Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and top officers of his private Wagner military company are presumed dead in a plane crash that was widely seen as an assassination, two months after they staged a mutiny that dented Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority.
Russia’s civil aviation agency said that Mr Prigozhin and six top lieutenants were on a business jet that crashed on Wednesday, soon after taking off from Moscow, with a crew of three.
Rescuers quickly found all 10 bodies, and Russian media cited sources in Mr Prigozhin’s Wagner company who confirmed his death.
US and other Western officials long expected Mr Putin to go after Mr Prigozhin, despite promising to drop charges in a deal that ended the June 23-24 mutiny.
“I don’t know for a fact what happened but I’m not surprised,” US President Joe Biden said.
“There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, said his country was not involved.
“We have nothing to do with this. Everyone understands who does,” Mr Zelensky said.
Police, meanwhile, cordoned off the field where the plane went down in Kuzhenkino, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) north-west of Moscow, as investigators studied its wreckage.
Vehicles took away the bodies.
Several Russian social media channels reported that the bodies were burned or disfigured beyond recognition and would need to be identified by DNA.
The reports were picked up by independent Russian media, but The Associated Press was not able to independently confirm them.
Prigozhin supporters claimed on pro-Wagner messaging app channels that the plane was deliberately downed, including suggesting it could have been hit by an air defence missile or targeted by a bomb on board.
These claims could not be independently verified.
Russian authorities have said the cause of the crash is under investigation.
Kuzhenkino resident Anastasia Bukharova, 27, said she was walking with her children on Wednesday when she saw the jet, “and then – boom! – it exploded in the sky and began to fall down”.
She said she was scared it would hit houses in the village and ran with the children, but it ended up crashing into a field.
“Something sort of was torn from it in the air, and it began to go down and down,” she added.
Numerous opponents and critics of Mr Putin have been killed or gravely sickened in apparent assassination attempts.
Speaking to Latvian television, Nato Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence director Janis Sarts said that “the downing of the plane was certainly no mere coincidence”.
Further fuelling speculation that the plane crash was a strike at the heart of Wagner, among those aboard was a top Prigozhin associate, Dmitry Utkin, according to the civil aviation authority.
Mr Utkin’s call sign was Wagner, which became the company’s name.
The crash came the same week that Russian media reported that General Sergei Surovikin, a former top commander in Ukraine who was reportedly linked to Mr Prigozhin, was dismissed from his post as commander of Russia’s air force.
Gen Surovikin has not been seen in public since the mutiny, when he recorded a video address urging Mr Prigozhin’s forces to pull back.
At Wagner’s headquarters in St Petersburg, lights were turned on in the shape of a large cross.
Mr Prigozhin’s supporters brought flowers to the building in an improvised memorial.
While countless theories about the events swirled, most observers saw Mr Prigozhin’s death as Mr Putin’s punishment for the most serious challenge to his authority of his 23-year rule.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, said on Telegram that “no matter what caused the plane crash, everyone will see it as an act of vengeance and retribution” by the Kremlin, and “the Kremlin wouldn’t really stand in the way of that”.
“From Putin’s point of view, as well as the security forces and the military – Prigozhin’s death must be a lesson to any potential followers,” Ms Stanovaya said in a Telegram post.
In the revolt that started on June 23 and lasted less than 24 hours, Mr Prigozhin’s mercenaries swept through the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and captured the military headquarters there without firing a shot, before driving to within about 200 kilometres (125 miles) of Moscow in what Mr Prigozhin called a “march of justice” to oust the top military leaders who demanded that the mercenaries sign contracts with the Defence Ministry.
They downed several military aircraft, killing more than a dozen Russian pilots.
Mr Putin first denounced the rebellion as “treason” and a “stab in the back” and vowed to punish its perpetrators, but hours later made a deal that saw an end to the mutiny in exchange for an amnesty for Mr Prigozhin and his mercenaries and permission for them to move to Belarus.
Details of the deal have remained murky, but Mr Prigozhin has reportedly shuttled between Moscow, St Petersburg, Belarus and Africa where his mercenaries have continued their activities despite the rebellion.
He was quickly given back truckloads of cash, gold bars and other items that police seized on the day of the rebellion, feeding speculation that the Kremlin still needed Mr Prigozhin despite the mutiny.
Earlier this week, the mercenary chief published his first video since the mutiny, declaring that he was speaking from an undisclosed location in Africa where Wagner is “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free”.
Mr Prigozhin’s overseas activities have reportedly irked Russia’s military leadership, who have sought to replace Wagner with Russian military personnel in Africa.
The Institute for the Study of War argued that Russian authorities probably moved to eliminate Mr Prigozhin and his top associates as “the final step to eliminate Wagner as an independent organisation”.
Flight tracking data reviewed by The Associated Press showed a private jet that Mr Prigozhin had used previously took off from Moscow on Wednesday evening, and its transponder signal disappeared minutes later.
Videos shared by the pro-Wagner Telegram channel Grey Zone showed a plane dropping like a stone from a large cloud of smoke, twisting wildly as it fell, one of its wings missing.
A freefall like that occurs when an aircraft sustains severe damage, and a frame-by-frame AP analysis of two videos was consistent with some sort of explosion mid-flight.
Mr Prigozhin’s death is unlikely to have an effect on Russia’s war in Ukraine.
His forces fought some of the fiercest battles over the last 18 months, but pulled back from the front line after capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut in late May.
As news of the crash was breaking, Mr Putin projected calm, speaking at an event commemorating the Second World War Battle of Kursk and hailing the heroes of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
On Thursday, he addressed the Brics summit in Johannesburg via video link, talking about expanding co-operation between the group’s members.
He did not mention the crash and the Kremlin made no comment about it.
