Flight Data for Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Aircraft Shows No Problem Until a 30-Second Dive

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary organization in Russia, was on board the aircraft when it crashed outside Moscow, taking his life and raising concerns about the crash’s causes. The event happened just two months after Prigozhin organized a mutiny against the senior officers of the Russian army.

Ten individuals were killed in the accident on Wednesday night, including Dmitry Utkin, Prigozhin’s second-in-command and the person who gave the mercenary squad its moniker. Only two months before to this occurrence, the 62-year-old Wagner leader had engineered an unsuccessful revolt against the top levels of the Russian army.

WHY DID THE CRASH OCCUR?

Due in large part to President Vladimir Putin’s definition of mutiny as treason and other instances of unexplained deaths involving Kremlin enemies, the jet accident has generated a great deal of conjecture and intensive investigation. Prigozhin has publicly criticized the way the commanders of the Russian army handled the crisis in Ukraine.

In the absence of comments from the Defense Ministry or the Kremlin, the Wagner group’s Grey Zone Telegram channel blamed his death to unnamed “traitors to Russia.” The executive jet involved in the incident was a Brazilian-made Embraer Legacy 600, according to news agency Reuters. Concerns about mechanical failure were allayed by the fact that this particular aircraft type, which has a strong safety record, has only had one earlier accident in its more than two decades of operation.

According to media accounts, the reasons for the jet accident are still unknown, which heightens the mystique surrounding Prigozhin’s death. Flight-tracking data suggest that the aircraft didn’t exhibit any warning signs until a sharp descent in the last 30 seconds of flight.

The accident is the subject of a criminal inquiry, according to Russian authorities. Unnamed sources informed Russian media that surface-to-air missiles might have brought the jet down. The claims, however, have not been verified.

Embraer’s aircraft The aircraft accident not only killed the head of the Wagner Group but also caused a chasm in the command structure of the private army. The group’s future operations, especially its operations in Africa and other places, are now in doubt in light of this news.