Wagner chief Eugene Prigojine has been confirmed dead after genetic analysis of bodies found in Wednesday’s plane crash, Russian officials said.
The Russian investigative committee said the identities of the ten victims had been established and matched those on the flight’s passenger list.
“As part of the investigation of the plane crash in the Tver region, molecular genetic examinations were carried out,” Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman for the committee, said in a statement via Telegram on Sunday.
“According to their results, the identity of the 10 dead has been established. They correspond to the list indicated in the flight sheet.
Further details of the tests were not shared.
Prigozhin’s private jet crashed northwest of Moscow on August 25, killing all its passengers.
Wagner chief Eugene Prigojine has been confirmed dead after genetic analysis of bodies found in Wednesday’s plane crash, Russian officials said.
An Embraer Legacy private jet crashed on its way from Moscow to St Petersburg, killing all seven passengers and three crew on board.
A Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel said on Wednesday its leader died in a plane crash at the hands of unidentified “traitors to Russia.”
According to reports, a private Embraer Legacy vehicle crashed on its way from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, killing all seven passengers and three crew members on board.
The passengers, made up of top brass from the Wagner Group, including Prigozhin’s right-hand man, Dmitry Utkin, and Valeriy Chekalov, Wagner’s logistics mastermind, were reportedly attending a meeting with Russian Defense Ministry officials.
Russian Vladimir Putin spoke about his former ally in the past tense just a day after his death and before Russian authorities investigated his death, saying: “He was a person with a complicated fate. He made serious mistakes in life, but he also achieved the necessary results.
The Kremlin has denied speculation it was responsible for the accident, which came just two months after Prigozhin led a column of his Wagner soldiers towards Moscow in an attempted mutiny against Vladimir Putin.
Wagner managed to seize the city of Rostov-on-Don in the shock coup and threatened to seize Moscow itself.
Prigozhin and his group of mercenaries were sent to Belarus after an agreement was reached, brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, which allowed him to leave without any charges against his name.
Prigozhin kept a low profile after that, but was spotted in multiple locations around the world.
Researchers from All Eyes on Wagner, which monitors the mercenary group, said a video shared via Telegram on August 21, just two days before Prigojine died, revealed he was in Mali.
He was seen wearing military fatigues and brandishing an assault rifle, saying he was in the area recruiting “heroic warriors” who would make Russia “even greater”.
Despite the brokered deal, Putin openly called the mutiny a “stab in the back”, and experts around the world blamed the autocrat for masterminding the crash.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said such allegations were an “absolute lie”.
Peskov declined to say whether Putin would attend Prigozhin’s funeral, simply saying, “The only thing I can say is that the president has a pretty busy schedule at the moment.”
The fate of the Wagner Group is not known at this time and many interested groups are speculating about the fate of the private military company established in 2014.
Putin forced Wagner’s fighters to swear allegiance to Russia just days after news of their leader’s death was announced.
The wording of the oath includes a line requiring those taking the oath to strictly follow the orders of Russian commanders and senior leaders.
More soon.
