Kremlin silent on reported death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in jet crash
Graham Russell
Joe Biden has strongly suggested Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the apparent death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash, as Ukrainian officials interpreted the incident as a warning to Russian “elites” and flowers were laid for the late Wagner chief outside the organisation’s St Petersburg headquarters.
“I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised,” the US president said after a briefing following the crash of Prigozhin’s private jet between Moscow and St Petersburg. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind. But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”
The Kremlin has not yet commented on the crash. Rosaviatsia, the Russian aviation authority, said Prigozhin and senior Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin were among 10 people travelling on the Embraer business jet at the time.
Putin made no mention of the incident during a speech in Moscow to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Kursk during the second world war. He instead hailed “all our soldiers who are fighting bravely and resolutely” in Ukraine.
Key events
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday thanked South African President Cyril Ramaphosa for handling the summit of the BRICS group of nations and for his efforts to expand the bloc.
BRICS has decided to invite six countries – Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – to become new members of the group, which currently comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
The move is aimed at growing the clout of a bloc that has pledged to champion the “Global South”, Reuters reports.
Putin was speaking via video link at the closing news conference of the three-day summit held in Johannesburg, amid news of a fatal plane crash involving mutineer Yevgeny Prigozhin in Russia.
The UK’s shadow immigration minister has again called for the Wagner mercenary group to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation, after its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s apparent death.
Stephen Kinnock told Sky News: “Mr Prigozhin is clearly a war criminal. He should have faced charges in the international court for his war crimes.
“Labour six months ago called for the Wagner group to be proscribed by the British government as a terrorist organisation and the government still has not done that.”
He said there were “many private armies” now fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
“They are part of the Russian mafia state. They have to be described properly as such,” Kinnock said.
‘Reasonable doubts’ about cause of Prigozhin plane crash, France says
France said on Thursday there were “reasonable doubts” about the cause of the plane crash that presumably killed Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner paramilitary group.
“We don’t yet know the circumstances of this crash. We can have some reasonable doubts,” the government spokesperson, Olivier Véran, told France 2 television.
Asked about the US president Joe Biden’s claim that little “happens in Russia that [Vladimir] Putin is not behind”, Véran agreed that “as a general rule, that’s a truth that can be established”.
Prigozhin was “the man who did Putin’s dirty work. What he has done is inseparable from the policies of Putin, who gave him responsibility to carry out abuses as the head of Wagner”, he said.
“Prigozhin leaves behind him mass graves. He leaves behind him messes across a large part of the globe, I’m thinking of Africa, Ukraine, and Russia itself.”
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has hailed Ukrainians as “free people” on the country’s independence day.
Posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, Zelenskiy said: “Happy Ukraine’s Independence Day!
“The day of the free, the strong, and the dignified. The day of equals. Ukrainian men and women. In our entire country.
“In this fight, everyone counts. Because the fight is for something that is important to everyone. An independent Ukraine.”
Happy Ukraine’s Independence Day!
The day of the free, the strong, and the dignified. The day of equals. Ukrainian men and women. In our entire country.
In this fight, everyone counts. Because the fight is for something that is important to everyone.An independent Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/tUYTsn3TrE
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 24, 2023
The president of neighbouring Moldova, Maia Sandu, also posted “we stand with you more firmly than ever”.
“Your resilience, determination, and unwavering commitment to freedom inspire us all. Together, in shared belief in democracy and a European future, we move forward. Slava Ukraini!”
The UK schools minister, Nick Gibb, said “it’s important not to jump to conclusions” following reports that the leader of the Wagner mercenary group died in a plane crash.
He told Sky News: “We only heard about this, it only happened a few hours ago.
“We are monitoring the position. It’s important not to jump to conclusions. We are working with our allies, and as soon as we have assessed the situation the government will of course have more to say on the matter.”
It was put to him earlier on Times Radio that this may be further evidence that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is not the kind of person deals can be made with, including to end the war in Ukraine.
Gibb said: “We do know that Putin engaged in an illegal invasion of Ukraine. He’s subject to a warrant for war crimes. So we know what kind of person Putin is.”
The UK schools minister, Nick Gibb, said the government was monitoring the situation carefully following reports that the leader of the Wagner mercenary group died in a plane crash.
Gibb told GB News: “We are obviously monitoring the position very carefully. We’re working with our allies to see how matters develop.”
He added: “There really isn’t any more I can say … It only happened last night and we’re having to, you know, take stock.”
A Reuters reporter at the crash site this morning saw men stretchering black body bags, the agency reports.
Part of the plane’s tail and other fragments lay on the ground near a wooded area where forensic investigators had erected a tent. Mourners left flowers and lit candles near Wagner’s offices in St Petersburg early on Thursday.
Reuters: the Embraer executive jet model that crashed, apparently with the Wagner group chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, onboard, has only recorded one accident in over 20 years of service, and that was not related to mechanical failure.
Embraer has now responded to the incident, saying it was aware of a plane crash in Russia involving a Legacy 600 aircraft but it did not have further information about the case and had not been providing support services for the jet since 2019.
There is a little more detail now on the seven people wounded early on Thursday in a Russian missile strike on the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, authorities said.
Six of the victims were hospitalised with moderate wounds, reported the regional governor, Serhiy Lysak, and some transport infrastructure was damaged.
About a dozen other buildings including a bank, a hotel and an administrative building were damaged, he said, adding that details were being checked.
Reuters could not independently verify the report.
Helen Livingstone
More now on Dmitry Uktkin, who also reportedly died in the crash.
Born in 1970, Utkin was a former officer in Russia’s GRU military intelligence service and served in both Chechen wars, as well as in Syria. He was also among the Wagner members who took part in Russian operations in eastern Ukraine, from 2014, and had received awards for his service from the Kremlin.
In the early 2000s he served 10 years as commander of GRU’s Second Spetsnaz Brigade on the Estonian border before retiring from the army. However, according to his ex-wife, he missed life on the battlefield.
Rarely seen or heard from in public, he was last seen in a video posted by Prigozhin in July, in which the Wagner boss addressed fighters in Belarus, where they were sent after their aborted mutiny a month earlier.
Who was Dmitry Utkin?
Helen Livingstone
Among those presumed dead alongside Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash near Moscow was Dmitry Utkin, who was often described as the founder or co-founder of the mercenary group although his exact role was disputed.
His own call sign was “Wagner”, after Hitler’s favourite composer. The investigative website Bellingcat wrote in 2020 that Utkin had “an obsessive fascination with the history of the Third Reich” while another recent report described him as “festooned with numerous Nazi tattoos, including a swastika, a Nazi eagle, and SS lightning bolts”. The Wagner group was apparently named after him.
However, according to a 2020 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an American thinktank, “it cannot be verified whether Utkin initiated the establishment of Wagner group or was only a frontman for someone else”.
Bellingcat said it had open source data suggesting he was “employed as a convenient and deniable decoy to disguise its state provenance”.
Prigozhin himself only acknowledged founding the group in September 2022 having previously sued news outlets who linked him to it. Both the US and EU imposed sanctions on Prigozhin and Utkin over Wagner’s role in Ukraine:
Air strike injures seven people in Dnipro
An early morning missile strike injured seven people in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the governor of Dnipropetrovsk region, Serhiy Lisak, said on Thursday.
Three men and four women were among the wounded, he said.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said on Telegram that “no matter what caused the plane crash, everyone will see it as an act of vengeance and retribution” by the Kremlin, and “the Kremlin wouldn’t really stand in the way of that.”
“From Putin’s point of view, as well as the security forces and the military – Prigozhin’s death must be a lesson to any potential followers,” Stanovaya said in a Telegram post. According to her, after the mutiny, Prigozhin “stopped being the authorities’ partner and could not, under any circumstances, get that status back.”
“He also wasn’t forgiven,” Stanovaya wrote. “Prigozhin was needed for some time after the mutiny to painlessly complete the dismantling of Wagner in Russia.”
But overall, “alive, happy, full-of-strength and full-of-ideas Prigozhin was, definitely, a walking source of threats for the authorities, the embodiment of Putin’s political humiliation.”
Stanovaya doesn’t expect much public outcry over Prigozhin’s death. She said those who supported him will be “more scared than inspired to protest,” while others would see it as a “deserved outcome.”
Kremlin silent on reported death of Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in jet crash
Graham Russell
Joe Biden has strongly suggested Vladimir Putin’s involvement in the apparent death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash, as Ukrainian officials interpreted the incident as a warning to Russian “elites” and flowers were laid for the late Wagner chief outside the organisation’s St Petersburg headquarters.
“I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised,” the US president said after a briefing following the crash of Prigozhin’s private jet between Moscow and St Petersburg. “There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind. But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”
The Kremlin has not yet commented on the crash. Rosaviatsia, the Russian aviation authority, said Prigozhin and senior Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin were among 10 people travelling on the Embraer business jet at the time.
Putin made no mention of the incident during a speech in Moscow to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Battle of Kursk during the second world war. He instead hailed “all our soldiers who are fighting bravely and resolutely” in Ukraine.
Opening summary
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine – and the reported death of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. This is Helen Sullivan with the latest.
Russia’s aviation authority has said Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who launched an abortive mutiny in June, and top Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin were on board a private jet en route from Moscow to St Petersburg when it crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver region on Wednesday. All 10 people on board the plane – seven passengers and three crew members – have died, according to Russia’s emergencies ministry.
There was no immediate official comment from the Kremlin or the defence ministry on Prigozhin’s apparent death. Putin delivered a speech for the 80th anniversary of the Kursk battle in the second world war durning which he did not mention the crash and hailed “all our soldiers who are fighting bravely and resolutely” in the special military operation in Ukraine.
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Flightradar24 online tracking showed the Embraer Legacy 600 (plane number RA-02795) dropped off the radar at 6.11pm Moscow time. An unverified video clip posted to social media showed a plane resembling a private jet falling out of the sky. Another unverified clip showed burning wreckage on the ground.
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The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but Prigozhin’s allies quickly accused the Russian defence ministry of assassinating him. Grey Zone, a Telegram channel with more than 500,000 subscribers linked to Wagner, hailed him a hero and a patriot who had died at the hands of unidentified people it called “traitors to Russia”.
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Russian investigators opened a criminal investigation. Unnamed sources told Russian media they believed the plane had been shot down by one or more surface-to-air missiles, according to Reuters. Neither Reuters nor the Guardian could confirm that.
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The other five passengers were named as Sergey Propustin, Evgeniy Makaryan, Aleksandr Totmin, Valeriy Chekalov and Nikolay Matuseev. The crew were named as Commander Aleksei Levshin, co-pilot Rustam Karimov and flight attendant Kristina Raspopova.
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In addition to Utkin, Prigozhin had been accompanied on the plane by a cameraman, Wagner’s logistics manager, and Prigozhin’s personal security detail, according to Fontanka, a St Petersburg news outlet that has covered Prigozhin’s operations extensively.
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The plane showed no sign of problems until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data. It made a “sudden downward vertical”, said Ian Petchenik of Flightradar24. Within about 30 seconds it plummeted more than 8,000 feet from its cruising altitude of 28,000 feet. “Whatever happened, happened quickly,” Petchenik said.
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The type of jet has a good safety record, with only one recorded accident in more than 20 years of service, and that was not related to mechanical failure. Embraer said it was aware of a plane crash in Russia involving a Legacy 600 aircraft but it did not have further information about the case and had not been providing support services for the jet since 2019, when the plane was placed under international sanctions.
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There was little surprise abroad over Prigozhin’s apparent death. After a briefing on the incident, the US president, Joe Biden, said: “I don’t know for a fact what happened. But I’m not surprised … There is not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer.”
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Russia meanwhile has also relieved Gen Sergei Surovikin of his command of the Russian aerospace forces, in the highest-level sacking yet of a military commander after Prigozhin’s abortive mutiny. Surovikin was seen as an ally of Wagner in the defence ministry and questions had been asked about whether he or other senior commanders aided the mutiny or had prior knowledge of Prigozhin’s plans.
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A Russian military pilot has reportedly defected with his helicopter to Ukraine after a six-month intelligence operation. A Russian military blogger said a helicopter crossed the border with three people on board “a couple of weeks ago” but claimed the aircraft had lost its way. Ukrainian officials appeared to confirm that the aircraft had landed in Ukraine but did not give any further details.