A business jet belonging to Yevgeny Prigozhin crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino at about 18:20 during a flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Ten people were on board the Embraer ERG 135, including three crew members. Eight charred bodies have been recovered so far. Rosaviation reported that Evgeny Prigozhin was among the passengers. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (ICR) has opened a criminal case for violation of the rules of safety of air transport movement and operation.
A list of passengers on board the plane that crashed in the Tver region:
- Yevgeny Prigozhin
- Dmitry Utkin
- Sergei Propustin
- Evgeny Makaryan
- Alexander Totmin
- Valery Chekalov
- Nikolay Matuseyev
Among the crew members: were commander Alexey Levshin, co-pilot Karimov Rustam, and flight attendant Raspopova Kristina.
The events of the airplane crash occurred suddenly. According to “Base,” before the crash, the pilots did not report any abnormal situations. Nevertheless, witnesses said that before the fall of the airplane, they heard strong claps. One of the possible versions of the cause of the crash is a terrorist attack. Telegram channel Grey Zone, associated with PMC Wagner, claims that air defense may have shot down the plane, but this has not yet been confirmed.
The plane, which crashed in the Tver region, belonged to MNT-Aero LLC, which specializes in business transportation a specially created Rosaviatsia commission is investigating.
It is reported that the crash killed Yevgeny Prigozhin and the commander of the “Wagnerites” Dmitry Utkin. This was stated by the representative of the administration of the Zaporozhye region, Vladimir Rogov. According to him, he learned the information about Prigozhin and Utkin’s death from “outstanding musicians.”
At about 21:50, the state TV channel “Russia24″ confirmed Prigozhin’s death. This was the first official statement about the death of the leader of PMC, “Wagner,” at the federal level.
Local TV channels say that the bodies of Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin have been found and identified. A genetic examination will be conducted shortly.
This incident occurred exactly two months after the mutiny of PMC “Wagner.” The mutiny began on June 23, when Prigozhin accused the Russian military of hitting the mercenary camps. After that, the PMCs seemed to have gained control over Rostov-on-Don and started moving towards Moscow, which ended the next day.
As it turned out, Yevgeny Prigozhin had already “died” before. In the fall of 2019, he was attributed to his death in a plane crash in Congo on board a military transport plane, but later, it turned out that there were no Russian citizens among the dead, including the head of PMC “Wagner.”