Prigozhin’s death in plane crash confirmed – Moscow

Author: Editors Desk Source: RT

August 27, 2023 at 07:15

A portrait of the owner of private military company Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin lays at an informal street memorial near the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, August 26, 2023. © Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP

DNA testing shows that all those listed on the flight manifest were indeed on board, the Investigative Committee has said

Russia’s Investigative Committee has confirmed the death of Evgeny Prigozhin, the chief of private military company Wagner Group, in a plane crash earlier this week.

In a statement on Sunday, Svetlana Petrenko, the committee’s chief spokesperson, said that Russian investigators had completed DNA testing of the bodies of those who were on board the Embraer 135BJ Legacy 600 plane. The jet went down in Tver Region on Wednesday as it was flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

“The identities of all 10 of the deceased have been established, [and] they correspond to the flight list,” Petrenko said.

The document in question had already been shared by Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency and included Prigozhin and several other high-ranking Wagner operatives, including Dmitry Utkin – said to be the co-founder of the PMC – and Valery Chekalov, whom the US considered to be the deputy head of the group.