officials said.

“There were ten people on board, including three crew members. According to preliminary information, all those on board were killed,” the statement, provided to state media outlet RIA Novosti, reads.

Russia’s aviation regulator, Rosaviatsii, has issued a statement confirming that an investigation has been launched. “According to the list of passengers, the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin is among them”, the agency said.

The Grey Zone Telegram channel, believed to be close to Prigozhin’s Wagner Group, cited the statement from the Russian aviation authority that Prigozhin was on board the flight.

“We note that the plane was shot out of the sky over Tverskaya oblast by the air defense forces of the Russian Ministry of Defense,” Grey Zone said in a post.

Another Telegram channel, Wagner Orchestra, posted a photo of what appeared to be the burning wreckage of a plane, saying the Embraer Legacy 600 had been shot down by Russian air defenses.

The well-connected Russian Telegram channel VChK-OGPU reported that Dmitry Utkin, a central Wagner figure and its alleged founder, was also among the plane’s passengers.

“Wagner has been decapitated,” the channel commented.

“Prigozhin is dead. No one believes that this is an accident,” pro-Kremlin analyst Sergei Markov said on his Telegram channel. In a separate post, hinting at how Kremlin spin doctors might frame the plane crash in the hours and days to come, Markov said the “murder of Prigozhin and Utkin … is probably a terrorist attack by Ukraine ahead of Ukraine’s Independence Day.” 

“All enemies of Russia are already rejoicing. The murder of Prigozhin is Ukraine’s main achievement this year,” Markin wrote. 

U.S. officials have been expecting Prigozhin’s demise given Vladimir Putin’s history of dispensing with figures who have challenged him. It has even been the source of some gallows humor. In July, at the Aspen Security Forum, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “If I were Mr. Prigozhin, I would remain very concerned. NATO has an open-door policy; Russia has an open-windows policy.”

“A caterer should know that revenge is a dish best served cold,” said a U.S. official familiar with Russia policy, referencing Prigozhin’s nickname, “Putin’s chef,” given because his catering company Concord was contracted to supply food to the Kremlin.

“If the news are confirmed, I would say it was always difficult to grasp Prigozhin could have believed he could survive after the June coup,” said a senior diplomat from Central Europe, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Now, we do not know details, but this looks like most likely an obvious message from the regime, that anybody who challenges it, has to be eliminated.”

What will be the consequences to the Wagner Group is to be seen, but most likely, under this brand or another, it will remain an instrument of the Kremlin.”

Prigozhin’s assassination came two months to the day after he launched an uprising in protest against Putin’s war against Ukraine. He led his mercenaries in an overnight raid, capturing the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don before breakfast time without a shot being fired.

Another detachment of Wagner men rolled northwards, coming to within 200km of Moscow by late afternoon — before Prigozhin abruptly ordered his men back to base.

The rebel warlord invoked the wrath of Putin, who on the morning of the uprising took to the national airwaves to denounce it as a stab in the back. And, although a compromise deal was brokered by Aleksander Lukashenko of Belarus to allow Prigozhin’s men to relocate to that country, the Wagner chief already appeared a marked man.

He disappeared for a time before appearing in a grainy night-time video addressing his men at a new base in Belarus, popped up on the sidelines of an Africa summit hosted by Putin in Saint Petersburg, and, only this week, appeared in a video apparently shot in Africa saying his mercenaries were enjoying the 50-degree heat.

Lili Bayer contributed reporting.