Crash or Kremlin-ordered shot? Hypotheses are open on the fall of the private jet carrying Yevgeny Prigojine, which crashed Wednesday evening in the Tver region, north of Moscow. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations has already indicated that all people on board the Embraer Legacy were killed instantly. For its part, the Wagner militia, from its Telegram Gray Zone channel, confirmed the death of its founder and boss.
According to the Federal Air Transport Agency (URA), seven passengers and three crew members were on board the aircraft, registered in the name of one of Prigozhin’s companies. The team of investigators sent to the scene the same evening found the remains of ten corpses, which will be transported to the morgue of Tver for identification, indicated the Russian news agency Interfax.
In addition to Yevgeny Prigojine, the public face of the Wagner group, the Wagner militia confirmed the death in the crash of its right-hand man Dmitri Utkin. Nicknamed “Wagner”, the latter had become the real leader of the militia according to the Ukrainian military intelligence services.
Man in the shadows, former lieutenant-colonel member of the Russian special forces, Dmitri Outkine, aged around fifty, created his own militia in 2013, Corps Slave. Its mercenaries stand out in Syria where they lend assistance to President Bashar El-Assad to secure oil and strengthen his army against the Islamic State. Corps Slave also participated in the Donbass war in 2014.
That same year, Dmitri Utkin and Evgueni Prigozhin decided to found the “Wagner” group together. The name, in homage to the favorite composer of the Nazis, is suggested by Utkin, who displays his admiration for the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler, wearing tattoos representing Nazi insignia on his rare photos.
In 2016, Vladimir Putin awarded him the Medal of Bravery in recognition of these acts in the Syrian conflict, particularly during the Battle of Aleppo. In the context of the war in Ukraine, the European Union declared him, in its Official Journal of December 2021, “responsible for serious human rights abuses committed by the group, including acts of torture as well as extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and assassinations”.
Among the other members of the list published by Russia are close collaborators or fighters within Wagner, according to Dossier Center (hacking site belonging to the Russian opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky which publishes internal documents for organizations linked to Yevgueni Prigojine).
One of Prigojine’s closest friends, Valery Chekalov had worked with him since the 2000s, and was a logistics manager at Wagner, says Dossier Center. Chekalov oversaw all of Prigozhin’s “civilian” projects abroad – geological exploration, oil production or agriculture. It was he who ran Euro Polis LLC, a company that covered Wagner’s activities in Syria and Africa.
A former police officer, he joined Wagner in March 2016. Eugène Makaryan was notably part of the fourth Wagner assault detachment in Syria, which came under fire from American planes near Khasham in January 2017.
The other passengers with a lesser known profile are all members of Wagner. After fighting in the Second Chechen War, Sergei Propustin joined Wagner in March 2015. Since 2016, he joined the Second Reconnaissance and Assault Detachment, where Prigozhin recruited many bodyguards that same year.
Dossier Center did not find Nikolai Matusevitch’s name on Wagner’s lists, but says he did join the militia in January 2017. He served in Assault Detachment Four in Syria. As for the seventh passenger, Alexandre Totmine, his functions have yet to be specified.