The boss of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is thought to have been on a plane that has crashed near Moscow, killing 10 people onboard.
Thursday 24 August 2023 01:03, UK
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People have started laying flowers at the site of the plane crash in Russia that killed all 10 people on board.
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was one of the passengers, according to Russian authorities, but his death has still not been officially confirmed.
The plane was en route from Moscow to St Petersburg when it came down almost 185 miles (297.73 km) north of the capital.
All 10 people on board a private jet linked to the Wagner boss have died, and Prigozhin was on the passenger list.
But Russian authorities haven’t explicitly said he has been killed.
Keir Giles, a Russia expert with the international affairs think tank Chatham House, urged caution about reports of Prigozhin’s death.
“Multiple individuals have changed their name to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, as part of his efforts to obfuscate his travels,” he said.
“Let’s not be surprised if he pops up shortly in a new video from Africa.”
The remains of all 10 people on board the crashed plane have been found, Russia’s Interfax news agency has said.
It cited emergency services in the country, who said the search operation had been completed.
Earlier, authorities said eight bodies had been recovered.
The exiled Belarus opposition leader has signalled there will be few tears for Yevgeny Prigozhin in Belarus.
“The criminal Prigozhin won’t be missed in Belarus,” Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said.
“He was a murderer and should be remembered as such.
“His death might dismantle Wagner’s presence in Belarus, reducing the threat to our nation and neighbours.”
Many of Prigozhin’s Wagner fighters had been moved to a camp in Belarus, after President Alexander Lukashenko brokered a deal to end the private military group’s rebellion.
Our security and defence analyst Professor Michael Clarke has been monitoring Russian social media channels this evening.
The Grey Zone, which is affiliated with the Wagner Group, is “very clear that Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin are dead”.
More social media reports suggest Wagner soldiers are being moved out of Belarus, he says.
This is backed up by Belarusian monitoring groups, which are more reliable, Professor Clarke adds.
Then there’s also rumours of things happening in Russia’s Rostov region.
Professor Clarke says that during Wagner’s short-lived coup, people in Rostov were “cheering in the streets” for the mercenary group.
He adds that Prigozhin “had a lot of support among Russians because he seemed to speak the truth”.
Since the aborted march on Moscow by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries began two months ago today, his future has been the subject of intense speculation.
The march was one of the most publicly documented events of the Ukraine war so far.
For this video, Sky News verified more than 100 clips to build a timeline of those fateful hours…
An image has been circulating on social media appearing to show the Wagner Centre in St Petersburg lit up with a crucifix.
A Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel has said Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in the plane crash and paid tribute to a “true patriot” – but official confirmation of his demise is yet to come.
The Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin was also on the plane’s passenger list.
By Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor
No one should be sentimental about Yevgeny Prigozhin.
He was a criminal and a ruthless killer. His favourite means of execution was crushing victims’ skulls with a sledgehammer.
If he has now been killed by the man who made him, in the gangster politics of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, it is a suitably violent ending.
His Wagner forces have massacred, raped and plundered their way across Africa.
And they have spearheaded Mr Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which has been marked by similar atrocities.
Prigozhin was also called on by Mr Putin to subvert American democracy with an army of trolls whose cyber meddling has helped polarise the US.
There is a danger that Prigozhin is romanticised as the only Russian to dare stand up to the Putin regime in what was the biggest threat to its rule.
But he was a nasty piece of work by any measure, a perfect henchman to his gangster president who raised him up, used him and has now destroyed his own creature, it seems, after he turned against him.
It’s been three hours or so since the news first broke that Yevgeny Prigozhin may have been killed in a plane crash.
Our video team has rounded up all the major developments so far…
Flight tracking site Flightradar24 has shared what it knows about the final journey of the Embraer Legacy 600 plane.
It says it first received data from the aircraft at 2.46pm local time.
The aircraft climbed to a cruising altitude of 28,000ft between 2.59pm and 3.11pm.
Nine minutes later, it had stopped transmitting data.
“Even though the aircraft was not transmitting position information, other data like altitude, speed, vertical rate, and autopilot settings were broadcast. It is this data that provides some insight into the final moments of the flight,” Flightradar24 said.
At 3.19pm, the aircraft descended briefly before climbing to a maximum altitude of 30,100ft.
It then descended back to roughly 27,500ft, before climbing and then levelling off again.
It then started to descend sharply, with the final data showing it at 19,725ft.
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