A law enforcement officer inspects the wreckage of the Embraer Legacy 600 that was reportedly carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group.
Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin reportedly died in the crash of an Embraer business jet in Russia on Aug. 23, Russian state media agencies reported, citing an official statement by Russia’s air transport agency.
The crash, which is now under investigation by Rosaviatsiya, occurred exactly two months after the mercernary leader led a failed mutiny against Russia’s military leadership over complaints about their conduct of the war in Ukraine and their treatment of Wagner fighters.
An Embraer Legacy 600 with registration RA-02795 is widely linked to Prigozhin. An Embraer business jet with Prigozhin and nine others on board took off from Shremetyevo Airport outside Moscow and was en route to St. Petersburg, according to the state-owned TASS news agency. But then the aircraft crashed about halfway to the destination, killing all on board, TASS added.
Several Russian news agencies, including TASS, Interfax and RIA Novosti, cited a statement by Rosaviatsiya confirming Progozhin’s name was on the manifest of the crashed aircraft. As this story went to press, that statement had not been published on the agency’s website or social media channels. The Ministry of Emergency Situtations reported the crash in a statement posted to its Telegram channel, but not the identities of the people on board.
“In the Tver region, near the village of Kuzhenkino, a private Embraer Legacy aircraft crashed while flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg,” says the statement by the Ministry of Emergency Situations. “There were 10 people on board, including three crewmembers. According to preliminary information, all on board were killed.”
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation announced a criminal investigation had been opened, focusing on the violation of traffic safety rules and air transport operations implied by the crash.
“An investigation team has left for the scene, all the necessary forensic examinations will be appointed, a set of investigative actions will be carried out to establish the causes of the crash,” the committee said on its Telegram social media channel.
Unconfirmed reports by social media channels close to Wagner, such as Greyzone, accused Russian air defenses of shooting down the jet, with unverified video clips from the ground showing an explosion in the sky followed by a large jet falling out of control to the ground.
The death of Prigozhin ends a bizarre chapter in the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Prigozhin’s fighters, including thousands recruited from Russian prisons, played a key role in the Russian military’s capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in May after a long and costly campaign.
But the Russian military cut off Wagner’s access to recruits from Russia’s penal system, then demanded that private military contractors agree to serve the Russian general staff directly. In response, Prigozhin staged an uprising with thousands of Wagner troops on June 23, capturing the southwestern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and dispatching an column of armoured vehicles toward Moscow. The mutiny was diffused after Prigozhin reportedly agreed to move himself and his organization to Belarus, but he was seen repeatedly afterward inside Russia.
