Yevgeny Prigozhin, Chief of the Wagner, Who Led the Uprising Against Putin, Is Assumed Dead After Fatal Plane Crash

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the commander of the mercenaries who briefly rebelled against the Russian military two months ago, is now thought to be dead after a tragic jet accident north of Moscow claimed the lives of all 10 aboard. According to the airline and the Russian civil aviation authority, Prigozhin was on board.

Social media videos depicted a jet falling violently and like a stone from a thick cloud of smoke. The Wagner chief was in fact on board the aircraft, according to a report from Russia’s civilian aviation agency, Rosaviatsia, which came out shortly after the tragedy. The creator of the Wagner private military business has been the focus of intense conjecture ever since he led the rebellion, thus the accident instantly prompted questions.

In June, Prigozhin oversaw a brief uprising against the Russian regular army in which tens of thousands of hired guns marched from southern Russia to Moscow with the intention of overthrowing the military establishment. At that time, Prigozhin had said, “This is not an armed rebellion, but a march of justice.”

After seizing Bakhmut, a city in the eastern Donetsk area, in late May, his men withdrew from the front lines of battle. The Russian soldiers had fought valiantly to take Bakhmut for months, maybe in the worst engagements of the whole conflict. After the uprising, Russian authorities declared that his soldiers could only go back to Ukraine as members of the regular army.

The rebellion came to an end with an agreement, mediated by Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, under which Prigozhin was supposed to transfer his forces to Belarus’ neighbor. Since then, he has resisted giving up control of Wagner while mostly avoiding the spotlight.

air crash
A jet traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg with three crew members on board and seven passengers reportedly crashed almost 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of the city, according to the Russian official news agency Tass. A private plane that Prigozhin had previously flown took off from Moscow on Wednesday night, according to flight monitoring data seen by The Associated Press, and its transponder signal vanished minutes later.

The jet was in the air and moving quickly when the communication abruptly terminated. A partial tail number that matched a plane previously flown by Prigozhin might be spotted in a photo of smoldering debris shared on social media by a pro-Wagner account.

The news source Reuters said that just one prior accident, which was blamed on crew errors, has been documented in the for over 20 years that the aircraft type has been in use. As is customary when opening such investigations, Russia’s Investigative Committee launched one into the disaster on suspicion of breaking air safety regulations.

After learning of his presumed death, US President Joe Biden didn’t show any astonishment. Biden told reporters, “I’m not surprised. However, he made it clear that he was unsure of the precise cause of the collision. “Putin is largely responsible for everything that occurs in Russia, but I don’t know enough to know the solution.”

Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council, commented on a news article by saying, “If confirmed, no one should be surprised.”