Russian state media reported on Wednesday that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group who led an aborted mutiny earlier this year, was listed as a passenger on a jet that crashed north of Moscow.
NBC News was not able to confirm the news.
According to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Services, a private Embraer Legacy aircraft crashed while flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
The jet had “10 people on board, including three crew members,” when it came down in the Tver region to the northeast of the Russian capital, the ministry added in a statement on its Telegram channel.
While the ministry’s statement did not mention Prigozhin, the Tass state news agency quoted the Federal Air Transport Agency as saying that he had been among the seven passengers on the plane that went down.
In a separate report on RIA Novosti,
“According to the Federal Air Transport Agency, an investigation has been launched into the Embraer crash,” state-run RIA Novosti reported separately. “Among the passengers is the name and surname of Evgeny Prigozhin.”
The agency had launched an investigation into the crash, Tass reported.
Russian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Prigozhin’s fate has been a mystery since his Wagner fighters captured the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on June 23, before they began to march on Moscow, stopping around 120 miles from the capital after an alleged deal brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The deal was meant to see Prigozhin go into exile in Belarus and his fighters either sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry or join him there.
The mutiny followed months of public criticism and mockery from Prigozhin of Russia’s top military brass, accusing them of incompetence throughout the war Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s treatment of Prigozhin since the rebellion has nonetheless confounded many observers.
Although Russian President Vladimir Putin called Wagner’s rebellion treason and a criminal investigation was initially launched, it did not appear that Prigozhin, the Russian leader’s once close ally, was facing charges or any real punishment for the stunning challenge.
Hinting at his location in the 41-second clip, which was published by several Telegram channels affiliated with Wagner on Monday, the man vowed to make Africa “more free” and “Russia even greater on every continent.”
Once known as Putin’s “chef” for catering state events, Prigozhin, 61, long publicly denied leading the Wagner group, a private military company that has also operated in Syria, Mali, the Central African Republic and other countries.
But after his fighters led the charge against Kyiv’s troops in Ukraine, often at massive human cost, he started to embrace the public eye, donning military fatigues and appearing in videos.
Some appeared to show him recruiting prisoners or in the thick of the action at the front line, in contrast to the city-dwelling elites he derided in some of his Telegram posts.
News of the crash broke after Prigozhin appeared to have given his first video address since the mutiny that shook the Kremlin.
Dressed in military fatigues and wearing a bulletproof vest featuring the Wagner logo, a person who appeared to be Prigozhin was filmed standing in a desert-like area in video released Monday.
NBC News was not able to verify the video’s authenticity, as well as when or where it was shot.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
