Featured Image Credit: Wagner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images / Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
Topics: News, World News, Russia, Ukraine
Kit Roberts
Topics: News, World News, Russia, Ukraine
An investigative committee in Russia has confirmed that the former chief of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed in a plane crash on Wednesday.
Sources outside Russia had previously reported that the former mercenary chief had been killed in the crash, but now a committee from inside Russia has confirmed his death.
Prigozhin was listed as one of ten people on board the plane which carried seven passengers and three crew when it departed from Moscow to St Petersburg, according to a report from Russia's civil aviation authority.
The plane had only been in the air for around thirty minutes when it crashed in the Tver region, killing everyone on board.
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Russia's civil aviation authority has confirmed that everyone on board the aircraft has now been identified.
The crash comes around two months after the Wagner Group, led by Prigozhin, mutinied against the Russian government, with a column of Wagner troops marching towards Moscow. However, the rebellion came to a sudden and unexpected end, with Wagner forces standing down.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko reportedly brokered a deal allowing Prigozhin to safely relocate to Belarus following the mutiny.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin branded the former Wagner boss a 'traitor' following the coup.
This led many to speculate about the former mercenary chief's safety given the Russian president's record with people who have turned against him.
The investigating committee in Russia has identified all ten of those on board following forensic testing, and said that the bodies 'conform to the manifest'.