Video : Wagner Chief Plane CRASH
Eugene Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, which staged a brief mutiny against Russian military leaders in June, was on board the plane that crashed northwest of Moscow. on Wednesday, the report said.
According to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Services, seven passengers and three crew members were on board the Embraer private jet when it crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region on Wednesday. According to initial information, all people on board were killed, adding that they were “conducting search operations”.
Among the passengers on board were Dmitriy Utkin, a trusted lieutenant of Prigozhin since Wagner’s founding, and Prigozhin’s senior assistant Valeriy Chekalov, according to a passenger list shared by Russia’s aviation authority. shall.
State media Russia 24 reported that the bodies of eight people were found at the crash site. Earlier, TASS reported that the plane “fired” on impact after being in the air for about half an hour. The crash comes months after Prigozhin launched a brief uprising that posed an unprecedented challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority before it was abruptly quelled under an agreement forcing the police Chief Wagner and his warriors had to settle in Belarus.
Wagner’s forces were heavily involved in capturing the eastern Ukrainian towns of Soledar and Bakhmut following Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine last year. Prigozhin then spent months criticizing Russia’s military leaders and their support of their military before calling for an armed uprising.
US President Joe Biden suggested that Putin may be behind the accident. “You may remember, I was asked about that,” Biden told CNN. “I said I’d be careful when I ride. I’m not sure what happened, but I’m not surprised.”
When news of the crash broke, Putin was attending an event hundreds of kilometers away in the Kursk region to mark the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
Video shows the plane falling from the sky
A video released by Russian state media RIA Novosti shows a plane falling from the sky with a missing wing. CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the video, but RIA Novosti confirmed this is the moment an Embraer plane crashed from the sky into the Tver region.
