Russian investigators on Sunday confirmed the demise of Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash final Wednesday, citing genetic tests indicating his identification.
Prigozhin’s identify was amongst these of the ten passengers on the flight manifest for the non-public jet, which crashed in Russia’s Tver area whereas travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
Wagner sympathizers had held out hope that the mercenary chief, who staged an aborted coup towards Russian President Vladimir Putin in June, was someway nonetheless alive.
But in a press release revealed on the Telegram messaging service on Sunday, Russia’s Investigative Committee mentioned the identities of all the plane’s passengers had been confirmed with “molecular-genetic examinations.”
A former loyalist who was dubbed “Putin’s chef” for his function as a catering government supplying the Kremlin, Prigozhin grew to become embittered towards the Russian authorities’s dealing with of the battle on Ukraine. After Prigozhin’s short-lived seizure of the southern Russian metropolis of Rostov-on-Don and march on Moscow, Putin accused the Wagner boss of “treason.”
Although the Russian president prolonged his condolences to Prigozhin’s household on Thursday, there’s widespread hypothesis that his authorities was liable for the mercenary chief’s demise. U.S. officers this week mentioned that there was no proof {that a} missile had taken down the plane, however left open the chance {that a} bomb had been detonated aboard the flight.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy final week denied that Kyiv had any involvement in the crash.
Russia launched new air assaults on northern and central Ukraine on Sunday; a minimum of two accidents and a few harm had been reported in the Kyiv area.
