Courtesy PMC Wagner via Telegram via REUTERS
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group leader who incited a short-lived mutiny against the Russian defense ministry exactly two months ago, may have been killed in a plane crash on Wednesday, Russian state media reported. It's not immediately clear if the mercenary boss was on board, but he was on the list.
State-run news agency TASS reported that Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on the plane that went down in the Tver region just outside of Moscow on Wednesday evening. All ten people who were traveling on the flight are reportedly dead. Wagner-affiliated social media channels claimed that the plane was shot down by unspecified air-defense systems, but the cause of the crash remains unclear.
Russia's defense ministry did not immediatey comment on the matter.
"An investigation of the Embraer plane crash that happened in the Tver Region this evening was initiated. According to the passenger list, first and last name of Yevgeny Prigozhin was included in this list," Russia's Federal Agency for Air Transport of Russia said in a statement.
Prigozhin's exact whereabouts since he started the armed rebellion in late June that saw his Wagner mercenaries march toward Moscow, shooting down Russian aircraft in the process, have been somewhat of a mystery. He recently appeared in a video that surfaced earlier this week and was puportedly filmed from an undisclosed location in Africa. The footage followed earlier remarks that he would eventually head there from his exile in Belarus.
His presence in Africa could not be confirmed by Insider, and it's unclear if he was traveling in Russia aboard the doomed flight for which he was listed as a passenger on Wednesday.
Before it became a disgraced organization in the wake of Prigozhin's failed coup, the Wagner Group fought in Ukraine alongside the regular Russian army. Rifts slowly began to emerge between the two sides with the Wagner boss regularly calling out Moscow's military leadership over issues like ammunition supply and battlefield incompetence.
Eventually, tensions boiled over in late June. Prigozhin and his mercenaries invaded Russia, quickly capturing the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and coming within just a few hours of Moscow before Belarus brokered a peace deal between Wagner and the Kremlin.
As part of the negotiations, Prigozhin was cast into exile in Belarus, and his mercenaries were given the opportunity to join him. Although Prigozhin was seen back in Russia at various times, he was eventually spotted at a militay camp in Belarus where his Wagner fighters were training Belarusian forces.