Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group who staged a brief rebellion against Vladimir Putin in June, is listed as a passenger on a plane that crashed northwest of Moscow on Wednesday.
Video shared on the Telegram app showed a plane afire on the ground with a partial registration number that aligns with a jet Prigozhin was known to use.
“An investigation of the Embraer plane crash that happened in the Tver Region this evening was initiated,” the Federal Agency for Air Transport of Russia said in a statement, according to the state news agency Tass. “According to the passenger list, [the first and last name of Yevgeny Prigozhin was included in this list.”
Russian media reports that eight bodies have been recovered from the wreckage so far. There were reportedly seven passengers and three crew members aboard the commercial jet.
A Telegram account that’s believed to be close to the Russian leadership suggests that reports of Mr. Prigozhin’s death were “premature,” and that “Yevgeny Prigozhin may have been on a different airplane.”
But the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the plane may have been shot down by the Russian air defenses.
Social-media channels close to Wagner said Russian air defenses shot down the jet, an Embraer Legacy 600. Video footage posted by onlookers showed what looked like the trail of a missile and the plane falling from the sky with one wing missing.
The plane may have been shot down, but there are other possible scenarios that could be true in the Byzantine world of Russia’s politics:
1. As a Russian Telegram channel close to the Kremlin suggested, Prigozhin may not have even been on the plane, although it would certainly be in his interest to make certain Russian dictators believe so. The Wagner Group chief may have needed to disappear for a while. Don’t be surprised if he emerges in a couple of months somewhere in Africa.
2. Putin may be blameless, and Prigozhin was taken out by his own men. Thus be it ever for mercenaries.
3. Given the state of Russian aviation, the aircraft may really have experienced a catastrophic failure unrelated to politics.
The New York Times has been updating its coverage regularly.
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s fate remains unclear. Several Russian news outlets are reporting, citing anonymous sources, that he was indeed on the plane that crashed. But Grey Zone, a Telegram account associated with Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group, just posted that it remained uncertain whether the warlord was dead or alive.
We’ll update this story when confirmation of Prigozhin’s fate becomes known.
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