A plane with 10 people on board crashed in Russia on Wednesday with no survivors, and the boss of the paramilitary group Wagner Yevgeny Prigozhin is on the passenger list, Russian news agencies said. According to the Ria Novosti, TASS and Interfax agencies, referring to the Russian air transport agency Rossaviatsia, Yevgeny Prigojine’s name appears on the passenger list of this plane which was to connect Moscow to Saint Petersburg.
“There were 10 people on board, including 3 crew members. According to the first information, all the people on board died”, indicated a little earlier on Telegram the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations. According to him, this Embraer Legacy private plane crashed near the village of Kujenkino, in the Tver region, northwest of Moscow.
Prigojine had appeared in a video on Monday evening
“The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry is carrying out search operations,” he said. Videos whose authenticity AFP could not confirm were broadcast on several Telegram channels claiming to be linked to Wagner, showing burning debris in a field or a device falling from the sky. Yevgeny Prigojine had been behind a rebellion in June against the Russian general staff and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, led by his men, who had briefly captured military sites in southern Russia before to go to Moscow.
Evgueni Prigojine had quickly given up this mutiny, in the midst of the conflict in Ukraine. It ended on the evening of June 24 with an agreement providing for the departure for Belarus of Evgueni Prigojine, while his fighters could join him there, enter the regular Russian army or return to civilian life.
On Monday evening, Evgeni Prigojine appeared in a video posted by groups close to Wagner on social networks, where he claimed to be in Africa. In a desert landscape, he said he was working to “make Russia even greater on all continents and Africa even freer”.