Wagner Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin Listed among Dead in Plane Crash, Russian State Media Reports

Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, is believed to be among the ten passengers killed in a plane crash outside of Moscow, Russian state media reported Wednesday.

The Russian Federal Air Transport Agency told state outlet RIA Novosti that Prigozhin’s name was included on the flight’s passenger list. “There were ten people on board, three of them crew members. According to preliminary information, all those on board died,” an official statement from the department noted.

Footage taken by locals shows contrails from an anti-aircraft missile targeting the jet.

CIA director William Burns warned in July that the Russian president was likely biding his time, waiting for an opportune moment to strike Prigozhin. “Putin is the ultimate apostle of payback,” the director said at the Aspen Security Forum fireside chat. “If I were Prigozhin, I wouldn’t fire my food taster.”

In late June, Prigozhin took his forces from Rostov-on-Don and marched them to within striking distance of the Russian capital before halting the offensive. At the time, he released an eleven-minute video message arguing that the military operation highlighted “serious security problems across our country” but sought to distance Wagner soldiers from accusations of starting a coup.

“It was never our goal to overthrow the current regime and legally-elected government,” Prigozhin said, according to a translation by an intelligence monitoring account, OSINT Defender.

Shortly after the insurgency, Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko announced a last-minute deal between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Prigozhin, averting further armed conflict. The agreement, according to Lukashenko, reportedly prevented “a bloodbath on the territory of Russia” and was  “absolutely advantageous and acceptable” for Prigozhin. However, the original statement did not include specific details.

Prigozhin confirmed the arrangement in an audio statement shortly after, explaining that Wagner forces were “turning around our columns and returning to field camps according to plan.” The military chief subsequently left Russia for Belarus, with all pending criminal charges to be dropped.

In his first public comment on the matter, President Joe Biden confirmed that neither the United States nor the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) played any part in the upheaval. “[W]e gave Putin no excuse to blame this on the West, to blame this on NATO. We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within [the] Russian system,” the president said during a press conference.

“I also talked at length with President [Volodymyr] Zelensky of Ukraine. We’ll be keeping in contact with him,” he added. “I told him that no matter what happened in Russia, we the United States, will continue to support Ukraine’s defense and its sovereignty and its territorial integrity.”

However, by early July, in a rare public interview, Lukashenko confirmed that Prigozhin was “not on the territory of Belarus” and had instead relocated to St. Petersburg, Russia. The about-face on Prigozhin’s exact location called into question the solidity of the deal negotiated with Putin, with the details still remaining murky.

“We don’t follow his movements. We have neither the ability nor the desire to do so,” Dmitri Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told the Times following Lukashenko’s comments.

Wagner Group units, however, remained stationed in “permanent camps” in Belarus located near the country’s border with Ukraine. Lukashenko’s original invitation to the group included an offer to host them in an “abandoned” military base outside the nation’s capital of Minsk.

Although preliminary construction had been underway to accommodate Wagner forces, Lukashenko’s comments at the time cast further doubt on the arrangement. “Whether they will come here, and if so, how many of them will come, we will decide in the future.”

According to the Belarusian president, Wagner units stationed within the country’s national borders could have been called upon for national defense purposes. “If we must activate this unit for the defense of the nation, then it will be immediately activated,” Lukashenko said. “And their experience will be in high demand.”