Staff Reporter.
Russian state-run news agencies on Wednesday said Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group that led a mutiny against Russia’s army in June, was on the list of passengers of a plane that crashed.
“The plane that crashed in the Tver Region listed Yevgeny Prigozhin among its passengers, (Russia’s aviation agency) Rosaviatsia said,” TASS news agency reported, with RIA Novosti and Interfax issuing similar reports.
A private plane crashed in Moscow’s Tver region, killing all 10 people on board, the Russian emergency services said Wednesday.
“A private Embraer Legacy aircraft travelling from Moscow to Saint Petersburg crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver Region. There were 10 people on board, including three crew members. According to preliminary information, all those on board died,” the ministry for emergency situation said on Telegram.
Both the Russian state and Prigozhin himself are known to deal in misinformation, and there was no immediate independent confirmation of either the crash or Prigozhin’s death.
Putin’s tool
In later years, Prigozhin said he had created the Wagner Group in 2014 to support Russia in its invasion of the Donbas region of Ukraine.
That was after a colourful early career first as a thief in St Petersburg (which earned him a 12-year jail sentence) and later as a maker of sausage rolls, then a restauranteur.
It was via his restaurant work that he met Vladimir Putin, at the time the deputy mayor of St Petersburg. With their friendship came government catering contracts for Prigozhin, and a rapid increase in his personal wealth.
Wagner claimed to be an independent company, but was widely seen as a Putin tool – and, after Prigozhin’s attempted mutiny, Putin disclosed that the Russian state had been funding Wagner – to the tune of some R18 billion in its last financial year.
Wagner in Africa
On the continent, Wagner became a fixture in conflict zones.
Most recently, after the coup in Niger, Wagner popped up as a potential ally of coup leaders should Niger’s neighbours seek to reinstate democracy.
In total, the company has activities in, or has been in negotiations with, 13 different African countries, as close to South Africa as Mozambique, until 2019, and Zimbabwe is known to have negotiated potential deals with Wagner.
The company is particularly attractive to minerals extraction.
Prigozhin’s aborted coup raised hopes that Wagner would be dissolved, but Russia has maintained it as a state-run enterprise – and it has maintained operations in many parts of Africa.
Wager has been a friend to dictators, warlords and leaders who made war on their own people in Sudan, Mali and Libya.
Perhaps its clearest involvement in war crimes was in Libya, where it was accused of killing many civilians with landmines and booby traps.
The coup that wasn’t
In the weeks leading up to the Russian coup attempt, Prigozhin was very clear, and publicly so, about his anger with Russia’s military commanders.
He branded Russian generals as “clowns” and accused them of using his troops as cannon fodder.
Prigozhin had planned to capture Russia’s top commanders when they visited a region close to Ukraine, but that plan was foiled by intelligence services, it later emerged.
Instead, on 23 June, he dispatched forces north toward Moscow, in what Putin branded treason, leading to some limited fighting between Wagner and Russian troops.
© Agence France-Presse.