Russia : Wagner Leader Prigozhin Dies In Plan Crash

The head of the Wagner private security group, which in June staged a rebellion against Russia’s military leadership has died in a plane crash. Yevgeny Prigozhin’s was on board a plane that crashed on Wednesday, with all passengers killed, Russian officials said. The crash comes after Russian media reported that a top general linked to Prigozhin was dismissed from his position as commander of the air force. A plane carrying three pilots and seven passengers that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg went down almost 300 kilometers north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia's state news agency Tass. Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-appointed official in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in Ukraine, said he talked to Wagner commanders who also confirmed that Prigozhin was aboard, as was Dmitry Utkin, whose call sign Wagner became the company's name.
Flight tracking data reviewed by The Associated Press showed a private jet that Prigozhin had used previously took off from Moscow on Wednesday evening and its transponder signal disappeared minutes later. The signal stopped suddenly while the plane was at altitude and traveling at speed. In an image posted by a pro-Wagner social media account showing burning wreckage, a partial tail number matching a jet previously used by Prigozhin could be seen. Videos shared by the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone showed a plane dropping like a stone from a large cloud of smoke, twisting widely as it falls. Such freefalls can occur when an aircraft sustains severe damage, and a frame-by-frame analysis by The AP of two videos were consistent with some sort of explosio...