Yevgeny Prigozhin obit

Leader of Russian Wagner Group believed dead after private jet crashes near Moscow

Unverified video shows Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin's private jet fall from the sky near Moscow, killing all 10 people onboard. 

He was not on the list.

Tver region on Wednesday, according to the press service of Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency. He is presumed dead.

Ten people were killed in the crash near the town of Kuzhenkino, including Prigozhin.

"An investigation has been launched into the crash of the Embraer aircraft, which occurred tonight in the Tver region. According to the list of passengers, among them is the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin," the department said in a statement.

Among the 10 dead were three crew members and seven passengers. The seven passengers were identified as Sergey Propustin, Evgeniy Makaryan, Aleksandr Totmin, Valeriy Chekalov, Dmitriy Utkin, Nikolay Matuseev and Prigozhin. Multiple pro-Wagner groups have claimed that Prigozhin was killed.

The crew was identified as Cmdr. Aleksei Levshin, co-pilot Rustam Karimov and flight attendant Kristina Raspopova.

The Federal Air Transport Agency said the plane was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a statement, "The demonstrative elimination of Prigozhin and the Wagner command two months after the coup attempt is a signal from Putin to Russia's elites ahead of the 2024 elections."

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the plane crash in Russia, according to the White House.

Biden told reporters he didn't "know for a fact what happened, but I'm not surprised."

"There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer," he told reporters in Lake Tahoe, where he is on vacation.

White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement earlier in the day that officials were watching the reports of the plane crash.

"If confirmed, no one should be surprised. The disastrous war in Ukraine led to a private army marching on Moscow, and now -- it would seem -- to this," she said.

Prigozhin is the head of the private paramilitary organization Wagner Group, which played a key role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine before briefly launching an insurrection against the Russian military in June. Forces loyal to Prigozhin marched toward Moscow, before turning back after several days.

Prigozhin allegedly struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin where he didn't face prosecution and was relocated to Belarus, according to the Kremlin. The Russian president and Prigozhin allegedly met face to face on June 29, less than a week after the failed coup, the Kremlin said.

On July 3, Prigozhin released a message on social media claiming the rebelling was aimed at "fighting traitors and mobilizing our society."

"I think we have achieved a lot of it. In the near future, I am sure that you will see our next victories at the front. Thanks guys," he allegedly said.

Prigozhin's last known public appearance came in a video dated Aug. 21 from an undisclosed location in Africa.

Prigozhin helped to launch the Wagner Group toward the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia conflict on the Crimean Peninsula around 2014, according to reports published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.

In 2018, U.S. prosecutors charged Prigozhin for his suspected role in funding the Internet Research Agency, which the U.S. described as a Russian "troll farm" that sought to use digital campaigns to increase political and social tensions in the U.S.

He was a Russian oligarch and mercenary leader who had been a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin until he launched a rebellion in June 2023. Prigozhin was sometimes referred to as "Putin's chef" because he owned restaurants and catering companies that provide services to the Kremlin. Once a convict in the Soviet Union, Prigozhin controlled a network of influential companies whose operations, according to a 2022 investigation, were "tightly integrated with Russia's Defence Ministry and its intelligence arm, the GRU".

In 2014, he founded a private military company called the Wagner Group, to support pro-Russian paramilitaries in Ukraine. Funded by the Russian state, it played a significant role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine and supported Russian interests in the Middle East and in Africa. In November 2022, Prigozhin also acknowledged his companies' interference in US elections. In February 2023, he confirmed that he was the founder and long-time manager of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company accused by the West of conducting online propaganda and disinformation campaigns.

Prigozhin's companies and associates, and formerly Prigozhin himself, are subject to economic sanctions and criminal charges in the United States and the United Kingdom. In October 2020, the European Union (EU) imposed sanctions against Prigozhin due to his financing of the Wagner Group's activities in Libya. In April 2022, the EU imposed additional sanctions on him for his role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The FBI has offered a reward of up to $250,000 for information leading to Prigozhin's arrest.

Prigozhin openly criticized the Russian Defense Ministry for corruption and mishandling the war against Ukraine. Eventually, he said the reasons they gave for invading were lies. On 23 June 2023, he launched a rebellion against the Russian military leadership. Wagner forces captured Rostov-on-Don and advanced toward Moscow. The rebellion was called off the following day, and Prigozhin had his criminal charges dropped after agreeing to relocate his forces to Belarus.

 

On 23 August 2023, exactly two months after the rebellion, Prigozhin was presumed dead in a plane crash in Tver Oblast, north of Moscow, along with nine other people.

In 1979, 18-year-old Prigozhin was caught stealing and was given a suspended sentence of two years and six months in prison. He served his sentence working at a chemical plant in Veliky Novgorod.

In 1980, he returned to Leningrad and joined a gang. He participated in a burglary spree around Leningrad, before being caught after choking a woman on the street during a robbery, with him and accomplices then stealing the woman's earrings and boots. In 1981, he was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment in a high-security penal colony for robbery, theft, fraud, and involving minors in criminal activity.

According to Prigozhin, he violated the terms of his solitary confinement "on a regular basis" until he was sent to general population in 1985, where he started to "read intensively" and worked as a lathe operator, tractor driver, and cabinet maker after receiving training at a vocational school. In 1988, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union reduced his sentence to ten years on good behavior, noting that he had begun "corrective behavior". He was sent to a medium-security penal colony and was released in 1990.

In total, Prigozhin spent nine years in detention. Immediately after his release, he started attending the Leningrad Chemical and Pharmaceutical Institute to get a pharmaceutical degree, but failed to complete his studies. Prigozhin would later flaunt his prison past to convince prisoners to join the Wagner Group.