Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin confirmed dead in plane crash

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian private military company Wagner Group, died in a mysterious plane crash on Wednesday (local time), just two months after the armed uprising towards Moscow. Prigozhin, once a close confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, ignited a rebellion on June 23, driven by accumulated conflicts with the regular military forces during the Ukrainian war. The scenario of figures opposing the Putin regime ending up in an enigmatic demise one after another has been reiterated.

According to the Russian state-run TASS agency and others, Prigozhin's private aircraft crashed into a field in the Tver Region at around 6 p.m. local time en route from Moscow to his hometown of St. Petersburg.

Authorities confirmed that Prigozhin, along with Dmitry Utkin, co-founder of Wagner Group, and eight other passengers onboard lost their lives in that accident. "There is not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind. I am not surprised," U.S. President Joe Biden remarked on the day, hinting at the possibility of Putin's influence behind the tragedy.


Eun-A Cho achim@donga.com