Russia on Thursday confirmed that Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was on crashed plane.
Russian emergency services informed that all ten bodies on the Embraer Legacy jet have now been recovered. Those on board include Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and his second-in-command Dmitry Utkin.
Police have now sealed off the area around the crash site and the Russian Aviation Authority has formed a special commission to look into it. A probe is underway to understand what has caused the crash.
How the plane crashed?
A plane carrying three crew members and seven passengers that was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg went down almost 300 kilometers (185 miles) north of the capital, according to officials cited by Russia’s state news agency Tass.
A BBC reports cites the executive jet showed no signs of trouble until a sudden drop in its final 30 seconds of received altitude, flight tracking data shows .
Ian Petchenik, who works for flightracker Flightradar24, told the Reuters news agency that the Embraer Legacy 600 jet made a “sudden downward vertical” at 15:19 GMT.
Then within about 30 seconds the aircraft plummeted more than 8,000 feet from its cruising altitude of 28,000 feet.
“Whatever happened, happened quickly,” Petchenik said, before adding prior to the drop there was no indication anything was wrong with the aircraft.
The crash immediately raised suspicions since the fate of the founder of the Wagner private military company has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted the mutiny.
At the time, President Vladimir Putin denounced the rebellion as “treason” and a “stab in the back” and vowed to avenge it. But the charges against Prigozhin were soon dropped. The Wagner chief, whose troops were some of the best fighting forces for Russia in Ukraine, was allowed to retreat to Belarus, while reportedly popping up in Russia from time to time.
