MANY were shocked when reports emerged that the plane supposedly carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, crashed in Russia with no survivors.
The Emergencies Ministry of Russia confirmed that the jet plunged to the ground in Tver Region.
There were 10 people listed including 3 crew and seven passengers.
The ministry said that the jet, an Embraer 135 BJ Legacy 600 was travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg at the time of the said incident.
Russian federal air transport agency Rosaviatsiya said that the Wagner chief was on board.
Along with several high-ranking Wagner commanders, including Vladimir Utkin, the alleged co-founder of Wagner.
The Russian Investigative Committee and the government of Tver Region are currently investigating the matter.
Meanwhile, although the Russian air transport agency listed Prigozhin’s name, they did not explicitly confirm that he was dead.
And the non-confirmation leaves uncertainty regarding the fate of Wagner and its controversial boss.
In fact, as of Wednesday evening, Russian officials said that they only discovered 8 bodies and none had been named by that time.
Some Russian media outlets said that Prigozhin’s plane tail number was RA-02795.
Another report by flight-tracking site Flight Radar-24 said that a second plane linked to Prigozhin with the tail number RA-02878 departed Moscow shortly after the first plane, but this plane turned around after the first jet crashed.
A report from Al Jazeera also said that Prigozhin’s phone was found at the crash site, but not his body.
As for the Embraer plane that crashed, Brazilian makers have said that they had stopped giving any support for such aircraft in 2019 due to sanctions.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin and the Russian defense ministry have yet to respond to the crash.
Telegram groups linked to Wagner released a statement asking the media and other Telegram channels not to publish unverified data and messages.
The crash happened at a time when President Vladimir Putin was in the Kursk Region in Russia to deliver a speech for the 80th anniversary of the battle of Kursk and Russian Forces.
Prigozhin was known as Putin’s chef by the media, and his fame surged for leading the battle for Bakhmut against Ukrainian forces.
Months ago, he led a short-lived mutiny in Russia against its top military brass, but this move was not taken lightly by Putin, who called the mutiny a betrayal, treason, and a stab in the back.
But as part of an agreement to end the mutiny, Prigozhin was exiled to Belarus and all charges against him were dropped.
However, he was still able to travel back and forth from Belarus to Russia and was photographed with an African official during the sidelines of the Russian-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg.
His latest video address was shot in Africa, where he declared that Wagner would recruit more men and declared that he would make Africa even freer and would fight ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and other bandits.
