According to the Russian air transport agency Rossaviatsia, the boss of the paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigojine, 62, was on board a private plane which crashed on Wednesday August 23 in the Tver region, around 180 kilometers northwest of Moscow. Many gray areas and questions surround the circumstances and the origin of the accident. Here’s what we know.
The plane, registered RA-02795, took off from Moscow in the direction of Saint Petersburg between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. (Paris time). According to Rossaviatsia, the aircraft belonged to the company MNT-Aero, which specializes in business aviation.
The jet traveled about 180 kilometers before the ADS-B signal (a geolocation system used by air traffic control) that it was emitting disappeared, without it being possible to determine the cause. He was then at 8,000 meters, close to his cruising altitude.
About an hour later, images posted on social media showed the burning carcass of a plane whose shape of the engines, as well as the last characters of its registration (“795”) reveal that it is indeed the same throw.
Using other videos showing the fall of the aircraft, Le Monde managed to locate the crash site, in a meadow south of the village of Kouzhenkino, in the Bologovski raïon (Tver oblast). Several bodies were visible, but it is not yet possible to identify them.
An investigation has been opened for “violation of air transport security rules”. “A team of investigators was sent to the scene (…) to establish the causes of the accident,” the Russian investigative committee said.
The Telegram channel Gray Zone, close to Mr. Prigojine and the Wagner Group, explicitly accused the Russian army of shooting down the plane with an anti-aircraft missile. Gray Zone claims witnesses heard “two explosions characteristic of air defense work” and also relies on traces seen in crash videos posted online.
“There were ten people on board, including three crew members. According to the first information, all the people on board have died,” the Russian Emergencies Ministry first announced on Telegram.
The Rossaviatsia agency confirmed that Yevgeny Prigozhin was on board the plane, along with his right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin. This discreet man, known for his neo-Nazi sympathies, was the real founder of the Wagner militia, his nom de guerre.
According to the Russian news agency Interfax on Telegram, citing the rescue services, the bodies of the ten people who were on board the plane have been found. The search is over, she added, without specifying whether the victims could be identified.
After spending nine years in prison during the Soviet era for common crimes, Yevgeny Prigozhin started a catering group that served in the Kremlin, earning him the nickname “Putin’s cook”, and the reputation to have become a billionaire thanks to public contracts. It was this money that he would have used to found Wagner, a private army initially composed of hardened veterans of the Russian army and special services.
During the conflict in Ukraine, he recruited tens of thousands of prisoners to go and fight on the front lines, where the Russian army was in difficulty. In May 2023, after nearly a year of bloody fighting, Mr. Prigozhin achieved his goal, claiming Wagner’s capture of Bakhmout in eastern Ukraine, celebrating a rare Russian victory, despite its human cost. .
He then launched a rebellion against the Russian General Staff and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, led by his men, who briefly captured military sites in southern Russia before moving on to Moscow. The mercenary leader renounced the coup after twenty-four hours, negotiating an exile for himself and his followers in Belarus. He escaped prison, justice, but Vladimir Putin had denounced, without pronouncing his name, the “treason” of Yevgueni Prigojine, “caused by excessive ambitions and personal interests”.
In July, the Russian president assured that he had offered Wagner’s men to serve under the command of another person in the army but that their leader, Yevgeny Prigojine, had refused the offer.
For some reason never explained, the boss of Wagner seemed to come and go in Russia despite his status as an outcast, until he participated a few days after his revolt in a meeting at the Kremlin.
On Monday evening, he appeared in a video posted by groups close to Wagner on social media, where he claimed to be in Africa. In a desert landscape and armed with an assault rifle, he said he was working to “make Russia even greater on all continents and Africa even more free”.
An adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Mykhaïlo Podoliak, implied that Vladimir Putin’s rival could have been eliminated by the Kremlin. “The dramatic elimination of Prigozhin and Wagner’s command two months after [their] coup attempt is a signal from Putin to Russian elites ahead of the 2024 elections,” he wrote on X (ex- Twitter), believing that “Putin does not forgive anyone”.
US President Joe Biden said he was “not surprised” by the possible death of the Wagner boss. “Not much happens in Russia without Putin having something to do with it,” he said.
Belarusian opposition leader in exile Svetlana Tikhanovskaya called Yevgeny Prigozhin a “murderer” who “no one will miss”. She hoped on X that “his death might dismantle Wagner’s presence in Belarus,” a country allied with Moscow.
Vladimir Putin gave a speech on Wednesday on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Kursk during the Second World War, visiting this region of southwestern Russia, bordering Ukraine . Without mentioning the crash, the Russian president praised on stage in front of the crowd the “dedication” and “loyalty” of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine, who are “fighting with courage and determination”.
In Saint Petersburg, near the premises of the Wagner company, a memorial was improvised on Wednesday evening. Candles, flowers, badges and banners bearing the image of the paramilitary group were placed and supporters of the armed militia gathered.