Russian investigators said on Sunday that genetic tests have confirmed that the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhinwas among ten people who died in a plane crash on Wednesday
Since the plane crash, it is not known whether Prigozhin was on the plane.
The Russian aviation agency published the names of the ten people, including Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, co-founder of the Wagner group.
The plane (a private jet) crashed in the Tver region, northwest of Moscow.
“As part of the investigation of the plane crash in the Tver region, molecular genetic examinations have been completed,” Alarabiya quoted the Russian Investigative Committee as saying in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.
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“Based on their results, the identities of the ten dead were established. They correspond to the list indicated on the flight sheet, ”he said.
The cause of the crash is still unknown and authorities have yet to comment.
In indirect confirmation of Prigozhin’s death, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the deceased’s former boss described him as a “talented man.”
“He was a man with a complicated destiny. He made some serious mistakes in his life, but he also achieved the necessary results, both for himself and, when I asked him, for the common cause, ”Putin added.
Before his death, Prigozhin led a short-lived rebellion against the Russian army in June, an act Vladimir Putin described as a backstab and betrayal.
Although Wagner’s troops entered Russia to challenge the Russian army, they withdrew after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally, mediated.
Most of Wagner’s forces then withdrew to Belarus, where they began training the army there.
Putin promised that Russia’s response to the threat posed by the Wagner group would be brutal.
Wagner, a private military company accused of human rights abuses, is financed and controlled by the Russian state and is active in some African countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso.