What we know about Prigozhin’s ‘last flight’ – a
visual guide
The Embraer Legacy 600 jet, long linked to the Wagner
group, rapidly lost altitude and contact 33 minutes into its flight
Peter
Beaumont
@petersbeaumont1
Thu 24 Aug
2023 10.54 EDT
The
aircraft on which Yevgeny Prigozhin was travelling had long been linked with
the Wagner group. An Embraer Legacy 600 jet, the flight tracking service
FlightRadar identified it as being in regular use in recent months, flying from
both St Petersburg and Moscow.
According
to some reports, the Wagner party on board had been attending a meeting with
officials from Russia’s defence ministry.
The
aircraft, manufactured in 2007, fell under US Treasury sanctions in 2019 when
it was listed under a prior registration, M-SAAN, according to a US government
press release.
It said
that by October 2018, Prigozhin’s employees had arranged for the purchase of
the private jet M-SAAN, which was registered to the owner Autolex Transport, a
company cited in the release for materially assisting the Wagner chief.
Flight data
reviewed by the Guardian showed the jet – tail number RA-02795 – was logged
taking off from Moscow at 5.46pm local time (15.46 UK), and climbing to a
cruising altitude of 28,000 ft, outside the range of many small anti-aircraft
missiles.
Thirty-three
minutes into the flight, while about a mile south of the village of Kuzhenkino
in the Tver region, the aircraft rapidly lost altitude and lost contact.
Amateur footage showed what appeared to be the jet falling from the sky.
Villagers on the ground reported hearing a loud metallic bang and seeing the
jet land in several pieces in a field.
Weather
conditions during the short flight were reported to be good.
What caused
the crash?
Prigozhin
supporters claimed on pro-Wagner messaging app channels that the plane had been
deliberately downed. Some suggested it could have been hit by an air-defence
missile, or targeted by a bomb on board. These claims could not be
independently verified. Numerous opponents and critics of Vladimir Putin have
been killed or gravely sickened in apparent assassination attempts.
Witnesses
and experts who have reviewed video footage of the incident describe a break-up
in mid-air associated with some kind of explosion, either originating within
the jet, suggesting a bomb or catastrophic failure, or from outside, suggesting
a missile strike.
Footage of
the incident is inconclusive, even when broken down frame by frame. In one
video, vapour resembling a missile contrail may be visible, and some witnesses
on the ground spoke of hearing two explosions.
What is
clear is that the blast was powerful enough to separate one wing section of the
jet from the fuselage. Low-quality images of the wreckage of the aircraft on
the ground suggest there may be holes in parts of the fuselage.
Vitaly
Stepenok, 72, a Kuzhenkino resident, described what he saw. “I hear an
explosion or a bang … and I looked up and saw white smoke. One wing flew off in
one direction … and then it glided down on one wing. It didn’t nosedive, it was
gliding.”
Western
sources, including the US president, Joe Biden, have pointed to Putin’s
potential role in the incident. . The French government’s spokesperson, Olivier
Véran, told France 2 television:
“We don’t
yet know the circumstances of this crash. We can have some reasonable doubts.”
Russia’s
aviation authority offered no comment on the reason for the crash and said it
had created a special commission to investigate “the circumstances and causes
of the accident”.
What are
the chances it was an accident?
There has
only been one recorded accident involving an Embraer Legacy 600, and that
involved a mid-air collision which the jet survived. There have been no
recorded accidents involving mechanical failure.
There were
unconfirmed reports that the aircraft had undergone repairs just before its
last flight. Because of sanctions, Embraer, the Brazilian maker of the Legacy
600, said it had stopped providing support for the aircraft in 2019.
Who are the
other Wagner group leaders presumed dead in the crash?
According
to the official passenger list published by Rosaviatsia, the Russian aviation
authority, several other senior Wagner members were on the plane with
Prigozhin.
Among them
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.
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. In the video, Prigozhin
introduces a man he says is Utkin; it was the first time the commander had been
filmed speaking to his troops.
“This is
not the end, this is only the beginning of the greatest work in the world,
which will continue very soon,” Utkin says in the video. “And welcome to hell,”
he adds, speaking the last words in English.
Valery
Chekalov was also listed on the passenger list. A longtime Prigohzin ally,
Chekalov was said to be overseeing Priogzhin’s catering firm that provided food
for schools across Russia and fed the military. He also reportedly managed some
of Prigozhin’s business assets in Syria, including his investment in oil in the
war-torn country.
According
to Russian independent media, Chekalov was also in charge of Prigozhin’s travel
arrangements, making him one of the only people aware of the warlord’s
secretive movements, and was responsible for Prigozhin’s personal security. He
had been accused by journalists of leading harassment campaigns against them.
The US imposed sanctions on Chekalov last month over his links to Prigozhin and
for facilitating munitions shipments to Russia.
Another
commander on board was Evgeniy Makaryan, who joined Wagner in 2016 and fought
as part of the mercenary group during Russia’s intervention in Syria. He was
reportedly injured in the Battle of Khasham, where hundreds of Russian
mercenaries perished after US airstrikes against pro-Assad forces.
Members of
Prigozhin’s personal security guard were also listed among the passengers
killed, including Sergey Propustin, a Chechen war veteran who joined Wagner in
2015.
Although
the crash killed much of Wagner’s leadership, a number of veteran commanders
remain alive. But they lack Prigozhin’s charisma, economic powers and political
connections, raising serious questions over the mercenary group’s future.
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