Mapping the Prigozhin plane’s final flight

Russian authorities say mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on board a plane which crashed on Wednesday evening north of Moscow with no survivors, two months to the day after he led an abortive mutiny against the army top brass.

The aircraft, which had been travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, came down near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver Region, Russia’s emergency situations ministry said.

The United States is looking at a number of theories over what brought down the plane presumed to be carrying Prigozhin, including a surface-to-air missile hitting it, U.S. officials told Reuters.

Earlier on Wednesday, another jet also set off from Moscow and appeared to be following the same route, completing its journey and returning the same day. The Wagner-linked social media channel Grey Zone said that jet was connected to the mercenary group. But the plane’s operator, Jetica LLC, denied this, telling Reuters on Friday that “neither the plane itself nor its passengers are related to Wagner and have never been”.

According to a report from FlightRadar24, the plane that crashed was not tracked using its precise location “likely due to … interference (or) jamming in the area,” though the company said it used another method to calculate its position using signals sent to multiple receivers in the area.

Flightradar24 said the jet went through a series of ascents and descents of a few thousand feet each over 30 seconds before its final, disastrous plunge.

The Embraer Legacy 600 executive jet, said to have carried Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to his death, showed no signs of any problem until its precipitous drop in the final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data.

The Embraer Legacy jet model has only recorded one accident in more than 20 years of service, and that was not related to mechanical failure.

Brazilian planemaker Embraer SA said it had not been providing any service or support in recent years to the plane, which seats around 13 passengers.

In 2014, Prigozhin founded Wagner, a private military company whose fighters have deployed in support of Moscow's allies in countries including Syria, Libya and the Central African Republic. The United States has imposed sanctions on it and accused it of atrocities, which Prigozhin has denied.

Prigozhin, 62, soared in prominence after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, where his fighters — including thousands of convicts he recruited from prison — led the Russian assault on the city of Bakhmut in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. Prigozhin used social media to trumpet Wagner’s successes and wage a feud with the military establishment, accusing it of incompetence and even treason.