According to the Investigative Committee, all people mentioned as being on the fateful flight of the Wagner leader have been identified by genetic testing.
The head of the private military contractor Wagner Group, Evgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a plane crash earlier this week, according to the Investigative Committee of Russia.
Svetlana Petrenko, the committee’s principal spokeswoman, said in a statement on Sunday that Russian investigators had finished DNA testing on the corpses of individuals who were on board the Embraer 135BJ Legacy 600 aircraft. On Wednesday, the plane, which was travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, crashed in the Tver Region.
According to Petrenko, “all 10 of the deceased’s identities have been established, [and] they correspond to the flight list.”
The aforementioned document, which had already been disseminated by Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, listed Prigozhin along with a number of other high-ranking Wagner agents, including Valery Chekalov and Dmitry Utkin, who was widely believed to be Wagner’s head of logistics and was rumoured to have co-founded the PMC.
Two pilots and an air hostess from the aircraft crew have also been confirmed dead.
When the conflict in Ukraine broke out in February 2022, Prigozhin, who was widely believed to be a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, made headlines when his PMC actively participated in hostilities, particularly in the fighting around the crucial Donbass stronghold of Artyomovsk (also known as Bakhmut).
The Wagner commander frequently criticised the Russian Defence Ministry; in late June, he accused it of bombarding a field camp where his men were camped and declared a “march of justice” towards Moscow in an effort to remove allegedly dishonest officials. The insurrection of Prigozhin, however, was short-lived, and it was put an end by a settlement negotiated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Prigozhin recently debuted a video that was ostensibly shot in Africa. He said that the Wagner Group had resumed recruiting and was engaged in “reconnaissance and search activities” against “ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and other bandits.” at the time.
Putin praised the businessman as a “talented” man with a “complicated destiny” who significantly contributed to the struggle against neo-Nazis in Ukraine when he commented on the Prigozhin plane disaster on Thursday.
