On August 23, 2023, exactly two months after the Wagner Group’s mutiny, a Wagner-associated Embraer business jet crashed near Tver, between Moscow and St Petersburg. The russian authorities claim 10 people on board died, including Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, the UK Defense Intelligence reports.
There is not yet definitive proof that Prigozhin was onboard and he is known to exercise exceptional security measures. However, it is highly likely that he is indeed dead.
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The demise of Prigozhin would almost certainly have a deeply destabilising effect on the Wagner Group. His personal attributes of hyper-activity, exceptional audacity, a drive for results and extreme brutality permeated Wagner and are unlikely to be matched by any successor.
Wagner’s leadership vacuum would be compounded by the reports that founder and field commander Dimitry Utkin and logistics chief Valery Chekalov also died.
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